♪♪ [Christine Leonard] Our family has been farming here for over 150 years.

I am a sixth generation dairy farmer.

Uh, my family and I milk 45 registered Holstein cows, about 45 minutes west of Minneapolis.

We farm right around 200 acres, um, and most of what we grow we use to help feed our cows.

When the milk leaves our farm, it actually goes to Bongards Creameries, um, where it gets turned into cheese.

Christine Leonard is one of 300 dairy farmers who are part of Bongards Creameries, a co-operative founded in 1908 in Bongards, Minnesota.

Bongards now produces cheese products sold across the United States and around the world.

[Evan Carlson] Our objective is, number one, to ensure that there's a place for our... our farmers' milk to go, making sure that they can always sell their product.

[Christine] I think one of my favorite parts about being a farmer is really getting to enjoy the fruits of my labor.

You can really taste the quality of milk that's coming from local family farms like mine and turning into this awesome, delicious product, um, that's, you know, full of protein, full of lots of other vitamins and nutrients.

Bongards expanded beyond its Minnesota roots in 2010 when they saw an opportunity to purchase a plant in the small town of Humboldt, Tennessee.

[Marvin] We got 8,500 people.

This city's ten square miles.

One of our number one products in this county is agriculture.

We are in the agriculture belt of West Tennessee.

Lots of cotton, corn, soybeans.

And now, Humboldt can add cheese to that list.

[Evan] And for us, it was just a great town.

We had the... the building, the facility and we knew that the... the employee base was here.

♪♪ Milk from the farmer's cows is turned into cheese, a process that can happen as quickly as 12 hours after the milk arrives at the plant.

[Evan] So, in this facility, we produce primarily processed slice and proce... processed loaf products.

And so, barrels come in from our... our Perham plant up in Minnesota, and they'll get ground up, additional ingredients will be added to that product.

It's mixed up.

It's pasteurized.

And then, it goes into either a carton for a loaf or, in the case of processed cheese, it's actually distributed across the belt.

So, as it comes off the belt, you see the individual ribbons of product layering up and going down the line.

And it's just a really- It's a unique thing to see.

We sell through the food service industry, K-through-12 schools, restaurants.

We sell to a lot of chain restaurants that many people have probably eaten Bongards cheese and not even known it.

The Humboldt plant not only brought a new commodity to town, it also brought much needed jobs.

[Marvin] It's awesome to say, hey, there's a bunch of people from Minnesota wants to come down here and open a cheese plant up in Humboldt, Tennessee.

[Christine] I really trust that they're also taking, a... a, you know, a good step forward to make sure that we're both able to be in business for years to come.