From Milk to Cheese

I ran into a couple of good friends last evening at dinner who gently reminded me that it had been weeks since I had posted a new blog writing.  I find it is kind of like getting my teeth cleaned. When the reminder comes in the mail I will make an appointment and get the work done, but until that time I am just fine with putting it at the bottom of my priorities.  Well, I would certainly prefer to write a blog than getting my teeth cleaned, but you get the idea.

  

I am changing the dairy.  Changing it a lot.  In a few weeks I will cease selling raw milk and instead produce and sell cheese.  

I have sold raw milk from the cows of Kurtwood Farms for the past four and a half years.  I started with one cow -- Dinah -- milking her in a muddy paddock and selling the milk in glass mason jars from the back of my truck.  It was most illegal and rather risky and yet it was such tasty milk and surprisingly the illegality didn't bother me too much.  At least I managed to put it out of my head as I drove around Seattle dropping off the quaint jars of tasty, creamy milk.

  

Two years later I built a small milk building and obtained a Grade A dairy license to sell raw milk.  The herd had grown by this time to four cows, with generally two in  milk at any one time.  The State had been quite helpful in the licensing process and the inspection process and the dairy grew.  I sold the milk in plastic jugs, a tidy little label on the front, looking all very official.  Kurt's All Jersey was born.  For the past two and a half years I have sold milk on Vashon Island and in the city this way and enjoyed it.  The milk was good and tasty and was now tested regularly to assure health standards.  

  

At the end of last year, I had a bit of an epiphany.  I was done selling milk.  

  

My attention span is limited.  I can only find something exciting for a period of time.  Then I want to try a new challenge.  I had learned the milk trade.  The barn was built, the dairy too and the pastures were coming in nicely.  A new challenge was needed.  I have turned to making cheese as the next challenge here at the Farm.

  

I quickly ordered a combination cheese vat - pasteurizer from C. van't Riet company in the Netherlands.  During the months of January and February this large piece of equipment was fabricated to my specifications.  A couple of weeks ago it was delivered to Rotterdam and then on to the U.S.  I expect it to arrive in another couple of weeks.

  

A small bulk tank to chill and hold the milk prior to making the cheese was ordered from a supplier in Canada.  With a bit of luck it too will arrive in the next two weeks.  New cheese molds and other small equipment will finish out the order.

  

I like working like this.  I have a long series of hurdles and tasks in front of me.  I can't even say that I am aware of most of them, but I am confident that I can overcome them.  The first few have been taken care of, the next set are being worked on and the rest will be solved as they appear.

  

I plan on first making a bloomy-rind fresh cows' milk cheese, commonly known as Camembert. I like making these cheeses;  the milk from my Jerseys is a rich, creamy milk that suits this cheese well.  Prototypes have been lovely.  

  

I will continue to sell raw milk until the new equipment is hooked up.  Because of the specific nature of the cheese vat and the milk tank, I will give up my license to sell fluid milk and concentrate only on making and selling cheese.  Although  many of my customers will be saddened by this, I must admit that I will not miss hauling around gallons of milk in jugs.  I am confident that quality of the cheese will win over my past customers.

  

So, eight weeks of news in one short blog post.  Really, I will try to keep more current.

A Reassessment of My Abilities

For four years  I have kept cows.  Fed them, milked them, chatted with them, bonded with them, and sadly slaughtered some of them.  I have felt that I have risen high enough on the learning curve of cows to term myself a cowboy; a dairyman.  I realized yesterday that I was mistaken.  I am a neophyte.

  

On Thursday, the first day of the new year, Dinah 2.0 gave birth to a calf.  I was thrilled and took a great deal of pride in this even though I had only bought Dinah 2.0 the day before, had never seen her before that date, had neither raised her nor bred her.  I did not deserve to take credit for the birth of this beautiful calf. 

  

I took a look at this healthy, strong, lovely calf and quickly, confidently and sadly assessed it as a bull-calf, a male.  In the world of a dairy, a bull calf has a financial value equal to a large Reuben sandwich at the local cafe.  A heifer, a female, is valued more along the lines of a great weekend out on the town.  I concluded that this was an omen for the year:  healthy calf yes, but one of little value:  the year would be a B, not even a B+ and no where near an A.  

   

As I began working with Dinah 2.0, trying to get her to relax and let down her milk in the milking parlor, I began to bring the young offspring with us.  With her progeny in sight of her, I theorized that she would calm down, possibly she would even confuse the milking machine with its mechanical pulsating with the clumsy suckling of the calf.  With the calf stationed in sight of Dinah 2.0, myself trying to massage her engorged udder, I looked over at the calf. The small, yet fierce calf was peeing in the milking parlor, and peeing in a most un-male way.

   

In my rush to judgement I had mistaken his, well actually her, umbilical cord for a penis.  I would like to think that this is a simple mistake to make, although anyone with the moniker of dairyman would never make it.  I stand corrected. The calf is actually a heifer.  Jorge, noting the demi-lune markings on her forehead has named her Luna.  

As this is the beginning of a new year, a time of reflection, I still have a chance to reassess the coming year.  This farm now has the best omen:  a young heifer calf born on New Years' day, in the year of the Ox.  Most certainly this is an A+ in the world of an omen.

  

I have also downgraded my status to novice cowboy.  I have quite a ways to go and relish the trek.  

Porcine Post Script

oh, and the pigs are good too.

The State of The Farm -- 2009

January 1, 2009.

  

It has been a great year here at Kurtwood Farms and I thought I would spend a few minutes reflecting on the year past.

   

This morning around five a.m. Dinah II gave birth to a beautiful bull calf.  I am taking this, partially at least, as a great omen.  The theme of the year will be a new start; birth, beginnings, hope, that kind of thing.  Now, if it had been a heiffer calf, I would have said that this was the greatest omen possible, but I will stick with a healthy calf on New Year's morning as a great, if slightly tempered, sign.

   

The veterinarian was just out to check on the nervous mother, the healthy calf and the other cows.  Boo was confirmed bred as well, set to calf in seven months.  Also, great news without question.  With luck, Andi will also have settled, after having spent a few days at the stud farm down the street.  

   

The pastures were greatly expanded during the spring of 2008 and are growing in nicely.  In addition, all the pastures were limed in late fall, with the hope of a great productive season coming up in the new few weeks.  

   

The barn is working out beautifully, albeit with a few design flaws.  The cows have found ways to push my buttons with the way the barn is laid out.  It is a glorious structure, however, and I always enjoy my time in the barn, even if it is time spent shoveling cow manure.  

   

A few days before the snows hit the Island, all of the sheep were sold off, freeing up a large chunk of the pastures for the cows.  I felt that the sheep were too inefficient to keep compared to the dairy cows.  I know how two large paddocks to rotate cows through and the main upper pasture is reserved exclusively for the cows.  I can't say I miss the sheep.  

   

The chicken tractor described in a blog post a few months ago has been a great success.  As of this morning no raccoons have been able to breach the coop and the chickens are safe and laying nicely.  With the exception of the two weeks when it was frozen to the ground and could not be moved, it has worked very well.  A new flock of layers is presently in the brooder and will be transferred to an additional chicken tractor in the next couple of months.  

   

The greatest change set for the farm in the coming year is the dairy itself.  After four years of selling raw milk, I am planning on switching to selling primarily cheese.  Last week I ordered a thirty five gallon combination pasteurizer-cheese vat from the C. van't Riet company in the Netherlands.  They will fabricate the cheese vat over the next eight weeks and then ship it to the farm in March.  I hope to make the transformation completely by April first.  I am most excited and quite hopeful of success.

  

On the home front, Daisy and Byron are healthy as ever.  I expect, or at least hope, that Daisy will live forever.  She looks far younger than her eight years.  Byron is the sweetest odd ball on the farm and is attempting to be the head dog here with some success.  Daisy may retire her position soon although I anticipate she will most likely fall into a more emeritus position, given her personality.

On the whole, Kurtwood Farms is set for a great season.  Dinah II, Boo, Andi and Lily look forward to the sun and warmth to return, the pastures to grow and some serious milk production to begin.  

  

And now, back to check on that beautiful calf.

Cows in Heat; Cows in Chill

I love my job.  Taking care of cows, milking cows, selling milk.  It is dynamic, it is a struggle and I may never learn everything I need to know.  This week is an entire new chapter.  It is cold out.

  

Actually it is rather cold out.  Colder than I can remember.  What makes this interesting is not simply that it is a bit uncomfortable to be outside, but rather what happens unexpectedly.  I will take great credit -- deserved or not -- for getting a barn ready for the cows before winter arrived.  The fact that it took four years and therefore four winters is incidental to this discussion.  The cows are not locked into their paddock to keep them barn bound for the week.

  

The most frustrating aspect of chill-milking is the milk hoses.  Made of thick, hard, clear plastic, it has a comfort range.  Twenty degrees and below is not within that comfort zone.  It is now very hard and most inflexibly.  Sadly, flexibility is its great attribute;  it needs the ability to flex over the metal housings of the milking machine and the vacuum lines.  Simply isn't happening on these chilly morns.  

  

As it also happens, any moisture that remains in the vacuum lines most quickly freezes.  With chunks of ice in the lines, the air cannot pass and therefore no vacuum.  No vacuum, and the milk does not flow from the udders of the cows.  Thankfully, the tea kettle is still warm in the kitchen and can assist in melting the lines. 

  

Surround the barn are four three hundred gallon stock tanks filled with water from the roof of the barn.  As it now happens, they are filled each with three hundred gallons of ice.  Great for a cocktail party in August, but most difficult for three very thirsty Jerseys.  I have been breaking the ice on top morning, noon and night trying to keep the small ice bergs from colonizing the entire tank.

  

Little Miss Andi, the youngest cow here came into heat on Saturday morning and Jorge and I walked her down to the neighboring farm to be bred to their Scottish Highland bull.  I have great hope that this will do the trick this time.  As Andi is a young heifer, she is most prone to get bred and should have no problem.  Tomorrow we will return to pick her up and walk her back to her rather confused and lonely sister cows.

  

Those lonely cows are standing in the snow as I write this, staring over at me.  I am most certainly projecting, but they appear to be confused by the snow, confused as to why there is no grass for them to graze.  As their days are generally filled with walking the pastures and grazing, they have a great deal of free time on their hands.  They chomp on the hay in the mangers, chew a little cud, but there is still many hours left for them.  With luck the snow will melt in a few days and they can get back to their cow ways.

La Vie Simple

I am forty six years old. I thought that I had already learned all the lessons of life.  Today I realized that I am mistaken.  

   

This week has been a difficult one here at the dairy.  The challenges revolve around Dinah, the head cow here at Kurtwood Farms. The cow that started this farm; a lovely cow.  She tested positive for Q fever two months ago during the annual testing of the herd.  (For details on Q fever you will need to go to past blog postings.)

  

I was most frustrated when I got the results back from my veterinarian.  Mistakenly, I called the King County Vet and the State of Washington vet's office to speak of my frustrations and in the hope of gaining some insight into the State's policy.  During those two phone calls I yelled, I screamed and I used that familiar expletive 'fuck' repeatedly.  I truly thought that word was part of our collective language at this point, but sadly, it is not. The worst part was when I said that I would truck this cow down to Olympia myself, chain her to the steps of the Department of Agriculture building and slit her thought there, letting her bleed all over the steps so that the head of food safety could see it.  Both government bureaucrats were not happy with me, gave me little information and were in no way understanding.  Their primary mantra was that it was not their policy, that did not know whose policy it was and they had no explanation for the policy.  Oh, and they knew nothing about the policy as well. 

   

I thought that all was okay after hanging up the phone with both vets.  I now know that I was mistaken.

  

On Tuesday this week I got a call from my Washington State Department of Agriculture inspector.  A sweet man, a foot soldier in the government's war on raw milk, he had a warning for me.  If I did not back off on the Q fever issue, the State would come down on me and would never let up. He repeated this more than once, eluding to a potential campaign of tremendous fortitude and non-ending scope.  The State prosecutors office would be involved he warned.

Although the cow in question is dry -- not producing milk-- and has been dry for the past two years they evidently still worry about Q fever getting into the milk supply.  The cow may be contagious to the other cows here, but the inspector and the two vets had no idea if that was true or not.  

   

The inspector said that I could slaughter the cow myself and that freezing might possible control any Q fever in the meat.  When I let him know that I would send it to auction he was content with that.  By sending the cow to auction, the result is that the meat will enter the food supply.   That is okay.  People are supposed to cook their meat.

   

The end result is that Dinah was put on a large stock truck at three o'clock this afternoon headed for the Chehalis livestock auction.  I expect to be paid twenty cents per pound for this lovely animal that I paid two thousand dollars for four years ago.  With luck, the trucking will cost less than the amount realized from the sale. My local vet was there at the farm this afternoon to check her ear tag with the test results and verify that the animal has been removed.

   

I could be terribly naive and find out that it wasn't the phone calls that elicited this response, but these blog postings.  If I end up in the State Penitentiary for writing this, the story will be even more tragic.

A Bit of a Mishap Morning

Life at the dairy is fairly predictable.  The cows are milked in the morning, they have breakfast, go up pasture to graze, late in the afternoon they return to the barn to be milked and fed and so on.  Can't exactly set your clock to it, but it rarely changes much.

 

Until this morning.

 

Dinah, I am blaming her, but only because I want to, decided to go a bit out of bounds last night.  Instead of spending the blustery night in the dry barn that was just constructed for such an evening, she decided to venture off of the farm.  Led by Dinah, the others followed suit.

 

This morning, after having coffee and conches for breakfast with Jorge, I proceeded to bring the cows into the milking parlor to milk Lily and Boo.  To my surprise, they were not there.  I marched up to the upper pasture and looked for them there.  Still no cows.  A bit nervously I walked across the pastures looking here and there for the cows.  Still no cows.  Remember we are looking for five cows, each close to a thousand pounds a piece and you might classify them as bright orange.  Usually hard to miss.

  

At this point I called Jorge and he began to look as well.  The option at this point is to walk the fence line looking for a problem.  Alas we found the far north west corner had been breached.  The fence was down and hoof prints were apparent.  We each headed in a different directions looking for the lost bovines.  As there were a great deal of paths with hoofs, it was difficult to find the direct route they took to leave the farm.

  

After another half hour I decided to go back to the house and grab my truck and begin to look far on the other side of the property.  Driving way around on the highway I went up and down driveways until out of the corner of my eye I saw a bit of that caramel colored hide.  Alas, here were my five beasts, lounging in a bit of grass and wind fallen apples looking very content and neither terribly excited nor disappointed to see me.

  

I called Jorge on his cell phone and began the difficult task of describing which way he needed to head through the woods to where I was. Although I know about where the farm was, and I knew where I was, I had not a clue how they were connected.  The cows were not giving up their secrets at this point.

   

Eventually I saw Jorge's bright orange rain slicker pop out of the woods and we began to herd up the cows.  With a dog leash and a rope we grabbed a couple of non-interested cows and marched them down a long driveway towards the farm.  As we approached a seemingly abandoned home out came an elderly Japanese woman who began to scream, fearful that the large beasts were after her.  Apparently she had a different vision of dairy cows and had been quite surprised to find them in her yard the evening prior.  Calls to the police did not avail her worries, nor did my pleasant words with the ladies.

   

We marched on, headed to the woods.  At one point -- did I mention it was pouring down rain at this point?-- Dinah decided that she was not to pleased with the whole project and firmly stepped on my foot.  Although it is an occupational hazard that I am well aware of, it always takes me by surprise.  She was not budging and my screams did not help.  Moments later she decided that her next best option was to turn and bolt back out of the woods.  Unwilling to give up the dog leash that I was holding on to, she proceeded to drag me through the woods, my belly pulled through the wet undergrowth of the woods.  After thirty feet she felt she had made her point and stopped.  Although most un-pleased, I stood up and started to pull her back through the trees, knowing we were close to the far corner of the farm.

  

With a bit more prodding and pleading we got the small herd back to the pasture and they headed back down the hill to the barn, very much expected a nice breakfast of alfalfa hay.  

  

All in all a most frustrating morning.  Two hours of plodding through the wet woods, soaked through to the bone, not particularly pleased with Dinah and still curious who that Japanese woman was.  I returned later with a jug of fresh milk as a peace offering for her, but couldn't find her.  In fact I couldn't find the front door of the house, all doors appeared to be grown over with vegetation and to have not been entered for decades.  Somewhere in there I imagine she is sitting, peering out of the dirty windows afraid of another night when the wild cows will return.