{"id":3166,"date":"2025-05-31T16:25:17","date_gmt":"2025-05-31T16:25:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/florys-truckle-discover-the-true-story-of-a-beloved-american-cheese\/"},"modified":"2025-05-31T16:25:17","modified_gmt":"2025-05-31T16:25:17","slug":"florys-truckle-discover-the-true-story-of-a-beloved-american-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/florys-truckle-discover-the-true-story-of-a-beloved-american-cheese\/","title":{"rendered":"Flory\u2019s Truckle: Discover the True Story of a Beloved American Cheese"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/p>\n

\"Flory\u2019s<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

To the uninitiated, \u201cFlory\u2019s Truckle\u201d might sound like an especially whimsical cheese name, dreamt up by a contemporary, hipster cheesemaker. In reality the name is as pragmatic as it gets, in line with the values of the Missouri-based, German Baptist family that makes it. \u201cFlory\u201d is simply the surname of the farmstead family in question, and \u201cTruckle\u201d refers to the shape of their singular cheese: a tall, barrel-shaped cylinder commonly used in certain varieties of cheddar. It isn\u2019t so much whimsy as downright accuracy, but fortunately for the cheese and everyone involved with it, the name is definitely one of its many memorable qualities.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re already a fan of Flory\u2019s Truckle, you might have heard rumblings that it had been discontinued, so you should be thrilled to learn that Flory\u2019s Truckle is back. In the spirit of accuracy, however, it must be said that Flory\u2019s Truckle isn\u2019t so much \u201cback,\u201d since it never fully disappeared in the first place. It merely changed hands from one set of aging and distributing circumstances to another, and in the transfer became a victim of a well-intentioned but ultimately unfortunate miscommunication. We\u2019ll spill that tea, but first, the cheese.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What is Flory\u2019s Truckle? <\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n

\"Flory's<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

Flory\u2019s Truckle is an aged, clothbound Cheddar cheese made from raw milk collected both from the Flory family\u2019s herd of Jersey cows, and that purchased from other local farms. In the English Cheddar tradition, the truckles are wrapped in cloth badges and coated with lard, where they remain in place during the aging process of up to 18 months to develop a crumbly, occasionally crunchy, aged Cheddar texture. \u201cFlory\u2019s Truckle packs a truckload of flavor,\u201d according to its tasting notes at The Cheese Shop of Salem<\/a>. \u201cIt is sharp, meaty, salty, and sweet \u2014 like the cheese-version of bacon.\u201d Murray\u2019s Cheese<\/a> calls out its \u201cunparalleled peppery aroma and rich grassy flavor.\u201d (I will also happily confess to a \u201cwhoa, what is this?\u201d moment myself when I first tasted Flory\u2019s Truckle.)<\/p>\n

History of Flory\u2019s Truckle and Partnership with Milton Creamery <\/strong><\/h2>\n

Jennifer Heam, the eldest daughter of Tim Flory who originally created Flory\u2019s Truckle, spoke to me about its history. \u201cOur goal has always been to be a small family farm,\u201d says Heam. \u201cWe have no outside, hired help, and Dad built the cheese plant for all of us girls.\u201d (There are 8 Flory daughters who\u2019ve all had a hand in Flory\u2019s Truckle at one time or another.) \u201cFor every single one of us, that was our job,\u201d says Heam. While several of her sisters have married and moved off of the family property, Heam is still very involved with the cheese production.<\/p>\n

Part of being a small family farm, however, meant that space for a cheese aging facility was at a premium, and wasn\u2019t initially a priority. \u201cWhen we got into the cheese business back in 2008, we traveled around to different areas and visited a lot of cheese facilities to see what kind of equipment it took to get started,\u201d says Heam. Milton Creamery<\/a>, (of Prairie Breeze<\/a> fame,) owned by the Musser family and located in southern Iowa, turned out to be more than just a resource for the Florys. \u201cMilton Creamery was the closest facility to us, and we became friends with them,\u201d says Heam. \u201cThey were a lot of help for us getting set up and troubleshooting things.\u201d What started as almost a mentorship relationship turned into an actual partnership. \u201cWe both saw the opportunity to work together. We called them a sister plant,\u201d says Heam. Milton Creamery would become the affineur for Flory\u2019s Truckle. The truckles were formed, bandaged, and held at the Flory farm for the requisite 60 days in order to meet regulatory standards for raw milk cheeses, then were transferred to the Milton operation to age out for the remaining months, and to be put out to distributors.<\/p>\n

As an intentionally small, German Baptist family farm that operates without the internet, the production of Flory\u2019s Truckle stayed roughly the same over time, but the Milton Creamery operation grew significantly during the almost 15 years of their partnership. As a partnership that was also based in friendship, \u201cWe had an agreement with Milton Creamery that they had to give us at least a year’s notice if they wanted to drop the aging and distribution for us,\u201d says Heam, which is exactly the notice that was given to the Florys when Milton Creamery grew to the level that they wanted to focus solely on their own production. \u201cSo we had one year’s notice, and in that time period we built our own aging facility,\u201d says Heam.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Continuing the Legacy of Flory\u2019s Truckle and Partnership with Fox River Dairy <\/strong><\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n

\"Flory's<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

It\u2019s important to note that the split from Milton Creamery was not an acrimonious one, given the mutual respect for the terms of their initial agreement. The struggle became simply one of communication, when Milton Creamery indicated on their website that Flory\u2019s Truckle was \u201cdiscontinued.\u201d \u201cThat was them saying that Flory\u2019s Truckle had been discontinued from their facility,\u201d says Heam, \u201cnot meaning that it had been discontinued from the market, but I think that’s how a lot of distributors took it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Milton Creamery shared its distributor information with the Florys, who then took it upon themselves to try to get the word out that Flory\u2019s Truckle was still available. (Without the advantages of email or other instantaneous communication, you can imagine this was no small undertaking.) \u201cWe’ve spent the last year and a half to 2 years, trying to get back up on top of it,\u201d says Heam.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One of the distributors the Florys reached out to was Dan Probst at Fox River Dairy<\/a>, who was in the process of buying his own warehouse and storage cooler facility. \u201cHe saw the opportunity not to do exactly what Milton was doing, because we\u2019re doing all of the aging now,\u201d says Heam, \u201cbut once it\u2019s finished, he takes it to his facility, and he\u2019s been amazing.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As for the cheese itself, it\u2019s an understandable source of pride for the Florys to now have complete control of the production of Flory\u2019s Truckle. \u201cWe can see the process from start to finish under one roof, and we have much, much more quality control than what we did before,\u201d says Heam.<\/p>\n

Discontinued? Made by the Amish? Aged in Iowa? We hope we\u2019ve cleared up these persistent misconceptions. For the record, Flory\u2019s Truckle was never taken out of production and is now both made and<\/em> aged by the German Baptist Flory family in Missouri and is available from Fox River Dairy<\/a>. Ask for it at your favorite cheese shop or cheese counter.<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

To the uninitiated, \u201cFlory\u2019s Truckle\u201d might sound like an especially whimsical cheese name, dreamt up by a contemporary, hipster cheesemaker. In reality the name is as pragmatic as it gets, in line with the values of the Missouri-based, German Baptist family that makes it. \u201cFlory\u201d is simply the surname of the farmstead family in question, … Okumaya devam et “Flory\u2019s Truckle: Discover the True Story of a Beloved American Cheese”<\/span><\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":1271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[395],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milk-and-diary"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sutyo.com\/tr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}