Northern Organic Farmers Associations (NOFA) has a program that links farmers to classrooms through letter writing. The kids learn about things on the farm, and as a participant, I've had a really nice time reading the lovely letters the children write back. Email me if you are a teacher of a second grade class and I'll send letters to your classroom too.
email - barrosse at comcast dot com.
Here's the latest letter to the kids in Manchester.
January 28, 2008
Dear Manchester Elementary Students,
Thank you so much for all your lovely letters. Your hand writing is very nice and you ask very good questions.
Sometimes we take the milk from the cows and we make cheese. We add something called rennet, which looks like a little tablet, to a pot of warm milk and let it sit for awhile. The milk sets up, so that there’s some water in the pot, and curds. The curds look like tofu at first. Have you seen tofu? It is a white solid block made of soy bean curd. Well after just a few minutes after adding rennet, we have a pot that looks like water and curds.
I take a long knife and cut the cheese curds into cubes. Then I stir for a few minutes. I gently pour the curds and liquid, which is called whey, into a strainer, which is lined with a loosely woven cloth called cheesecloth. The cheesecloth lets the whey drain through, but captures the curds.
If you want to make cottage cheese, you rinse the curds at this stage, by dunking the ball of cheesecloth and curds into a bowl of cold water a few times and letting the water drain out each time. Then you salt the cheese and add a little more milk and you have really tasty cottage cheese.
Whenever you make cheese, it is surprising that for each gallon of milk, you only get a small amount of cheese curds – maybe just the size of both of your fists put together. There is a lot of whey liquid left though. We don’t waste the whey. It goes to our pigs for supper, and they love it!
If I don’t make cottage cheese, I can take the ball of cheese curds and put it in a bowl and heat it in the microwave for a minute. Then I take it out, and with very clean hands, I stretch it and pull it. I do that over and over again, each time pulling it out until it cools again. Finally it is really stretchy and shiny, and I form it into a ball and put it into a bowl of ice water.
Do you know what kind of cheese this is? It is mozzarella cheese, just like you have on pizza! Back in the old days, people like me would rewarm the cheese not with a microwave, but by putting the cheese in a pot, sitting in a larger pot of hot water. You’d keep the water the same temperature for a few hours. Using the microwave makes good cheese and it only takes ½ hour. This works well for making a few batches of cheese at home.
If you want to make cheddar cheese or Swiss cheese, warm the milk and add a cheese culture, which is a special kind of bacteria. You should let the cheese and culture sit where it can be warm for a few hours to give the bacteria a chance to multiply.
Then press the cheese curds into a special form the shape of a ball of cheese, and then push down on the form to force out all the whey. Store the cheese in the refrigerator for at least 30 days and sometimes longer, and turn it over every few days. Allowing a bacteria culture to grow in something, like cheese or sauerkraut, is called fermentation. Fermentation gives air bubbles to cheese and air bubbles to root beer! Fermentation in Swiss cheese creates pockets of air in the cheese because the bacteria give off carbon dioxide and it remains trapped in the cheese.
But different bacteria cultures do different things to cheese and that’s why we have so many types of cheese. Some cheeses start with cow’s milk and some with sheep’s milk or goat’s milk. Some cheese start with whole milk and some with cream. But the cultures make the cheese the most different from other cheese. Blue cheese culture forms long blue veins in the cheese. Brie cheese is coated with a culture that forms a soft white coating, called a rind.
This is a cheese press – when you put the cheese curds in, and crank down, the extra liquid or whey comes out the bottom. You need to use a cheese press to make hard cheeses because hard cheeses have less water or whey in them.
Next time I’d like to share with you all some information about my bees and making honey. We love honey!
Someday we’d love to grow all our own food, but right now we grow:
Chickens for eggs, and chickens for meat
Pigs for ham, bacon, sausage, ground pork, and pork chops
Cows for milk, butter, yogurt, cheese, cream, and ice cream
Vegetables for storing in the winter – pumpkins, squash, potatoes, onions, carrots
Vegetable for freezing for winter, and eating in the summer – tomatoes, spinach, lettuce, beans, zucchini, radishes, hot peppers, beets, broccoli, and herbs
Cucumbers for pickles
Corn for popcorn, corn for our animals, and fresh corn (we love popcorn!)
Cabbage for sauerkraut and kimchi
Blueberries for eating in the summer and for canning and freezing for winter
Basil for making pesto and freezing it
Honey from our bees
We buy a lot of our food locally in the summer and save it for use in the winter too. We buy dry beans and flour from a local farmer, and we pick apples at Mad Tom Orchard and raspberries at Wildwood Blueberry Farm. We make jam and applesauce from the fruit. Would you like to grow your own food too? It sure does taste good when food is fresh and just picked from the garden.
We don’t have horses, sheep, or goats on our farm. We just don’t have enough room right now. Someday we’d like to have a horse and maybe a buggy too. Would you like to see me riding in Manchester down the street with my horse and buggy? That would really be old-fashioned!
Oh – and if someone asks you where chocolate milk comes from, please tell them it comes from a brown cow. Just kidding! Chocolate milk comes from chocolate mixed with milk, of course! My cows are about the same height as a kitchen counter. But they are miniature cows, so they aren’t as tall as cows you usually see on a farm. We have 2 mama cows, and two heifer calves, which are girl calves that haven’t had babies yet. The cows are both pregnant and should have new calves in the spring. Then we’ll have six cows. That’s a lot of cows, especially when the bull comes to visit each summer.
Your farming friend,
Mary Barrosse Schwartz
Bosky Dell Farm
East Dorset, VT
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