These were supposed to be their Golden Years. At 65 and 68 years, respectively, Mariann Janosko and Gerald Onken have every right to be kicking back with cold drinks and warm slippers. Instead, they are working 12-hour days, seven days a week, running their upstart Lake Erie Creamery, Ohio's only licensed goat cheese producer.

Of course, this isn't exactly how they envisioned things.

"Originally, we had planned to do this as a hobby in our spare time - maybe supplement our Social Security income," Onken manages to squeeze in between phone calls. But demand for Lake Erie's artisinal goat cheese has grown so quickly, it is all the couple can do just to keep up.

When the pair grew bored with previous entrepreneurial pursuits, Janosko suggested starting a creamery. She had for years dabbled with small, stove-top batches of cheese. A brief three-day cheese-making course filled in the gaps. To earn start-up money, the couple - no joke - started a paper route.

"Making goat cheese is not hard," explains Janosko, her hair in a net, her feet in lime-green Crocs. "What matters are your ingredients, and that you treat the milk with respect."

To score great ingredients, Onken hits the road at 5:30 in the morning for the 50-mile drive to Mantua, in Portage County, where a friend manages a herd of happy dairy goats. There, he fills 10-gallon stainless steel cans with fresh goat's milk before heading back, his truck sagging beneath the weight.

If Onken is Deliveries, Mariann is Production. In a cramped 700-square-foot space in a converted Cleveland warehouse, Janosko coaxes the milk into cheese. By law, the milk must first be pasteurized by heating it to 145 degrees for 30 minutes, which kills off any bacteria. Then cultures and coagulants are added to the milky broth to kick-start the metamorphosis.

Curd is the word - Mariann Janosko and Gerald Onken.

"The whole idea with making cheese is separating the curds from the whey," explains Janosko, whose job it is to scoop out the flaccid curds and place them in muslin bags to drain. A farmer picks up the watery whey to feed to his lucky hogs.

To make her signature product, chevre, Janosko places the day-old curds, now the consistency of cream cheese, into a mixer with a touch of sea salt and gives it a brief go-around. The result is a creamy, fresh goat cheese with none of the characteristic chalkiness or strong goat flavors. Lake Erie Creamery also produces a bolder flavored product, Blomma, by inoculating cheese rounds with penicillin mold and allowing them to age in the cooler for three weeks.

When Lake Erie Creamery began just 12 months ago, Janosko and Onken struggled to move 50 pounds of cheese per week. Then Mike Fiala, chef at Inn at Turner's Mill, suggested they take their product to other chefs around town. Word spread like butter on warm toast and today Lake Erie's cheese is on the menus at Lola, Fahrenheit, Light Bistro, Fire, Blue Point and others. These days, 160 pounds of goat cheese barely satisfies a week's worth of orders.

Granted, at first, Onken's sales technique left a little to be desired.

"I'll never forget," says Ryan Alabaugh, chef at Sergio's in University Circle. "This big guy walks in the back door of our restaurant right in the middle of service. He hands off a tub of goat cheese and leaves." Alabaugh says he was too busy to taste the cheese until the next day, but as soon as he did, he placed it on his menu. "I love the cheese's subtleness, sweetness and creaminess," notes the chef. "It is an absolutely stellar cheese."

"Cleveland chefs are big-time supporters of local products," says Onken. "They like us because we are local, but also because this is the freshest goat cheese they can get their hands on."

As far as stepping up production to meet increased demand, Onken shrugs off the idea. "Until God comes up with a 48-hour day," he says, "we can't do much more than we're already doing."