LAST year, Erin Bligh, the proprietor of Dancing Goats Dairy in Newbury, Massachusetts, planned to introduce a new cheese - hard, with spicy peppers - called Madam President, in what she assumed would be a fromage homage to a historic election.

Then came the unexpected result: hard cheese indeed, in the Evelyn Waugh sense of the phrase.

"I'm like, 'Oh damn, this is awful,'" said the 29-year-old who has four full-time employees overseeing a herd of 45 goats. She renamed the cheese General Leia Organa, after the Rebel Alliance leader in Star Wars, and sent chunks to fortify friends attending the women's march in Boston. "This is my small piece of the resistance," a local customer told her, brandishing a wedge.