Brooke's Cheese- Photos
Brooke Weisbecker, a Western Washington University student balances her spare time taking on working at local cheese creamery Ferndale Farmstead.
WWU Student Works at Cheese Factory in Spare Time
By:Jessica Vangel
December 4, 2017- WWU Student Brooke Weisbecker works at Ferndale Farmstead in Ferndale, Washington in her time apart from class.
Brooke started out doing farmers markets in the summer for the cheese creamery and the family owners decided to keep her on for a longer time and delegated her to tie ropes from home for hanging the mozzarella cheese in the aging process.
Ferndale Farmstead itself is an italian cheese farm in Ferndale and is family owned. Though it is a somewhat small facility and owned by a family, the company actually has its products being sold in stores such as Costco and Fred Meyer.
Brooke is roommates with twin sisters whose older brother, Mason Luvera, was a WWU alum and best friends with the wife of one of the owners is who to thank for their jobs at Ferndale Farmstead.
Brooke is thankful to have such a unique job as a student because she can choose her hours, can work at home and study or watch netflix while she ties the ropes.
She says she doesn’t necessarily have a passion for cheese but she does for workers rights and she is happy to have a job with people who care so much about someone just who ties ropes, even citing that they pay her $15 an hour to tie rope at home.
Brooke also does costco exhibitions across the state with Ferndale Farmstead where she hands out samples and does promoting for the company.
You can see Ferndale Farmstead Cheese Creamery in Costco’s doing this in the following months including Bellingham.
Picture Story Assessment
Jessica Vangel
This assignment was the most fun for me. It was really fun doing a combination of all the techniques and photo styles we have used throughout the quarter. Some photos were posed (the obvious ones) and others were of Brooke’s day at the cheese creamery as she would normally spend it if she has to come into the farm. The assignment was a bit difficult in timing because the first person I was going to focus on (the veterinarian) had absolutely no time to even talk about photos and whatnot so I had decided to find something else. I’m glad I found Brooke though because she was very willing to do whatever I wanted her to do, even when my interview with her didn’t record she was willing to meet up monday to re record her interview for my video. The assignment was super fun also because we took a tour of the ins and outs of the cheese creamery. Brooke had never even done that before since you have to wear special sanitary clothes to go inside the creamery portion of the building. It was a huge learning experience for me too and I can see if i were working for a newspaper or magazine I would focus more on the company, but focusing on brooke was also interesting because the owners care so much about each employee even down to someone who just ties the ropes for mozzarella aging and occasionally does costco expos and farmers markets. My photos I think are some of the best I’ve done but a lot of the coloring was interesting and I kept having to adjust the white balance because there was so much white at the creamery. I was using a 5D Mark III from the school instead of my 70D this time so there was a bit to get used to there as well. Overall I really enjoyed it though.