Who I am and what my mission is.

I spent ten years making cheese in the US before beginning to travel globally volunteering with cheesemakers and herders in 2019. I wish to document the intersection of traditional and modern techniques, and portray the global diversity of dairying, cheesemaking, and grazing practices. In doing this I want to show how the final cheese is the end product of a complex series of relationships and decisions made by humans, that are embedded in a a cultural, geographic, and climatic setting. I advocate for raw milk, a natural starter cultures, heritage breeds, regenerative or ecologically responsible grazing, and the right of all humans to ferment milk in their own homes, selling in local markets. In order to further my mission I am writing a book, and hope to build an online archive, a global database of cheese, dairy, and grazing knowledge. I would love to talk with anyone interested in hosting me anywhere in the world and hearing about how you do things.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

ACS Conference 2012





















In the first days of August I flew out to Raleigh North Carolina for the annual American Cheese Society Conference and Festival of Cheese.  Three days of classes, workshops, and tastings preceded an awards ceremony and festival in which all the cheese entered was out for display and sampling.  It is a great networking opportunity and way to get people together to exchange ideas and discuss common problems and solutions.



 I learned a lot from an alpine cheese making demonstration which I attended.  I realized some very basic things that I had overlooked regarding the effect of cutting curd and rate of cooking on final firmness.  The harder the curd is at the time of cutting, the softer the final product will be because the curd will have less time to expel whey when firming up.  So for a harder cheese your cut when still relatively soft, which is counter intuitive but logical.


We entered 4 cheeses and our Feta received a 3rd place award in the category of Sheep's Milk Feta.  It was great to be able to check out Raleigh which as a great beer/food scene going on.  I enjoyed representing the company and our cheese, learned a lot, and met a lot of great folks!!
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