2014: A selection Cheesemaker journals
so many posts, so little time...
peter handed me his notebook. there are hundreds of pages of handwritten musings... i am daunted by the very thought of transcribing, but also intrigued to see what he's been writing for the past year.
no cheese father's day
rainy, sultry sunday. happy father's day, peter. how lovely to have a son who is 18, happy, healthy, and headed for college.
how nice to have maneuvered our lives to take a day (every week?) to do all the things that aren't cheese, so that when we go back to the other 6 cheesy days, we are happy to be making and aging and selling and eating and sharing cheese...
~rachel
September 19, 2014
It was a very cold morning for this time of year. There was a thick layer of frost on some recently cut hay in a field along the flat part of Westminster West Road near the village.
Sam is in the cheese house making the second vat of curds for West West Blue.
Rachel and I were in Brooklyn at the end of last week. We stayed with Benton and Sue and kids in their penthouse apartment in Crown Heights. Benton took us down into the cave so that we could see (and later taste) our cheese. Everything looked great. The cave facility is very well laid out. On the first floor of the building that houses the cave we entered a room that is used for bringing in the green cheese and taking out the aged cheese.
August 28, 2014
The Reverie cheese that we made three days ago is in the brine in the cave on Westminster Road. Emily is working there this morning. She will turn the wheels in the brine so they can freely absorb the salt. If cheeses are touching each other for too long while they are in the brine the salt will not penetrate through those spots and leave low salt areas that may develop gas pockets during aging. Gas producing bacteria do not tolerate salt as well.
Sam is in the cheese house today starting a batch of West West Blue. This cheese will take two days to make into wheels. Today, the first day, is fairly quick as the drained curds will be gathered into large cheese cloths and then left on the drain table until tomorrow morning. Another, larger vat of milk will be turned into curds tomorrow. All of these curds will be milled and mixed together to form around 25 wheels that weigh 1620 pounds. The process of making this Gorgonzolastyle cheese was originally developed on farms. Curds were made after each milking and wheels of cheese were made every day after the morning's batch. Our next step in the process is to move the wheels to the cave where they will be surface salted for the first time. These large wheels require anywhere from three to four saltings so the entire salting process can ake up to a week.
Yesterday as I was driving home from the cheese house I passed a truck loaded with hay, which was hauling a hay wagon. It was the crew from Patch Farm at work. The hay will feed sheep that will make the milk for Vermont Shepherd cheese. I immediately thought about times I spent haying as a boy growing up on our farm in Dummerston, VT. I remembered hot summer afternoons in the fields working with my dad and a large contingent of French Canadians, the LaTulippes and the LaBelles who had immigrated to Brattleboro, Vermont in the 1970s. Achille (Archie) LaTulippe (or as my brother jokingly called him Achilles the Tulip) had injured his shoulder doing heavy construction work and was a patient of my dad. Archie was a short, swarthylooking man with a small pot belly.
He always wore a pork pie hat and a smile on his face. He had struck up some kind of business arrangement with my dad, maybe involving a barter for services because we had a small herd of Angus cattle show up on our farm around the same time as Archie. He had been a farmer in Quebec and must have milked cows by hand because he could milk our family Jersey cow, named Jewel, out in what seemed to be no time at all. He was a livestock dealer in the area and kept some of the Angus on our farm in exchange for helping with the haying and other farm enterprises.
When we were haying Archie's wife Be a, son Martin, and daughter Linny, were always present as were some of the LaBelle family members and a few tag alongs. Their cackling Quebequois would ring out across the fields as we worked. My dad was usually on one tractor raking and another man would be on a different tractor running the baler.
Martin, who was twelve like me, would usualy be installed behind the wheel of the big International truck that we used to carry the hay bales. Archie would put it in low gear and instruct Martin to steer along the rows of bales. I would hear "Baile, MaRten," ring out occasionally but mainly it was quiet except for the low gurgle of the trucks engine. I was always the stacker because for some reason I had developed an aptitude for building loads that didn't fall off of the flat bed. Archie and the rest of the men would jab their pitchforks into the bales and lift them up to me. In this manner we spent many a long summer afternoon.
The field work was my favorite. I like being outside the most. Stacking hay in the barn was usually hot, sweaty, dusty work. The elevator, which carried the bales would clank and rattles each bale made its way up from the flat bed to the opening to the hay mow.
Most likely I'd be in the barn ready to carry a bale to its allotted place in the ever increasing stack in the upper story of the timber frame. Inevitably there would be an afternoon where the thunderclouds would come rolling in and there would be a race to get all of the hay picked up and onto every available flat bed truck and wagon and put under cover before the heavens opened up.
August 25, 2014
A hot summer day. It is a bit after 4 pm and Vito and I are getting ready to hoop 14 wheels of Reverie. The whey is draining and soon we will press the curd together by hand under the whey to form a deep, tightlyknit curd pack. From this curd mass we will slice out pieces to make the individual wheels.
August 11, 2014
I am making Reverie today with Vito, who is in charge of the vat. It is another hot, sunny summer day. I went home earlier and had lunch with Rachel, which was followed by some cave work.
The pace of work is very different from last year when I would have typically been eating on the run. It is nice to have the help of our apprentices. Vito and Sam live in the house next to the cheese house, which we call the Reverie House. Emily lives at her dad's house, which sits on Bump Road right above the cheese cave.
These three young people work at the cheese house, the cave, and farmers markets such that we always have two of them helping us every day of the week.
We just started draining the whey. It'll be about an hour before we put the 15 wheels of Reverie on the press. This cheese is made in the style of Italian Toma, a semihard cheese made in the mountains. The curds are cut rather small and then cooked up to stimulate the growth of the starter so that acid is produced before the whey is drained.
Today we are using the Abby starter and it is working well. We are making most of our cheese this year using four native starters that originated from four cows: Abby, Sonya, Hilde, and Helga, in the Elm Lea Farm herd. Sonya is Pete's favorite and Abby is Phil Ranney's favorite (both are Jerseys).
Helga is a descendant of the foundation cow (Holstein) that Sam Bunker, an alumni, gave Pete when he started the herd. Hilde is another top Holstein cow. To make the starters Emily and I went up to the farm over a month ago. She hand milked the cows while I waited in the milk house to strain each cow's milk into a separate sterilized jar (which was done by boiling the jars and lids).
We took the jars of milk back to the cheese house and let them incubate at around 90 F until they curdled one day later.The result was four delicious yogurty tasting fermented milks. These became the mothers of the cultures we are using to make our cheese for the rest of the year.
This is old world cheesemaking, not necessarily what most of us do but it is very rewarding to be making cheese this way. We have to follow along with what the milk and the cultures will do when we make the different varieties of Parish Hill cheese.
Since the cultures are made from raw milk the cheese has to also be made from raw milk and aged at least 60 days above 35 F. By using this method of culture propagation we are transporting Parish Hill Creamery back in time to when commercial starters were not available and cheesemakers had to make their own. I have read and heard stories about how all of the Cheddar cheese makers in Somerset used to make their own starters. When one cheesemaker had a slow vat or ran low on starter he could go to the neighboring cheesemaker and get some more that had proper activity.
One of my favorite cheeses, Montgomery's Cheddar, is still made in the traditional way in Somerset with the original strains of starter; they use seven different cultures, "One for each day of the week," as Jamie Montgomery himself once told me in a class at the Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese several years ago. It is still very common in Europe to make cheese this way particularly in smaller batch productions.
August 10, 2014
Benton, Sue, and their kids are staying with us. We stayed up late last night, lingering over bbq chicken and veggies and talking cheese. We also looked at a bunch of photos of our cheese aging in the Crown Finish Caves. The cheeses certainly look happy there. Rachel and I are planning to go to Brooklyn to visit at the end of the month.
We were up relatively early this morning to make the milk run. Benton came along for the ride. It is a beautiful summer day, a bit hazy and warm but very comfortable nonetheless. Pete Stickney showed up and Benton, the affineur, got to meet Pete, the farmer who manages the start of the whole process that ends up with cheese going to the caves. When we got to the cheese house one of the Vermont Shepherd guard dogs was hanging around. "Shouldn't you be guarding the sheep?" I asked.
The dogs response was noncommittal. I popped the hatch of the hauling tank in order to rinse it out and I caught a gentle whiff of sweet summer milk. This is one of the more pleasant moments of the day. There was still a bit of milk sticking to the inside walls of the tank. Cool air. As I rinsed that off to prepare the tank for the cleaninplace milk water runs out the valve and down the delivery hose into the sink in the cheese house. Now the milk is in the cheese vat heating up. Soon we'll add the starter culture. Another day is underway at the cheese house. We are making Provolone today and we should be stretching the curd by 3:30 pm. Benton, Sue, and Nora will be over to take part in the process.
We are halfway through our cheesemaking season, which we started on May 15th. We've made about sixty batches totaling 12,000 pounds. All of this cheese is being aged in the cheese cave on Westminster West Road that we rent from Emily's dad or in the Crown Finish Caves. Every other week we assemble 1,000 pounds of cheese in totes lined with FDAapproved plastic liners. We take the totes up to Green Mountain Orchards and build a pallet. which is picked up at by a Vermont-based, produce transport company and delivered to the caves in Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
The red clover in the surrounding pastures is reaching maturity and the milk is very sweet. The first batch of Humble Herdsman cheese that we made in May is ready for sale. Soon there will be a revolving door through our cave with an aged batch going to market in the same week as a new batch comes in.
July 29, 2014
It is overcast and cool out. There was intermittent rain yesterday with some thunderstorms, especially in the morning. The foliage is lush throughout the fields and woods. It is hard to keep the weeds at bay in the vegetable gardens.
I've got a pile of paperwork to do this morning. I will help make the wheels of West West Blue later this afternoon. Rachel is at the cheese house with Vito and Sam is working in the cave. It is peaceful at home even with the clanking of the excavator and the buzz of the chainsaw. Phil and Izaac are working on building a new road around the backside of out property to the north.
Rachel and I had a short getaway from our farm and cheese business over last weekend. We went to Wellsboro, PA for the marriage of our friends Ellie and Justin. We left home on Friday at 6:30 pm and drove to Hammondsport, NY arriving at 1 am at Jim and Judy's house. We drank a couple of beers and watched TV before going to bed at 2:30 am. We were up and on the road to Wellsboro by 11 am. The wedding was held at Justin's parents residence on a hilltop overlooking Wellsboro. What a delight it was to see Ellie and Justin exchange vows on a sunny afternoon. The party went on until midnight with a rocking' band and the launching of mini hot air balloons. We stayed at Barb and Jeff's house in town and had a leisurely mooring before hitting the road at 11 am. The road north heads up the valley of the mighty Susquehanna River, past some flood control dams, one of which sits atop an abandoned coal mine. Ridges after ridges spread out to the east and west.
July 28, 2014
A soggy start to this day. Thunder woke me up and I listened to heavy rain pouring down outside my window. I went down stairs and got ready to go to the cheese house to start a batch of West West Blue with Vito. The sky is starting to lighten up now.
Today we are also experimenting with a small vat of a soft blue cheese from a recipe for Lymeswold, an English cheese. I first learned to make this from Kathy Biss, a venerable cheesemaker who operates the West Highland Creamery in Scotland. Lymeswold is supposed to have blue veining in the paste with a bloomy, white mold rind. This will be the fifth time we have made it in the past two years.
Since our cave is full of wild mold spores we have yet to produce a bloomy rind that is white; the rind is usually mottled with grey, white, and blue molds. The paste has been lovely with enough blue veining to soften the paste and produce the characteristic flavor of a blue cheese. We have had three successes out of four attempts making four, twopound wheels per batch so today we will probably end up with 24 wheels.
The first day of making WW Blue goes farily quick if the starter culture behaves. After the curd is cut and stirred, the whey is drained, and the curd knits into a pack. After this the the packed curd is cut into pieces and gathered in cheesecloths and moved to the drain table. Tomorrow we will make a slightly larger vat and combine today's acidified curds with the sweeter, warmer curd from that batch to make the wheels. The slabs of curd have to be milled before the wheels are assembled. By the end of tomorrow we will have around 25 wheels with a yield of approximately 450 pounds of cheese ready for hand salting.
July 22, 2014
They were putting hay in the barn when I got up to the Elm Lea Farm at the Putney School this morning.
A long frame elevator stretched from a flat bed hay wagon to tan opening in the barn twenty feet up. Second cut hay (rowan hay as the oldtimers say).
Sam Frank, one of the apprentices working with us, backed up the haul tank and set to work loading on 2,300 pounds of milk. Sam recently obtained his hauler/samplerlicense from the Vermont Agency of Agriculture. I am about to turn him loose to pick and sample milk on his own.
Rachel also passed her exam so there are three of us qualified to do this important job.
The extra help for this job, among many other changes, make this year of cheese production a far cry from last year when Rachel and I, with parttime help from sister Alex, did all of the work.
In addition to Sam, Vito Forte and Emily Aldrich are apprenticing. This provides Parish Hill Creamery with a work force of six available people. Rachel, Sam, and I are working fulltime. Vito works the front half of the week, Emily works the back, and Alex floats. We are able to operate the business with more precision and also allowenough time for Sam, Emily and Vito to learn the craft.
We are still catching up on sleep and restoring energy levels after going to the fifth annual Vermont Cheesemakers Festival two days ago. We had success at the fest! There were 110 vendors including us. The event was held at Shelburne Farms in the Carriage Barn and surrounding lawns at the edge of Lake Champlain. It was a beautiful summer day: breezy, sunny and warm. There were 1750 people in attendance, arriving at 10 am and staying until 4 pm. We had a table outside under the big tent between Grafton Village Cheese and an apiary.
The response to our cheese was very positive. It still amazes me that the West West Blue is going over so well, as it is one of the strongest Blues out there.
The quality is excellent. I guess I had no idea that there was a crowd that enjoys eating really strong Blue.
Our whole crew came up to the festival, including Gus, who has come every year since Rachel started running the show 4 years back.
Every year Gus volunteers, helping set up, getting vendors where they need to go, and generally helping things run smoothly. This time he also worked at our table for a while.
We took turns so that we could all go exploring. There are always some good eats and drinks. I enjoy visiting my cheesemaking friends and trying their cheese. There is always something new being made. After clean up Rachel, Gus, and I went up to the Inn for some time in the formal gardens with a drink. We sat on the wide stonewall surrounding the flower beds and felt the reward of a job well done.
After that we stopped at my brother Sam's house just a bit up the road for dinner with his family. Sam is the dairy farm manager at Shelburne Farms. He lives in a house overlooking the Inn and the lake with a great view of the Adirondack mountains to the west.
The Putney School cows are producing enough milk so that we are making a big vat of Humble and a small vat of a new cheese that we began working on last year, Little Blue. Last year's attempt turned out similarly to West West Blue so there will be a few tweaks to the recipe.
I am mentoring Elsie Gawler, a young farmer from North Branch Farm in Maine, who will begin making cheese commercially in 2015. She is staying at house and making cheese with us for a few days. Her program is sponsored by MOFGA. Elsie is a lovely young woman with ties to our area, her grandmother lives in Marlboro and a sister lives in Brattleboro.