Wisconsin

Westby Cooperative Creamery to build 50,000-pound cottage cheese container

Published

4 years ago

July 9, 2020

When life gives you a 6,280-gallon silo, make cottage cheese.

Westby Cooperative Creamery announced Thursday it will be giving its silo on Main Street a facelift to resemble a giant cottage cheese container. The creamery said it pays homage to the area’s dairy heritage and designation as “The Cottage Cheese Capital of Wisconsin.”

“With 13 to 14 million pounds of cottage cheese leaving this facility on a yearly basis, we thought it would be fitting to create a visual representation of this work and the work of our 175 farmer-owners,” Creamery General Manager Pete Kondrup said.

Westby Cooperative Creamery is known internationally for its cottage cheese after securing the 2020 World Championship title for its 4 percent small curd in the cottage cheese category.

The project will be completed locally by Shawn Engh of Signs by Shawn in Viroqua. In a blog on the creamery’s website, Engh said this may be the most interesting project he has completed.

The installation is expected to be finished by the end of July. The creamery clarified the silo does not actually hold cottage cheese. It often holds yogurt, but the design will represent one of its most renowned claims to fame.

Kaitlyn Riley

Kaitlyn Riley’s passion for communications started on her family’s dairy farm in Gays Mills, Wis. Wanting to share agriculture’s story, she studied strategic communications and broadcast journalism at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In college, she held officer positions with the Association of Women in Agriculture and Badger Dairy Club while volunteering as a news reporter for the college radio station. She also founded the university’s first agricultural radio talk show, AgChat. In her professional career, Kaitlyn has worked in radio, print and television news doing everything from covering local events to interviewing presidential candidates, and putting back on her barn boots to chat with farmers in the field. Today, Kaitlyn can be seen covering local stories that matter to you in the La Crosse area.