How quickly cheesemakers’ livelihoods can crater, especially when they make mostly perishable cheeses or care for animals that have to be milked twice a day. What are you supposed to do with that milk when nobody’s buying your cheese? I checked in with two West Coast cheesemakers I greatly admire to see how they’re faring in this crisis and how they plan to climb out of the pit. Because they will.

Sarah Marcus (above right) of Briar Rose Creamery in Dundee, Oregon, has built a successful small business over the past decade, making mostly washed-rind and bloomy-rind cow’s milk cheeses with limited shelf lives. Briar Rose Maia is a personal favorite.

Can you give me some sense of how business has changed for you?

A complete 180. We went from a ton of orders one week to almost none the next. It sent me into a state of shock. I’ve built my business on selling to restaurants, mostly between here and Seattle, and farmers markets. My cheeses that sell the best are softer, more delicate, more perishable. Grocery stores have shifted to selling things that are pre-cut and pre-weighed so clerks have as little contact as possible and can restock shelves quickly. That’s not something I’ve offered because of the labor involved. I have to reexamine my entire business model.

The Oregon Cheese Guild suggested that we reach out to CSAs, or to wineries doing curbside pickup that might want to add on a cheese plate. They all thought it was a great idea, but no takers yet.

Did you have contracts for milk?

No, I can tell my dairymen I’m not picking up this week. I’m grateful I don’t have animals that I have to continue to manage. I’ll take my blessings where I can find them.

What are your plans? Can you switch to aged cheese?

I can and I can’t. It’s a matter of having shelf space. If your cheese isn’t moving quickly, how do you manage that? You’re building up back stock, and then you’re out of space.

We’ll continue to make small amounts and sell at farmers markets. But I’m slowing down production. If I don’t have an outlet for it, what’s the point?

Erika Scharfen (above left) is the cheesemaker at Pennyroyal Farm in California’s Anderson Valley, a small farmstead creamery with family ties to Navarro Vineyards. Situated in wine country, the farm derived much of its income from visitors who came for farm tours and purchased cheese direct from the farm.

How’s it going?

Like everybody, I’m on the verge of tears every day. Not knowing is hard. We had to shut down on-farm sales last week. That’s about 30 percent of our business, and this is our busiest time of year, so we took a hit there. Our restaurant accounts are mostly fine dining, so we saw an immediate drop-off there. Our hope is our cheese club. We’re onboarding people who were on the wait list. We’re lucky that we weren’t wholly reliant on distributors or restaurant accounts.

You’ve got animals. What are you doing with the milk?

We’re milking 78 goats and 27 ewes, and they don’t just shut off. So we’re still making cheese every day, although less than normally. It’s kidding season so I’m able to funnel a lot of milk back to the kids. I’m grateful for the diversity of our cheese line. We’re doing almost no mold-ripened cheese and putting everything into Boont Corners, which we can age. The fear is that we’ll have too much eight months from now, but that’s better than a recipe we have no outlet for.

How long can we sustain at this level? We don’t know. I hold onto hope that, when this passes and the economy bounces back, people are going to come visit. Restaurants come back, maybe not with the same owners but there will always be restaurants. It’s a matter of whether we can weather this until we get to that point. I go out and look at my girls, and just pray we don’t have to sell them.