Editor’s Note: We’d like to introduce our first post from Edible Manhattan’s new online editorial assistant, Amber Benham. A recent graduate of CUNY’s graduate program in journalism and a former intern at Saveur, Amber’s specialty is multimedia reporting and story-telling. One example: Her amazing slideshow on Bobolink Dairy and Bakeyard–watch it below!–one of our favorite Greenmarket stands for bread and cheese.

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Vernon, N.J.: I can’t say this speck of a town ever made my must-visit list, but when my friend Ilana suggested a weekend getaway to her childhood home,  I couldn’t resist.  Besides, she promised, the leaf-peeping was fine and the local cheese out of this world.

That weekend we did our best to shake off the stress of the city and soak up all the country goodness we could.  We wore our pajamas all day, played cards and watched movies and spent an entire evening roasting vegetables and baking apples.  But the highlight of that cool, rainy weekend was a visit to Bobolink Dairy, an unassuming farm we nearly missed after a wrong turn on a winding road.

I was expecting to find a farmer who’d learned how to make a couple basic cheeses and sold them alongside fresh eggs.  Instead I was delighted to find an array of pungent, moldy fromage and hearty loaves of bread flavored with everything from salty olives to succulent duck fat.  This was no casual cheese-making operation.  Just one bite and I was in love.

Hoping to meet the geniuses behind this robust cheese, I headed to the Union Square Green Market the next week to visit Bobolink Dairy’s stand.  Sadly neither Jonathan nor Nina White were working the booth that day, but a phone call and an e-mail later Jonathan agreed to meet me in the city and chat about his cheese.

Over a couple of pints at d.b.a. in the East Village Jonathan brandished a pocket knife and sliced into wheels of his raw milk cheeses, letting the dense cream ooze out from the rinds.   As we munched on bread and cheese, Jonathan enlightened me about the secrets of good cheese-making.  I won’t spoil the fun, but check out my slideshow above to learn how an engineer and a dancer/choreographer/teacher by trade ended up making cheese in Jersey.

And next time you’re at the Greenmarket (they’re at Union Square on Fridays and Lincoln Center on Saturdays) stop by their booth for a taste of pure grass-fed deliciousness.