LOOKING FOR HOME. Inga Orth (pictured above), a Wisconsin dairy farmer and former television host on PBS, will soon release her debut memoir and recipe book: Unpasteurized Inga. (Photo by Paul Strabbing)

For award-winning Wisconsin dairy farmer, Inga Orth, mornings on the farm are defined by steady, quiet rhythms among the rolling plains. These hours at dawn, shared with her herd, are equally defined by a newfound, transformative path – one that has cultivated in Orth's first book exploring her culinary journey.

Unpasteurized Inga: Recipes and Reflections on Food, Farming, and Finding Your Way Back – to be released Sept. 1 with Little Creek Press based in Mineral Point – was written from a life still unfolding; “a woman still learning how to live inside of her own skin.”

As detailed across five parts – from “Finding My Way” to “Coming Home” – Unpasteurized Inga sees Orth describe her life through compressed routines on the farm. Those routines were infiltrated by the on-camera persona she adopted for 10 years through the “Around the Farm Table” documentary series on PBS.

Orth, now facing a new chapter of life, felt a profound need to chronicle her own narrative – one defined by resilience, grief and endurance intertwined with authentic life on the farm and pivotal transitions in her family life.

Those transitions included Orth’s cutting ties with her parents and former partner. Whilst reckoning what abusive relationships unfolded when the public eye was turned away, Orth said she found it impossible to engage with her own history and memories.

While viewers grew to love the distinct aesthetic of Orth’s gingham dresses and aprons – the PBS program also showed Orth in her own home kitchen – they served as a shield; masking the unrelenting personal scrutiny endured behind the scenes, she said.

“It always felt like there was a version of me that was for TV – that was Inga from ‘Around the Farm Table,’ ” Orth said. “In the last couple of years, I came back home into my body … and through that changing of my mind … it felt like all of a sudden I had a voice.”

“In the last couple of years, I came back home into my body … and through that changing of my mind … it felt like all of a sudden I had a voice.” –Inga Orth, author of Unpasteurized Inga.

“All of a sudden, I was like f**k her, I don’t want to be her anymore,” Orth continued. “I don't want to have to work that hard – to get criticized constantly by everyone around me – to do something that I don't even want to be a part of. (These are) not the stories I want to tell.”

So, over the past few years, Orth took to social media and embraced a digital community. There, she cast off the garden-hat-wearing, gingham-clad persona and chose instead to reveal a more authentic self – and reclaim her own voice.

“I couldn’t understand my family or where I came from or any of this chaos that had happened. I had to really look for these farming communities,” Orth said in a recent interview. “It was really this beautiful network of these farmers that brought me back through their food and through their ingredients.”

Orth walking through the pasture at St. Isidore's Dairy Farmstead Cheese in Osseo. Orth's dairy products, she said, are a based with a traditional small batch, raw milk cheddar from the milk of six grass fed Jersey Cows. (Photo by Paul Strabbing)

In the years since, Orth forged new relationships in love and, of course, the farm. Her vocation expanded to St. Isidore's Dairy Farmstead Cheese in Osseo, where her now husband Chance Orth fully stepped into not only daily life on the farm, but introduced an uncomplicated peace to Inga’s life.

Chance, she said, became an anchor to transform the kitchen which once housed the memories of her former television series. His presence helped it become a sanctuary where Orth could safely return to the foundations of cooking, Orth noting, “I could finally come back into the kitchen and start really cooking, start loving it – he gave me this huge gift.”

From last September through today’s final revisions of Unpasteurized Inga, Orth has integrated the act of writing into her daily routines. Whether she jots down quick notes between milking sessions on the farm, or sharing new ideas while making cheese, the process of documenting her life has become an inseparable part of her everyday livelihood.

“With dairy farming, whatever comes in is just a part of what you do,” Orth said. “If you have kids, they just milk cows with you. If you’re writing a book, you just milk cows when you’re writing a book. It just happened all around us.”

Naturally, she felt it essential – as woven through nearly every chapter of her memoir – to honor the bonds formed with her closest companions, her step-daughter and the vibrant network of Wisconsin producers and farmers.

“It was really this beautiful network of these farmers that brought me back through their food and through their ingredients.” –Inga Orth, author of Unpasteurized Inga.

Each acted as steady forces in this latest chapter of her life; their gifts are woven into Orth’s most pivotal recipe – her honey cake – among many others, shared in Unpasteurized Inga.

“The honey cake really tells the story of the last year of my life,” Orth said. “That whole process of slowly going through these simple, very humble ingredients that really make such a difference. That cake to me means slowing down. It means taking time and intentionally connecting.”

For fellow Midwesterners, the collection of recipes offers a poignant return to the values of local agriculture systems. Orth honors relationships with Kaiserson Bee Co. honey of Eau Claire, Heartland Craft Grains of Lodi; spotlights dishes including Eggs En Cocotte (The Good Wives Style), Braised Beef with Red Wine and Winter Spices, and Truck Stop-Style Polenta.

Pictured, Orth's "Eggs en Cocotte (The Good Wives Style)." (Photo by Paul Strabbing) 

Pictured, Orth's "Honey Cake." (Photo by Paul Strabbing)

Ultimately, whether interwoven through personal narratives or step-by-step instructions on how to make your own yogurt, Orth embraces and encourages others to reckon with the “unpasteurized” in life.

“ 'Unpasteurized' means I am not required to be identical from year to year,” Orth writes. “I am allowed to respond to the season I am in, allowed to carry the weather of my life without erasing it for presentation, allowed to be rooted somewhere specific.”

Unpasteurized Inga: Recipes and Reflections on Food, Farming, and Finding Your Way Back is now available to pre-order online through Little Creek Press. Following its launch on Sept. 1, the memoir and recipe collection will be available to purchase in person at The Local Store (205 N. Dewey St., Eau Claire).

Keep up with Inga Orth and St. Isidore's Dairy Farmstead Cheese online through ingaorth.com or social media (@unpasteurizedinga).