Besos
We’ve been training a new milking crew since milking – as it turns out – is the MOST labor intensive part of operating a farmstead dairy. Since we don’t purchase a single drop of milk, it means we have to squeeze it ourselves from the udders of our little (26 head) herd of ladies. Despite the obscurity of such work, and the incredibly uncomfortable conditions under which we must perform this work (hot. hot. also humid. and then hot), I’ve been shockingly lucky to have fantastic folks interested to learn. Actually, I’ve been tremendously lucky for all sorts of support since we opened – particularly this season. Are you all taking pity on my bruised little soul, tattered at the corners where the goats have chewed through? Or is it just that you – like me – are suckers for this ancient beast that man has walked alongside since, well, forever? Whatever their reason for signing up for purgator…I mean milking…I’m grateful.
When asked if she felt ready to milk solo, one of our new team members stated that yes, she was confident. But with a healthy dose of terror.
Girl. I feel that.
Since kidding ended in a slippery pile of babies at approximately 3:30pm on April 27 (It was the best day of 2018 so far), we’ve entered what I consider to be relative Cruise Control. Now it’s just milking and making. Milking and making. Milking and making. Easy – right? Except the third element to the necessary triumvirate of a successful season is also this: Selling. Who knew establishing a brand, a rep, and a steady and abundant clientele would be so damn hard in a city so damn full of businesses loving local food? This is a taboo subject, it must be, because I entered this field without any understanding that the sales aspect of cheese making would comprise such an enormous part of my physical time and my mental real estate. Texas – particularly central Texas – is lousy with incredible goat milk products. These are produced from strong companies that have well-established and well-earned reputations and relationships. It’s tough to knock on doors with a scrappy story and a meager offering of products that are different but similar to what’s already being produced locally and at a very high quality.
What’s a girl gotta do?
So I’ll tell you the secrets no one really told me – maybe because I never asked – certainly because I never suspected it would play into the multitude of challenges that a small, farmstead cheese producer faces: you must create entirely unique products. It’s not enough to have sweet animals that produce sweet milk that we turn into pleasant tasting food. Those products must be creative, fill market demand and – most important to me – be something that you (as producer) actually want to make and eat. Despite my many business supporters (you know who you are, and I love you), I’ve had to sit with this particular worry, the kind so robust that it fills physical space. As baby goats are weaned and milk volume grows, my confidence drowned in the flood created by a herd that just keeps showing up in the parlor twice daily to give and give and give. It’s a bounty I never imagined and wasn’t prepared to channel out into the world. Because here’s the deal, something I’ve never kept quiet from any of the (many) folks who come visit the farm: I’m not a cheese maker – nah – not really. I’m a goat herder. I’m a smitten child following her animals through fields of dreams and stinging nettles and devils vine and blue grasses. I’m wandering behind and around and into a family of animals that sustain me with their unquestioning love and demands. The cheese making’s just a side gig.
Which is why I’ve found myself knocked sideways by my own excitement to create something new that is the result of fiddling with the gallons of milk that just keep seeping into the dairy (and into my every single waking thought, my dreams, my panic attacks…). Since day one I solemnly swore I would only create products that I truly enjoyed consuming, and so far I’ve stuck close to that rule. I’ve always been a sucker for feta and chevre – and halloumi has been a favorite (albeit difficult to find) dairy product for many years. So now, as I stumble through the quagmire of product options, considering the requirements of commercial production for each (aging, packaging, production time, yield, margins, yada yada) I keep coming back to one of my other dairy loves: skyr. This is an Icelandic cheese similar in texture and flavor to a Greek yogurt, made with probiotics but also with rennet – a coagulant used in cheese making to separate curd from whey. The rennet is what helps to thicken the cheese so that the result is a decadent, creamy, rich consistency of sweet milk, a slight tanginess reminiscent of yogurt but with a texture that leaves it quivering on the edge of cream cheese. You can shmear it on a bagel or stir it into honey and berries. It’s got the versatility I personally love to have within reach in my own refrigerator and the probiotic-rich benefits of many fermented milk products like yogurts. Have I sold you yet? Are you still listening?
I don’t really care. And that’s the point. This is the first time in a long time I’ve gone back to my vat with no intention other than creating something I want to eat. Something that I feel is a deep and rich expression of the milk we work so hard to produce from these animals whose life cycles now dictate our own. While I’m not entirely certain how soon it will be ready to leave the farm, I’m having fun experimenting for the first time in a very long time. This doesn’t feel like business and profits and margins and yield and weights and worry. It feels like the reason I started. Like the little kisses from these little animals whose love for us is of a magnitude that can barely be contained. The feeling? It’s mutual, girls. I have a healthy dose of terror about this, too. All of it. Pretty sure the fear is just as important as the confidence.
