FEATURES

ART LUDLOW'S MECOX BAY DAIRY BRINGS ARTISANAL CHEESE TO THE EAST END

Every day at 6 a.m. and 4 p.m., Wendy, Thistle, Clarabel and 11 other adult Jersey cows on Art Ludlow's 50-acre Bridgehampton farm nose their way into the milking room to release their swollen udders. Once inside, either Ludlow (who milks them Saturday afternoons and Sundays) or his colleague, Claes Cassel (who milks them at all other times), lures them into place with a snack, ties them to a rail (if they're fidgety) and attaches an electric milking claw to each one of their four teats, or quarters. The pumped milk then travels through a hose into a steel bucket about the size of a large bowling bag, which is then poured into a 300-gallon bulk tank when the milking is done.

This twice-a-day ritual is the foundation of Ludlow's true occupation: artisanal cheese maker for Mecox Bay Dairy, a company he founded in 2002 after he and his brother Harry, former potato farmers, decided to abandon the family spuds business in favor of something more economically feasible. (Their grandfather, Harry S. Ludlow, started the potato and dairy farm in the early 1900s, and their father Gurden P. Ludlow took it over at age 17 when Harry grandpere died prematurely. By 1960, Gurden had given up the dairy business and focused solely on potatoes.) With differing interests, the two brothers decided to split the farm's 100 acres in 2000 and go their separate ways. Harry started raising vegetables—he owns the adjacent Fairview Farm, and runs a farm stand at 19 Horsemill Lane as well as the famous autumn corn maze—and Art turned to making cheese, which he produces and ages in an old barn.

"I decided to do it for a couple of reasons," Art says. "In 1960, when we got rid of the cows, I was nine years old. I always liked the cows—that type of agriculture.