This post is long overdue. For years now, I've cringed at the constant appeals for "increased efficiency" made by managers, executives, politicians, researchers, journalists, teachers, engineers, activists, bosses, columnists, liberals, designers, coaches, conservatives, accountants, and radio talk show hosts. I think it is safe to say that we all agree: all of us want to make our businesses, our jobs, our governments, our schools, and our refrigerators more efficient. Efficiency is a good thing.

Efficiency, however, is a property of means, it is never an end, and it cannot be an ultimate goal. The thing that matters most is our choice of objects to efficiently accomplish. The business that efficiently returns value to shareholders is not necessarily the business that efficiently rewards good employees or that efficiently turns out efficient refrigerators. It is clear that machine guns and gas chambers are very efficient killing machines, but efficient murder isn't a good thing at all.

When a merchant or a candidate or an employer tries to sell you on efficiency, it is a meaningless pitch unless you ascertain what sort of efficiency he or she means. Is the most efficient factory the one that makes widgets the most quickly, or the one that makes the strongest widgets? Is the most efficient government the one that does things for the least expense, or the one that does things for the most good? Is the most efficient plan for your boss the most efficient plan for you?

Let's take a collective step back from this mad drive towards efficiency, and remind ourselves of our values, our goals, and what it is we're trying so hard to accomplish. Using ends to justify means is bad enough. Don't make the means into the end.

After the blizzard last night, when winds whipped the snow into great dunes on the ridge, it took a heavy duty end loader to finally dig out the road to the farm.

Mayor Dave Hemmer, who had earlier tried and failed to clear the road with a plow truck, now followed behind to clear up after the loader.

It's toasty at home today where the turkey roasts, but yesterday's freezing rain left a gloss of ice over the outdoor world. The blades of frozen grass in the front lawn look deadly sharp. You wouldn't want to see the roads. Safe travels to everyone, and Happy Thanksgiving!

I stopped to fuel my car earlier today. Given that I noted in my last post that there are no oil reserves in Wisconsin, I began to wonder just where the gasoline I put in my car comes from. Oklahoma? A B.P. well in the Gulf of Mexico? Iraq or Saudi Arabia? As far as I've ever known, it has always just come from Kwik Trip, a regional gas station and convince store chain based in La Crosse, Wisconsin. With a little digging, however, I've managed to trace my fuel back to its (rather disquieting) source.

Kwik Trip operates a fleet of tanker trunks that supply its stations with gasoline from the Flint Hills Resources Pine Bend Refinery located near Minneapolis, Minnesota. At approximately 1,000 acres, the Pine Bend Refinery is among the largest in the Midwest, and it can process 300,000 to 400,000 barrels of oil each day. It is owned by Koch Industries — the same privately held conglomerate that makes Quilted Northern toilet paper. Like Wisconsin, however, Minnesota has no natural oil reserves. The refinery relies on outside sources of oil to make its gasoline.

The Pine Bend Refinery is supplied with crude by pipelines from two directions. A small amount of oil comes northward in the Wood River Pipeline and the Shell Capline from Louisiana, where it arrives from the Gulf of Mexico and other parts of the globe on ocean-going tankers. Much more of the oil at Pine Bend, however, comes south from Canada via the Minnesota Pipeline and the Enbridge Pipeline. These pipes link the United States with oil from Alberta, Canada.

This Google Earth satellite image shows one area of oil strip mining near Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada. The yellow line across the center, added for reference, is 19.6 miles long.

The Enbridge Pipeline system reaches as far north as Fort McMurray, Alberta, where two companies, Suncor and Syncrude, extract oil from the earth. Unlike conventional oil, the crude from Fort McMurray does not come from wells. The oil fields in Alberta simply aren't fluid enough to access by drilling. Our insatiable demand for oil is exhausting the easy-to-access oil reserves across the globe, pushing oil companies to find newer, less efficient sources. In Alberta, that means tar sands. These great deposits of thick, sticky oil mixed with sand have to be stripped mined and shoveled — drilling won't cut it. After the oil is mined, steam treatments melt the oil away from the sand, preparing it for delivery by pipeline to refineries. Mining and treating the oil are both energy-intensive activities, and retrieving usable oil from the tar sands requires far more power and creates much more pollution than conventional oil. Strip mining also leaves tremendous scars of wasteland across the wilderness. The entire process is environmentally devastating.

It's definitely enough to make me think twice next time I'm considering whether to drive across town or brave the beautiful outdoor world and walk.

Read More on Kwik Trip's Gasoline Supply:

• La Crosse Tribune:  From Canada to the Coulee Region: Where our gas comes from
• La Crosse Tribune:  Refinery takes Canadian oil and turns it into gasoline for Wisconsin

Pleasant Ridge Reserve, made near Dodgeville, Wisconsin, took best of show at the ACS Awards for the third time.

Forget last night's Emmys — the results of the 2010 American Cheese Society Awards are here. The annual competition at the ACS "Festival of Cheese" is among the highlights of the nation's culinary calendar. This year's contest took place on August 28 in Seattle, Washington. The society released the complete judging results from the competition online today, and they are a great reminder of why life in Wisconsin is so appetizing. Wisconsin cheesemakers took home almost one third of the awards given at the contest, including 29 firsts, 36 seconds, 33 thirds, and the prestigious best of show prize for Upland Cheese Company's extra-aged Pleasant Ridge Reserve.

I'm not an expert cheese taster, but I did grow up on a small Wisconsin dairy farm where cheese was always a treat. More than half a century ago, my grandfather helped manage a cheese factory just a mile up the road from my family's farm, and although the place stopped making cheese before I was born, I can still see the little old factory building across the valley from my bedroom window. Today the farm where I live no longer even produces milk, but I've kept my childhood eagerness to always sample all the cheese on the tray, and growing up I've learned how to appreciate skillful affinage.

Given my background, I'm often surprised at how few of my fellow young Wisconsinites realize the diversity and renown of the cheeses made in our midst. We've been raised in a generation of big box stores and chain restaurants, and they've spread an illusion that every city and every state is the same, except that some places have more people and more chain stores than others. These chains breed ignorance of the homegrown products that make every town materially different from the next. People know that Wisconsin is "America's Dairyland" — it's printed on the license plates — but the cheeses in Wisconsin's big supermarkets arrive from mass-producers across the Midwest, and the award-winning cheeses made right in the neighborhood go to high-end restaurants and specialty stores in California and New York. Luckily, our farmer's markets, locally owned shops, and the cheese companies themselves all continue to sell the fruit of the state. For the unfamiliar, here's a quick tour of just a few of the remarkable cheese producers in Southwest Wisconsin

Best of Show at the 2010 American Cheese Society competition went to Uplands Cheese Company, located just north of Dodgeville. It makes a highly-decorated cheese called "Pleasant Ridge Reserve," which has now won the top award at the ACS contest an unprecedented three times (2001, 2005, 2010). Pleasant Ridge Reserve is a washed-rind cow's milk cheese in the style of French Beaufort, created by Mike Gingrich and now crafted by Andy Hatch. The cheese is made in small quantities on the same farm that supplies all its milk. I have not yet had the opportunity to sample the extra-aged variety of Pleasant Ridge Reserve that took a ribbon this year, but I have tried the younger version in the past. It has a nutty flavor that is complex but amiable — pleasant, like the name suggests.

A Few Award-Winning Cheesemakers in Southwest Wisconsin.

Hidden Springs Creamery, outside Westby, was another big winner this year. Hidden Springs, run by Brenda Jensen, specializes in sheep's milk cheeses and has built an international reputation. British humorist Stephen Fry visited the creamery in 2008 as the basis for the Wisconsin segment of his "Stephen Fry in America" documentary series on BBC One. This year the creamery's "Driftless" variety swept the flavored fresh sheep's milk category at the ACS contest this year, with a first for the Lavender Honey flavor, a second for Cranberry Cinnamon, and a third for Maple. There is nothing better on warm bread or bagels in the morning than Driftless Cheese. The creamery's aged Ocooch Mountain Reserve also tied for second in its category this year.

There are several other local cheesemakers whose work I can personally endorse:

• Edelweiss Creamery, near Monticello, picked up a blue ribbon for its Emmentaler, which the creamery makes in a copper kettle that produces 180 pound wheels. Noted for its holes, Emmentaler is a traditional cow's milk cheese created in Switzerland, but it's far richer than the so-called "Swiss Cheese" sold in the U.S. The version I've had from Edelweiss has a grassy flavor with a tinge of caramel sweetness. I haven't had Edelweiss's Gouda, which also got a ribbon this year.
• Maple Leaf Cheese is affiliated with Edelweiss, and is located a few miles to the south in the hamlet of Twin Groves. Although it did not place at this year's ACS Awards, Maple Leaf has won accolades in the recent past for its aged Cheddars. I can attest to their sharp, crumbly, and occasionally crystalline deliciousness.
• Montchevre-Betin in Belmont is run by Frenchman Arnaud Solandt. It makes goat's milk cheeses including an unusual goat's milk "Mini Cabrie" and several flavored soft-fresh cheeses perfect for crackers. This year the company got a first-place ribbon for its Chevre in Blue, which is still on my list of cheeses to try.
• Lactalis USA, which also has a plant in Belmont, mass-manufactures soft-ripened French style cheeses for the American market. It's President Brie is too uniform to compare to Brie from France, but that doesn't keep teams from Lactalis from routinely preparing ribbon-winning wheels of Brie for the ACS contest.
• Carr Valley Cheese in La Valle, Sauk County, took 18 ribbons at the ACS show this year. Sid Cook, the company's leader, has crafted an amazingly diverse variety of original cheeses with the milk of cows, goats, and sheep. Marisa, a rich sheep's milk cheese named for Sid Cook's daughter, placed first in its class for its fresh variety, and second in another class for its aged version.

Sterling Reserve is an aged raw milk goat's milk cheese made at Mount Sterling, Wisconsin.

Finally, I've saved the last spot in this post for the Mount Sterling Co-op Creamery, the only active cheese producer in my home county, which specializes in goat's milk cheeses. The Mount Sterling Co-op earned a ribbon for its tasty raw milk cheddar at the ACS contest this year. The creamery's best product, in my opinion, is the cave-aged Sterling Reserve, a washed rind cheese with a hard texture and varied flavor streaked with mouthwatering tanginess. Sterling Reserve won first place in its class last year at the Los Angeles International Dairy Competition, and it took second in its category early this spring at the World Championship Cheese contest in Madison, Wisconsin.

I could write more, and there are many local cheeses with rave reviews that I have yet to sample. Why waste time just reading about cheese here, though, when you could be out tasting new varieties for yourself? Mind you, there's nothing wrong with Mild Cheddar and Co-Jack, but living in Wisconsin without sampling our more unique artisanal cheeses would be like living in Champagne and only drinking Kool-Aid. This is Cheese Paradise! Enjoying it is as easy as eating.