Kat's International Plate

Well today I had to say farewell to my intern/employee/assistant cheese maker/good friend. It all began when she wrote me a note to ask for a job in eighth grade, I reluctantly hired her due to her age but on a farm you take what you can for help. Nobody wants to do this kind of work and labor is always the limiting factor to not only success but any type of expansion. She came to me with an innate work ethic not normally seen in this era of cell phones, instant messaging and trips to the mall. As she came and went with each new passing school year I watched her grow up until she went to college and now off to Europe for a semester abroad. What will be an excellent opportunity for open-mindedness, culture, growth and some serious immersion language studies will also mean for me a bittersweet loss of what my husband termed "an incredible asset to our farm."

These days it is an exceptional young person that can work with fervor, initiative and intuition-we should all strive to enhance our work environments like she does-naturally. So let's all make a New Year's resolution to enjoy our work, whatever we 'do' and also laugh a LOT. That's what we did. Hats off to Kat and many many thanks for great years of attention to detail in the cheese room and making me laugh- a lot.

Mark your bookmarks to Kat's International Plate to see her travels thru Spain and great food to boot! Buena Suerte, Kat!

Happy New Year!

Good things come to those who wait. That's what I say! 2008, that is. After a challenging 2007 on the farm with everything electronic or electric breaking I relish the entry of 2008. It began with my husband and I attempting to 'finish' the two and a half year cheese house construction project by ourselves. Especially since the old one was completely disassembled and unusable. Then all of a sudden, it seemed each and every compressor, condensing unit, bulk tank, motor and engine broke here on the farm. For those unfamiliar with these terms, they are all related to refrigeration. The kind that keeps cheese, meats and blueberries cold. Refrigeration costs are expensive and always break down on a Sunday, when charges to fix them double. This mostly affects those small delicate soft cheeses and not the larger natural rinds in our cave.

Due to the ever lengthy construction project, we also were unable to produce the normal volume of our award winning natural rind cheeses which age in the caves: Autumn Oak, Mountain Tomme and Blue Moon. Hopefully we will be back on track for 2008. I look forward to this year as one friend said recently "the 2007 curse has broken."

Great things that happened in 2007? We released a new washed rind cheese appropriately called 'Paniolo' which means 'cowboy' in Hawaiian. This, in honor of at least 10 generations of familial lines of those Paniolos who have worked the cattle and land on our family ranch in Hawaii. As their numbers are on the decline we felt it a propos to pay homage to them. This one is a stronger cheese, what some call 'stinky cheese.' I prefer aromatic. It is creamy and mild when young, maturing into a luscious texture and unctuous character-like a true cowboy. Complex in nature, it deserves to be served with an Alsatian Riesling or a big Belgian beer.

Re-cover The Skin!

After 2 years of staring at our winter sheep housing that had been seriously vandalized (slashed from one end to the other resulting in two animals' deaths) we managed to re-cover the skin with Dave's father's assistance just in time for a Nor'easter headed our way! Photos were taken on the wind calm sunny day a couple Sundays ago.



Then this taken this morning on December 2 right before a major storm is approaching rapidly. As I look across the lake towards New York state I can see the lake effects white clouds forming in preparation for perhaps 14+ inches! Amazing that about two weeks ago I could still dig radishes and the last kohlrabi from the garden.

Wild Wanderer

A lone wanderer wild turkey graced us with his presence all day today on Thanksgiving day right at our house. He was sadly thin and strangely alone. I tossed out some ripening tomatoes and zucchini from our garden in case he wanted it. On this day it seemed to be a message of gratitude for our health and the food we now are about to consume, on this, very commercialized day of over-consumption.

We see a lot of wildlife here on our farm, since we have many habitats that remain undisturbed by 'people-kind'. There are pheasants, wild turkeys (sometimes so many one must stop the car on our farm road to wait for them to cross), and lots of deer. Not to mention raccoons, foxes and owls. And the ever-mysterious sand piper, which makes her nest in the spring and squawks and shrieks when approached while pretending to be wounded-just to protect her stash of babies. Clever! Every spring when I spot them I actually worry if the bird is all right. Only to remember in the next instant that it's a ruse!

As an icy rain was predicted here today, I decided to bake some hearth breads

and brine my bird for the meal. I have brined turkey for years before it became a trend only because I am food-obsessed and always playing with different techniques of preparation-sort of like my cheese. Brining meat is simple.
Some Rules to Abide By:
Do not use kosher or saline-injected turkeys. They already have a salt solution in them and will not work well.
It must be fully submerged. An easy to remember guide is for every 1 gallon of water you use, combine 1 cup of salt, 1 cup of sweetener of your choice (be it honey, brown sugar, molasses, cane sugar etc), and herbs, spices, fruit...........then heat it all up in a stockpot so the salt and sweetener dissolves into solution and then chill down. After this add the meat and cool undisturbed (in a fridge or if meat is too large in an insulated cooler) for the required time.

The choices really are endless! It's so much fun to brine meat that once tried, the user never goes back. Sounds like an addiction to me! The real plus though is the most moist meat ever. For cuts known to get dry upon cooking, like chicken breasts, turkey breasts, pork chops and other thin cuts of meat. The rule of thumb is one hour for every pound of meat. For instance, a six pound turkey breast would be about 6 hours brined. For a quick dinner party of chicken breasts or pork chops the brine time dependent on weight could be as short as a half-hour. Visit www.foodnetwork.com for more info on brining meats......... Always rinse the meat after brining in several changes of water to prevent an overly salty taste. Any cooking method can be used after brining too: roasting, grilling, baking, even sauteeing.

The science behind it, I believe, is that osmotic pressure causes the moisture to come out of the meat and then with the sodium (from the salt) it must come to equilibrium and returns inside. I am no scientist, in fact, I even make cheese from my heart not from my mind. As Shirley O. Corriher states in her book Cookwise, "Brining makes meat juicier by increasing the amount of liquid inside the meat cells." Try it once and be convinced. And surely after eating it, you WILL be thankful for that which you eat. Happy Thanksgiving all!

Winter has Wandered In

Well about one month after I claimed Fall in a past post, winter has wandered in. As such the light levels wane and we must shorten our viewing room hours. Our new hours 'for now', we will be open every day including holidays from 9-4pm. There you will find seasonally available cheeses in a self-serve setting. For special orders of lamb, please contact us ahead to pre-arrange pickup.


The farm was quietly blanketed in snow two days ago with a not-so quiet snowstorm. It began with hard rain and then slowly transitioned to sleet and then slick snow. Located at an altitude of 1200 feet, we get snow when most in the village have barely a dusting.

As we are mitigated by all things 'weather' here on the farm, happily for me as our season slows I get to cook a lot more and get together with friends. Having a penchant for baking hearth breads and low and slow barbeque this time allows me to rejuvenate my soul through food after a hectic spring, summer and fall.

New Winter Farmer's Market!

Well, it's official. We got into the new indoor winter farmer's market in Montpelier, Vermont. The market begins on December 1, 2007 and will run the first Saturday of each month thru April 2008.

So there are 5:
December
January
February
March
April

The location of this new market is Vermont College (on College Street) from 10am-2pm.

For those of you located near there or perhaps traveling thru, please stop by and visit with us!

We will be bringing our seasonal cheeses and our tender grassfed lamb.

Fall Fields

Well fall has finally hit here. It's October 13 and we have just had our first slight frost on the garden. Latest one ever I believe. We are located about 1200 feet above sea level 3 miles from Lake Champlain as the crow flies and agriculturally speaking, our zone is zone 4. In this zone the growing season should be about 120 days. That's for veggies anyway. It's longer for pastures.

Fall's arrival each year is slightly different. The light changes and one can actually take note of this in August up here on the hill. Colors are more vibrant, and the air smells clean. Fall also brings with it certain other chores on the farm. Like bringing in firewood. We heat in the winter using our own firewood harvested here on the farm. This means finding fallen down trees or cutting down standing dead trees. Then the trees must be cut up into logs and then into smaller chunks and then split into manageable sizes for use either in our outdoor wood boiler or woodstoves in the house.

Fall's arrival also signals the time to finish up necessary outdoor projects before Nor'easters begin to blow our way! Like the woven wire fence we are putting up to protect our blueberry fields from errant escape artist sheep. They love to nibble the tips of the leaves and scratch their backs on low hanging branches.The problem is during picking season they also knock a lot of fruit off the branches by all this movement. I must say though it's quite a sight to see about 30 sheep running on a mission to the blueberry field!

Clear crisp fall days also bring their share of lofty balloons soaring over our house. They seem so close I always wonder if they can hear me talking.

Why diary and not dairy?

This is my first blog. Why diary and not dairy? Well the two go hand in hand. One tends to a diary each day as does one to a dairy. You see, each and every day animals that are lactating must be milked. Twice a day. That means Saturday and yes Sunday too. Through beautiful summer days and awful snow storms in January and February, like here in Northern Vermont. Unless of course you are milking what they call 'seasonally' based on certain seasons, or in our case because sheep don't lactate (milk) for that long. A typical sheep milking season lasts in our climate from May thru the third week of October. It is getting into the second week in October so the sheep are drying off and sheep cheese making will soon cease, for me, until the cycle begins again in May. We do milk cows as well, on a very small scale, and so I will be able to continue making the cow's milk cheeses for a while longer.

One thing we have been very busy doing over the last two and a half years is building a new cheese house. We outgrew our old cheese room in our milking barn several years ago. We still need to finish some things on the new facility but are now open to visitors. Finally! For a long time folks would drive to the farm wondering where they could purchase our cheeses right here on the farm. It was not possible. We had no retail space and no extra bodies to avail themselves to help. One thing has changed. We now have a small space, but it is a self-serve sort of thing like many in Vermont. This might be a Vermont thing. Like an honor system at a vegetable farmstand.

So join us if you are ever in the neighborhood and love cheese. Cheese types we make are described on our site www.sheepcheese.com

Well as Willem Lang says, "gotta get back to work!"