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There’s a funny thing about hobbies: What starts as a spare-time pursuit often becomes so much more.

One minute you’re scrapbooking or making chainsaw animal statues for fun, the next it’s your living. At least, that’s how three Washingtonians got started in the artisanal cheese business. Granted, cheese making isn’t your typical hobby, but you wouldn’t know it from talking to Julie Steil, Kelli Estrella or Brad Gregory.

While many people get cheesy with Tillamook or Kraft, these three got started because they prefer their cheese made with more love and fewer additives.

“There were three things in our milk that I didn’t want my sons drinking much less make cheese with,” says Steil, the owner of River Valley Farms in Fall City. Despite her passion, her first efforts were far from perfect. Some early attempts were so bad, she says, “even my chickens wouldn’t eat it.” She might still be a hobbyist if she hadn’t taken some of her handiwork to a PTA meeting. It was so good, a buyer from Whole Foods asked if she would sell her cheese to the chain.

Within three months, she had two cows, 12 goats and had turned her home into a farm. The 16 yaks came later.

“I’m a Type A personality. I don’t do anything halfway. I wanted to make real mozzarella and I knew that mozzarella came from milk from water buffalo,” she says.

Estrella isn’t Type A. She just likes healthy food. It also helps that she wanted to be a farmer, because making artisanal cheese is a lot of work.

Long before most people are awake, she’s milking cows and goats, pouring milk into vats, warming the vats, adding cheese cultures and rennet, watching it over as it ripens, cutting the curd and pressing it. A day later she’ll put it in a salt bath and, eventually, into a room or cave where it’s aged.

Although the co-owner of Estrella Family Creamery in Montesano believes Tillamook makes good cheese, there’s a key difference between her product and theirs. “Cheese is something that the industrial realm has changed from what it should be. When it’s paired with the right wine and the right foods, it creates big memories.”

Brad Gregory, the owner of Black Sheep Creamery in Adna, agrees.

“Bulk cheese isn’t terribly exciting because it’s bland,” he says. Artisanal cheese fans are “people who like the bigger, wider variety of flavors.” The ingredients are the difference. The milk often goes from the source to the vats within minutes and is as likely to come from sheep, goats or yaks as it is from cows, changing the taste.

And the selection isn’t just limited to Swiss and cheddar. Gregory produces 10 varieties of cheese, including English-influenced Mopsy’s Best, Spanish Queso de Oveja and the nutty Black Sheep Thome. Estrella produces 18 raw-milk cheeses ranging from a buttery cheddar to a blue cheese called Partly Sunny. Steil’s line features five raw-milk options and 11 pasteurized-milk cheeses, including Naughty Nellie, Valley Girl tomme and five types of chevre.

Cheese making wasn’t a hobby for Gregory, it was a necessity. His middle son was born with an allergy to cow’s milk and wasn’t getting the fat he needed from soy milk, so he made sheep’s milk cheese.

Gregory liked the cheese so much he kept making more until he outgrew his kitchen. Five years later, he now sells two thirds of his product to small grocery chains in Portland and much of the rest at farmers markets in southern Washington.

He doesn’t turn his nose up at the likes of Tillamook when he talks about the flavor of handmade cheese, though. “It’s not better, just different.”

Visit your local AAA office for a free Washington map to visit the cheese farms. River Valley Cheese offers tours with an appointment (for $5), Estrella Family Creamery does not offer formal tours, but does operate a farm store, and Black Sheep Creamery should begin offering tours in the spring of 2010.