Aging Pecora

2 weeks, white yeast

5 weeks  some blue and black molds, earlier yeast patted down.

Pecora is a loooong aged raw sheep milks cheese.  It is sold at 10 months as a more mild semi hard cheese and 18+ months as a sharp dry hard cheese.  The younger wheels have a lactic tang to them and are pleasantly sheepy with some deeper/sweeter flavors developing.  The older wheels have a butterscotch sweetness, with bold fruit flavors and some earthiness near the rind.  I like taking real old dry Pecora and grating it on things.

6 month, full developed mottled looking  rind, blue grows on waxy feeling surface

10 month, the spotty wind tufts visible on right is Geo, It gets rubbed into the rind making it waxy

The cheese is hooped in cheesecloth and the rind has random artisan looking grooves on it.  It gets washed with brine for the first few months until the rind looks ready.  From then on it will be brushed frequently to keep mite damage at a minimum, but the natural rind will continue to develop.  I like to encourage the faint white greasy Geotrichum candidum that shows up on many naturally rinded cheeses after a few months aging.  It is indigenous meaning not added to the milk but is already present in the environment airborne or in the milk itself. It is a fungus with mold and yeast like forms that is common worldwide.  It could fall into the milk and express later but I imagine it is airborne in the aging cave and cannot colonize until a later phase in the succession of rind ecology.

The geo sticks to the rind better than the dusty blues so when you brush them the blue comes right off and some of the geo presses in. After 8-10 months you can mainly rub that geo in and it builds up a thick waxy feeling rind that seems to protect the cheese from cracking and drying out as well as inhibit anything else from growing.

14 months, cheese is hard and dense, beautiful orange scarred milky veteran 

2 years, rind is pitted from mites but under the thick cellar tasting layer is wonderful cheese

May 12th Snow Storm

  It snowed last night and into today, I took some photos while milking and feeding. Is it Spring yet?

 

Fruition Farms Larkspur Colorado



1st night On The Road, Big Sur
 

I left California in April 2013 to go on the road and seek greener pastures.  After a few months
living out of my modified minvan in the southwest and doing backpacking trips I visited Fruition Farms in Larkspur Colorado.  I met with owners Jimmy Warren and Alex Seidel, made some cheese and helped with milking.  After this I went to spend sometime in my hometown of Port Orchard WA.  I had expressed interest in working at Fruition and I got a job offer which I accepted and spend another month on the road getting out to CO to start work in November.



Cold morning on the farm, frozen frost.

Winter was getting started when I showed up and we had some good long frosts.  I learned how to take care of feeding the sheep, doing farm chores and making cheese once a week.  I live out on the farm in a small apartment with a wood burning stove.  I'm very excited to be out here, part of a good company, working with awesome people.  We are having lambs right now and have just started milking again, making cheese regularly.  I'm juiced!!

My buddies, the yearling rams