Some families play board games together, or take bike rides, or rob banks. Then there’s the Hilarides family of Lindsay, California. They make cheese. Tons of cheese. About 30 tons a year, to be exact.

It all started when Central Valley dairy farmer Rob Hilarides and his wife Jeannie decided to develop a family business that their daughters would enjoy. Nine years later, Three Sisters Cheese has been featured in magazines like Bon Appetit, and the Hilarides’ daughter Marisa Simoes oversees the aforementioned 30 tons of annual farmstead cheese production.

Jealous? Here’s how to bring your family closer together through the magic of cheese.

1. Get 9,000 cows.

2. Take a farmstead cheese class, like the one Rob and Marisa took back in 1999.

3. Taste every cheese you can get your hands on, like Rob, Jeannie, Marisa, and their other daughters Lindsay and Hannah did.

4. Build a state-of-the-art dairy complete with cheese room, milking parlor, and multiple cheese aging and storing rooms.

5. Milk the cows directly into the cheese vat. You’ll need either some long tubes or some very limber cows.

6. Do the rest of the cheese-making stuff you learned about. This will involve microbes, rennet, curds, whey, and possibly a tuffet.

7. If you’ve done it right, you’ll now enjoy delicious artisanal cheeses along with your family togetherness. In Three Sisters’ case, those cheeses are Serena, a hard cheese with some of the bite of Parmesan and some of the sweet nuttiness of Gruyere; and Serenita, a creamier, softer, mote delicately flavored variation that was accidentally created from a botched batch of Serena.

Of course, that’s a lot of work. You could always skip to the end and just enjoy these two pounds of Three Sisters Cheese. It’ll be every bit as delicious. And you won’t argue over who has to clean up after all those cows.

Back to top