cheese_Yelena

UDDER
ARTISANS
A behind-the-barn peek
at one local food you love:
cheese.
R
honda Shaul emerges
from behind her
modest Oswego
County farmhouse
onto the sunlit,
pastoral hillside where only
the occasional horse whinny
or sheep’s “baaa” breaks the
silence. The sturdy, 42-year-old
mom with faded-brown, wavy
hair and a bright red apron
sounds slightly winded, with
one of five children clinging
tightly to her neck. After a
cheerful greeting, she heads
back inside to a tiny room
attached to a barn — the place
where the cheese-making
magic happens. 0
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UNFOLD • MAY 2012
Text and Photos by Yelena Galstyan
T
his is purely Rhonda’s domain. The
8-by-10 foot room contains just a
fridge, a sink, a table, and several
blocks of cheese. Here she creates the five
varieties of cheese that help support her
family. All are made from fresh goat and
sheep’s milk, straight from the teat.
Rhonda says that her cheese making is an
art, with some science thrown in for good
measure. She and her husband Matt take
pride in their process — from hand birthing
the goats, to milking them, to packaging the
cheese. They do it all. But their cheese making roots stem from far the north west.
The Shauls came here in 2008 from Sarah
Palin country: Wasilla, Alaska. They started
their cheese making there in 1998, but then
decided to decamp to a friendlier climate to
sell their goods. The young family is part of
a creative boom in artisanal cheese making.
It’s a boom that’s not peculiar to our region,
yet one that has set off particularly strong
vibrations here.
We’re most likely to see signs of it at local farmers markets. Ruddy, rough-hewn
rural folk and sturdy farmers descend from
the hills and pastures of Central New York
to peddle their cheddars, Goudas, and
crumbly blues. Smiling, offering samples,
explaining this mold or that smell, these artisans of cheese form a direct connection to
the food we eat. They made the cheese with
their own hands, and often with their own
animals’ milk.
But as both demand and production grow,
some cheese makers say they’re walking an
uneven line between hobby and livelihood.
It’s a balancing act that puts a new twist on
the adage “go big or go home.” And it’s one
we all must understand if we truly want to
know where our food comes from.
O
f course, there’s nothing new about
artisanal cheese. Before it was the
pricey, trendy foodstuff of the moment, it was an agricultural staple from
ancient times. Any place with dairy cattle
or other milk-producing livestock crafted
cheese. By the 19th century, New York’s Mohawk Valley was the premier cheese-making region in the U.S.
But that’s not our only local claim to
cheese fame. Cheese making began its shift
from the farm thanks to Jesse Williams, who
founded the first cheese factory, in nearby
Oneida, in 1851. And so began our culture’s
descent into a Velveeta-and-cheese-whiz
hell of mass production and tasteless uniformity.
Flash forward to the locavore and artisanal renaissance of recent years, a movement that farmer Matt Shaul summarizes
succinctly: “People want to know where
there food comes from. It’s as simple as
that.”
Enthusiasts, farmers, and entrepreneurs
willing to dedicate their time and effort to
combine the basic elements — milk, starters, coagulates, and salt — discovered they
could meet that demand and deliver simply
made products with complex flavors to our
tables.
New York remains a cheesy leader, and
the trend only gets better with age. In 2003,
the scene was vibrant enough to support the
launch of the New York State Farmstead and
Artisan Cheese Makers Guild. By 2007, the
state ranked third in total U.S. milk and milk
product sales, according to the Census of
Agriculture.
From traditional cheddars and cheese
curd to more complex, aged camemberts,
bries, and blue cheeses, New York state caters to diverse tastes. All that pungent, moldencrusted variety starts with a process that
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can seem frightfully simple. Cheese originated through mishaps in history, when
warm milk was left on counters and turned
into cheese of its own accord.
As Rhonda Shaul describes her method,
first she filters the raw milk and stores it in
a 90-gallon refrigerated bulk tank, before
transferring it to a large steam kettle. Once
the milk is warmed to its cheese-making
temperature, between 85 and 100 F, she
adds culture, followed by rennet, an enzyme extract necessary for curd formation.
Eventually, she cuts the curd by hand within the pot, stirs it, and heats it gently until
it achieves the proper texture. Rhonda then
gets rid of the whey and places the curds in
round molds. Finally, she takes the cheese
out and places it in salt brine. It air dries and
ages for at least 60 days until — voila! — it’s
ready to sell.
From traditional cheddars and cheese curd
to more complex, aged
camemberts, bries, and
blue cheeses, New York
state caters to diverse
tastes.
R
honda learned her technique in Alaska by reading books and experimenting through trial and error. Once she
moved to New York, she took a supplementary cheese class with Peter Dixon, an experienced artisan cheese maker and dairy
foods consultant, to perfect her technique.
By one measure, Alaska was the perfect
place to start a cheese making business.
“There was no competition,” Matt Shaul
says. “We were the only game in town.” The
flipside was daunting: expensive prices for
hay, limited access to essential farming
equipment, and low population. But in the
end, it boiled down to one main obstacle:
the cold soil of Alaska doesn’t allow plants to
easily absorb necessary nutrients, meaning
the Shauls had to buy a larger bulk of hay to
satisfy their animals. Longer winters meant
the animals had to be fed the expensive,
imported food longer, which in turn meant
more and more wasted cash.
So the couple packed up their young family — at that time, four children under the
age of 7 — and made the transcontinental leap to the snowy side of Lake Ontario.
They named their 53-acre farm by its Alaska
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UNFOLD • MAY 2012
CHEESE GLOSSARY
Go from a mere sampler to a full-blown cheese connoisseur.
Affinage: The process of caring for, aging, and developing a cheese to its highest
potential.
Bandaging: The wrapping of cheese with cloth to protect the surface and promote
ripening.
Brining: The soaking of a cheese in a salty solution to flavor the cheese and develop
desired surface characteristics.
Cave: Any cool, moist chamber for the aging of cheese.
Curds: A solid part of cheese as it’s being made, as compared with the liquid whey.
Formed from protein. Contains fat, moisture, salts, and other milk components.
Fresh cheeses: Cheeses not subjected to aging or affinage; usually ready to eat immediately or within days of production.
Mold-ripened: Cheese in which fungal growth has been encouraged through the conditions of aging.
Raw milk: Milk that has not been pasteurized and thus retains its full complement of
bacteria.
Rennet: An enzyme extract from the gut of an infant cud-chewing animal or from
specific plants or fungi, used as a coagulant.
Whey: The watery lactose-carrying solution that is drained from curds during
cheese production; the part of the milk that does not become cheese.
Taken from “Artisan Cheese Making at Home,” by Mary Karlin.
moniker, Cranberry Ridge, bought a herd
of goats and sheep, and started producing
five varieties of their own hard, aged cheese.
And although competition is much fiercer
in Central New York, land prices are reasonable, the statewide market is 27 times greater, and necessary goods are easy to come by.
So confident did Matt Shaul feel in the
decision to move that he says that the biggest risk that the Shaul’s took leaving Alaska
was the drive through the Rocky Mountains
with in an overloaded truck and trailer on
icy roads, praying the brakes would hold on
five-mile down-hill slopes.
Since safely settling in CNY, Rhonda
Shaul continues to refine her cheese making
technique, as any artist continually trying
to improve their craft would. She says that
shifts of flavor automatically occur over the
course of a season, simply because the animals are eating plants in varying stages of
maturity.
Renate Nollen achieves unique cheese
flavors intentionally through strictly monitoring time and temperature when making
cheese. Nollen, hailing from the Netherlands, moved to CNY in 1999, and now acts
as the owner, cheese maker, sales woman,
and pusher of Dutch Girl Cheese in Leonardsville, N.Y.
She says that only a handful of basic
cheese recipes actually exist, and the taste,
texture, and aroma of each resulting product
depends on a number of variables including
location, climate, the animal, its milk, and
the tendencies of the cheese maker. Are
ingredients stirred fast or slow? Does the
temperature of the concoction drop and rise
routinely? The smallest quirks have a big effect on the outcome of the product, Nollen
says. She tries for a signature blend by keeping good record of her process and reading
up on other cheeses to gain inspiration.
But making the cheese isn’t the only thing
Nollen needs to worry about. Running a
complete one-woman cheese operation is
more than a full-time job, Nollen says. She
sometimes works up to 80 hours a week. Milk
production is another job in itself, one that
she simply doesn’t have time for. Nollen fits
the description of an artisan cheese maker
because she buys the raw goat, sheep, and
cow’s milk that she uses. Her counterparts,
farmstead cheese makers, also keep the animals that produce the milk.
Thankfully for the artisans, New York is
awash in milk production. So Nollen can
whip out her mean raw-milk goat cheese an
hour away from Syracuse. But then comes
her next and biggest challenge: finding
ready outlets to sell her high-end cheese.
Market selling has its merits: farmers
are in direct contact with the people who
consume their cheese. It’s how they get
feedback on their most recent batch and
discover how much more of that kind their
customers might want. Some vendors even
move a lot of product and make a supplemental income.
So what’s the downside? There are several. After buying space at a market and
spending the money to drive there, a vendor
might hand out a lot of free tastes but sell
precious little. It’s particularly frustrating
in the summer — high season for the markets, but also farmers’ busiest time. “You’re
sitting there thinking, ‘Oh man, I’ve got four
miles of fence to build and I’m just sitting
here,’” says Matt Shaul, Rhonda’s transplanted Alaskan husband. “That’s the frustrating
thing.”
People who organize farmers markets
just don’t realize what it takes to be part of
their market, Nollen says. If the organizers
wanted to do something for the farmers,
they’d make the markets no longer than
three hours, not the whole damn day, she
says. Farmers don’t necessarily sell more
cheese based on the length of their time
spent. “It’s a really ridiculous marketing
idea,” she adds.
Add in yet another constant — strict regulations, particularly when raw (unpasteurized) milk is an ingredient — and farmers
struggle to fit every task into their day while
making enough money to survive. On that
score, the Shauls and Nollen share a simple
goal: to make a living, not a fortune.
F
armers markets provide the most
common outlet for cheese makers to
sell their products and to build their
brands (and yes, even farmers have to worry
about brand-building). From the big, yearround markets in the larger towns and cities, to the small-town, weekend, parking-lot
affairs that dot the landscape, there’s no
shortage.
Says Nollen, “In the
western world, people
are always out to make
a killing; for me that’s
not necessary.”
E
xpanding beyond the farmers markets means selling cheese wholesale
to restaurants, retail outlets (or starting one on the farm, which leads to another
set of complicated rules) or marketing their
goods online. That requires even more time,
not to mention contacts and expertise. But
that’s where someone like Gordon Walts Jr.
comes in.
Walts owns American Farmstead LLC,
a distribution and consulting company in
Phoenix, N.Y., that helps farmers sell their
goods. His company handles the sales, logistics, transportation, and marketing, so
cheese makers can just focus on the cheese.
Matt Shauls is down with Walts’ plan.
“Whatever we can produce, as much of it as
he’ll take, we’ll give him,” he says.
Matt wishes he had four or five Gordon
Walts’ to distribute his goods. That way, says
the burly, red-bearded farmer, he wouldn’t
have to maintain his side job as a distributor
of organic minerals and fertilizers. “It’s not
a nasty job,” Rhonda pipes in. “It’s just one
more thing that takes you off the farm.”
Matt explains that if the couple had
enough cheese mongers, they’d always just
stay on their hilly pasture scattered with
grazing animals: by last count, about 80
goats, 40 sheep, three horses, one dog, and
five cats. Both faces light up when they talk
about their goal of never needing to leave
the farm. That would be their ultimate utopian existence: taking care of their herds,
gardening, keeping the kids happy,
and, of course, making cheese —
all
day.
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UNFOLD • MAY 2012
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The Finger Lakes Cheese Trail
one other idea...
SYRACUSE
IF YOU LIVE IN CNY, chances are you’ve gotten sloshed on the Finger Lakes Wine Trail. Well,
we’ve got some good news: you can mosey along a cheese trail too. A total of 13 farms
offer tastings for interested travelers. Visit www.fingerlakeswinecountry.com/cheesetrail
for the full list, but for now, check out some of our favorite spots:
Shtayburne Farms
Lively Run Goat Dairy
Cowlick Farm
Shtayburne’s got a good ol’ fashioned country
store, and more blends of cheese than you can
count on your fingers (we’re talking 18 delicious
flavors).
Sampling fresh goat cheese is great. Sampling
fresh goat cheese while getting to pet some
goats is even better. Tours are available for
animal lovers.
Colby, blue, feta, gouda with chives, cheddar
with wasabi, and homemade gelato! What more
could we ask for? Swiss, perhaps.
2909 Chase Road
Rock Stream, NY 14878
(315) 270-2249
www.shtayburnefarm.com
8978 County Road 142
Interlaken, NY 14847
(607) 532-4647
www.livelyrun.com
8865 State Route 414
Lodi, NY 14860
(607) 582-6611
www.winecountrycabins.com/cowlickfarm
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