AUSTIN — When Louisville restaurateur Ivor Chodkowski began looking for cheeses to be used in his Harvest Restaurant he looked to his friend Kenny Mattingly, owner of Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheese in Austin.

“It is a great and well-cared for artisanal product which is really, kind of, without compare locally,” Chodkowski said. “We had decided as a restaurant to source 80 percent of what we do within 100 miles. So we were curious about that, and we were delighted that that high of a quality product, a national-quality product, is available locally to us.”

“The diversity of products that Kenny does, the fresh cheese and the aged cheeses … any of those cheeses would go on a really great cheese board in New York, Chicago or San Francisco. It’s a well-cared for, great quality product and great service,” Chodkowski said.

While the locavore movement has helped place Mattingly’s cheese onto the plates of diners in Kentucky, it is the Kenny’s Farmhouse Cheese story and product quality that sells distributors on the cheese that is now found in the California headquarters of Airbnb and Apple. It is also offered to first-class fliers on international Delta Airlines flights out of Atlanta, said Van Campbell, director of sales for Kenny’s.

“Most of the cheese gets sold in Nashville and Louisville. Then I would say beyond that, there is a demand for products that have a story behind them,” Campbell said.

“We try to be really transparent about who we are, where we come from and what goes into making our cheese, what the cows are eating to how well they are taken care of. That history goes back 40 years to when Kenny’s parents bought the dairy farm. That’s a big part of what we try to convey to people.”

Mattingly’s parents moved from Indianapolis to their Barren County dairy farm in 1976.

“This is a ‘Green Acres’ story,” Mattingly said referring to a popular sitcom that ran from 1965 to 1971 about a couple who moved from New York City to a country farm. “The guy who sold us the farm called dad “Mr. Douglas” and me “Eb.” Both were characters on the show.

Mattingly is the second oldest of seven children and immediately took to farming life. His father Kenneth Mattingly Sr. died in 2009. A photo of him hangs in the cheese store. Mattingly’s widowed mother lives in Glasgow.

Today Mattingly’s farm has grown from the original 203 acres to 291 acres, and he rents an additional 100 acres from a neighbor. He has 140 cows and 120 heifers. And on a recent Tuesday afternoon, a vacationing family stopped by to visit, and Mattingly gave them a tour of the farm explaining the dairy farm process and the cheese business.

The cows and heifers have pasture land to roam and, up until storms rolled through the area last week, an air-conditioned barn to keep them comfortable.

Severe thunder storms in the area caused the barn to collapse earlier last week. With the help of neighbors and friends, Mattingly has been in cleanup mode, office manager Jeanette Stumpenhorst said.

“Thankfully we didn’t have any animal loss,” Stumpenhorst said. “We were very, very blessed that no one was hurt and all of our cows are OK. We did have two that were injured but they are OK. The barn collapsed. With a lot of friends, neighbors and family who came over and helped, they got all of (the animals) out rather quickly. They looked a little scared. But a little later as Kenny and Manuel got them out to milk, they were as calm as they could be.”

Several Mennonite men showed up at the farm Friday to help clean up. Mattingly will rebuild his barn, and they don’t expect the cheese business to slow production, Stumpenhorst said.

Mattingly built the cheese production facility into a hillside that created the perfect space for his large cheese caves in which the cheese is aged. The facility is adjacent to the milking area where the cows are milked twice a day. Two farmhands milk the cows six days a week. Mattingly milks them usually one day a week to give the farm hands a day off.

It’s the care of the animals, from providing them air-conditioned comfort to high-quality feed, that also appeals to many of Kenny’s Cheese customers, Campbell said.

“We want the cows to be comfortable,” Mattingly said.

Mattingly opened the cheese business in 1998 starting out with 50 pounds of gouda cheese. In the first year, Kenny’s cheese produced about 4,000 pounds of gouda cheese.

He now makes 28 varieties of cheese and has seen his business grow every year. This year, he has seen a 15 percent growth in business.

“In the last 12 months we’ve made and sold about 140,000 pounds of cheese. That’s utilizing half of the milk produced on the farm,” Mattingly said.

Mattingly sells the other half of the milk on the commodity marketplace and makes the same amount of money for milk per gallon that he made 25 years ago, while at the same time the price per gallon at the grocery store for consumers has significantly increased.

Kenny’s Cheese is a separate business from the dairy farm and pays a fair market price for the milk that keeps the dairy farm in business.

“We’ve changed our story because we’ve taken the risk to build our own market for our milk,” he said. “I didn’t build this business because I wanted to be a cheesemaker. I wanted the farm to receive a fair price for the milk being produced, which is a definition for sustainability.”

His timing was good because just as he started cheese production, people became increasingly inquisitive about their food and its origins with many people preferring to eat only the food that is locally grown and produced.

“Now were are considered pioneers of that because we were some of the first farmers in Kentucky to do value added,” Mattingly said.

“We’re making as much (cheese) in a week now than we made in our first year,” he said.

Kenny’s Cheese currently ships to 15 states on a monthly basis as the business picks up new distributors every year, Mattingly said.

Louisville-based Creation Gardens is one of the business’s distributors.

Creation Gardens provides food primarily to restaurants, hotels and country clubs in Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

“We have a lot of customers now that want to use just artisan products in general,” said Ian Navarro, director of marketing for Creation Gardens. “What Kenny’s has done, they are at the forefront of the Southern artisan cheese movement. There’s a lot of money it takes to buy the equipment that you need to do that.

“Having a farm or dairy is difficult work. The cows don’t take a day off. Farming is just not easy. Aging cheese is a long process. There’s FDA and USDA regulations. You’ve got to follow strict standards. You have to really, really love what you do and be passionate about it. The folks at Kenny’s love what they do and have been instrumental in educating people.

“Most of the top restaurants in our region use Kenny’s in some capacity. They rely on quality cheese at an affordable price. They’re pushing the envelope on what’s available in our region. It’s difficult to wait on the cheese to age. There’s not a lot of people who are doing that.

“When people want to buy cheese in volume, they can sustain that. From our side of the business it’s a balance. You want to please every type of customer, and (Kenny’s) have the ability to do that.

“You see a lot of what he’s doing in Vermont and California and all over Europe. But it a very new thing for cheesemaking in the United States and very new in the South. Food has taken a huge twist in education and awareness. Kenny’s is definitely pushing everyone to be better. If you are a cheesemaker in the South, you look to Kenny’s as a benchmark for yourself,” Navarro said.

Navarro also cited the dairy farm’s story as a big selling point for Creation Garden customers.

“It’s the decisions they make in raising their animals. It costs more to care for their animals. They treat their animals like family. They treat their employees like family. When Van or Kenny goes to see a customer you see that conviction. Less expensive product, means cows together closer … . You don’t care for the animals as much as Kenny’s does. The decisions they make and the way they handle their products show in the way the products taste and in the way they present themselves,” he said.

“Our customers love the flavor profiles they have,” Navarro said.

Both Navarro and Chodkowski heard the news about the barn collapse and were disheartened that the incident occurred. Both both referred to Mattingly as a resilient farmer who would quickly manage the incident without missing a beat.

“In these times you get to see who comes to bat for you,” Navarro said. “I know Kenny’s has a lot of support in the cheese community. Chefs in general love what they do.”

Stumpenhorst said the farm is grateful for the help from neighbors and friends.

“We’ve had so many friends and neighbors come by. There’s a lot of good people around our community. At this point they will continue to clean up. The herd will stay here. They’re out on pasture right now. We want to think everyone who has reached out to us. We do appreciate everybody’s thoughts and concerns.”

— Follow Assistant City Editor Deborah Highland on Twitter at @BGDNCrimebeat or visit bgdailynews.com.