Serendipity may have brought Louella Hill to artisan cheesemaking, but this Arizona transplant may just be the littlest state’s most remarkable food activist.

Leaning over the small vat of warm fresh milk, Louella Hill grabs a metal tool known as a cheese harp, and begins to swish the harp in figure-eight-like movements, cutting young curds that feel more like slippery jelly than dense chewy cheese. She does this to separate the curds from the whey – and is just one step in a process used to create Divine Providence -- Rhode Island’s first artisan cheese.

Made entirely from local Rhode Island milk, Divine Providence, an aged gouda-style raw-milk cheese, is part of the new Narragansett Creamery www.richeeses.com
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Hill has pinned clever names to her new cheese line -- Atwells Gold, an aged Asiago-style cheese; Renaissance Ricotta, in a nod to the city’s nickname, and Salty Sea Feta, which Hill likes to joke, has been brined in Narragansett Bay. (Not!) And while an official cheese cutting occurred in December, the first hunks of Divine Providence have just hit local shelves.

Rigging her own cheese cave with the help of a white tent and humidifier to control the environment, Hill nurtures and watches over her rounds of Divine Providence like a doting mother, constantly checking the levels of mold that are encouraged to grow on the rind, and testing each batch carefully.

Matt Jennings, owner of Farmstead www.farmsteadinc.com in Wayland Square says after aging for only a few months, it’s tricky to predict just how Divine Providence will mature in flavor.

“It’s like looking at your five-year-old and wondering what they’re going to do with their life, but it has the potential to be a really fantastic table cheese. It’s a little stony, a little earthy, with a caramelized onion and brown butter thing going on, and all of those elements are just awesome,” says Jennings.

“And it’s fantastic having Louella do it more than anyone else, because she’s committed to the state. First and foremost, she never left that behind. She wants to be a champion for Rhode Island agriculture, and the fact that she’s making cheese is just gravy,” he says.

Louella Hill

But for Hill, the effort is slightly bittersweet. It’s been a winding path from agri-champion to Louella-the-cheesemaker.

Her journey began in 2002, when she took a year off of school while attending Brown University, to travel to Italy to learn about food. With a ticket in hand, but no clear plan, she was fortunate to land at Castello di Spannocchia, a working farm near Sienna, Italy that was built in the 1100s. After several months there, she switched jobs and began working for a local cheesemaker.

“We were picking olives, planting grapes, running the vineyard. And when I moved next door to make sheep cheeses, I was leading the sheep to pasture, milking them twice a day and making cheese twice a week,” said Hill.

For Hill, it was a short-lived paradise.

She was jolted back to our American reality when her return trip included a stop in a Greyhound bus station. There she glumly watched children buy processed snacks from vending machines, while a nearby man noshed on baloney.

“I came back to do my senior thesis, and it was obvious to me, it needed to be how to produce more food in Rhode Island.”

So she started talking to local growers.

“What got me is the farmers were so intensely emotional which really shocked me. One farmer in Rehoboth took me out to see his land. There were McMansions bordering his entire farm where he grows cabbages, and they’re telling him he stinks.

“It was clear I had been handed a mission,” she says.

In an effort to save what few local farms were left in Rhode Island, Hill organized the Brown University Farmers’ Market in 2003. She obtained a $10,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to develop software which would enable online communication between farmers and wholesale buyers, and by 2004, Brown University had hired Hill full-time to source local foods for their dining hall.

Meanwhile, the local food fever continued to rise, and not just in New England. It was a movement that was swelling across the country. From Fast Food Nation to localvores to The 100-Mile Diet, it was a grass roots campaign like there had never been one before, said Hill.

Hill soon realized she could make a bigger impact on the production of local food by working for multiple buyers. So in 2005, what had started with her thesis work, officially became Farm Fresh Rhode Island http://www.farmfreshri.org/, a group that links growers with buyers, including chefs or farmers market organizers. And the organization blossomed.

“It was just rolling. There was way more need for that than I could believe,” said Hill.

But that also meant Hill was spending more and more time behind a desk, buried in paperwork and emails, instead of nurturing plants or working with animals. She dreamed about creating something with her hands, and after three years, the pull to make a change was strong.

“Not only did I want to get my hands in it, but look at Rhode Island farmers’ markets...we have produce, we have clams, we have bread, we have honey, but we have almost no meats and no Rhode Island-made cheese. It was a very obvious niche I just filled,” said Hill.

To brush up on her cheese making skills, Hill went to Maine for several months to apprentice with Appleton Creamery, while continuing to reach out to Rhode Island dairies and government officials.

Mark Frederico

But constructing a certified facility where she could launch her cheese operations was extremely costly. It was then that an employee from the state’s Department of Health suggested she get in touch with Providence Specialties -- a wholesale cheese manufacturer on Providence’s west side, who produce feta and mozzarella curds primarily for the New York market.

It was a match, and owner Mark Frederico hired Hill on the spot.

“All along, I thought a farmer and I would go in as business partners. I thought I’d be looking at years of insurance and certification, and then all of a sudden it was a turnkey operation, and these cheese experts, Mark and Frank [Angeloni] were saying, ‘We’ve been meaning to do this for years.’”

With access to a certified facility and a green light on the creative design of the entire artisan cheese line, Hill was ready, but in taking this path, she had to give up the face-to-nose connection to the cows that produce the milk for her cheese. It’s something that she knows is necessary to make her dream happen, but gives her twangs of yearning.

Yet the passion to produce a local food is stronger. Twice a week Hill checks the shipping label on the delivery truck ensuring the milk is only from Rhode Island farms, draws out 40 gallons to fill the small vat set aside for her, and sets out to hand-make the day’s batch of cheese -- each its own small divine revelation.

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Divine Providence, Renaissance Ricotta and other Narragansett Creamery cheeses can be found at:
• Farmstead, 186 Wayland Ave., Providence, 401-274-7177, www.farmsteadinc.com
• Venda Ravioli, 265 Atwells Ave., Providence, 401-421-9105, www.vendaravioli.com,
• And at the Providence Wintertime Farmers’ Market at AS220, 115 Empire Street, Providence; Saturdays, Noon –3pm, through March: www.farmfresh.org/food/farmersmarkets_details.php?market=29