Milk Trekker : 2018

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.

Friday, August 10, 2018

Cheese Maker at Stepladder Creamery

From January though August 2018 I made cheese and lived at Stepladder ranch In Cambria CA, which is in San Luis Obispo county just south of Big Sur. I helped milk the goats and fed the pigs along with making and aging cheese from goat and cows milk. Triple cream, Geo rind, Large cider washed alpine, goat milk washed rind, long aged hard cheese. Lots of styles and seeing the impact a smaller amount of goats milk mixed with mainly cow in a hard cheese was mouth opening.

I definetly prefer to live and work in one place, where I can make cheese with the milk from animals living onsite. Farmstead cheese is the lifestyle I have fallen in love with. Having a hands on connection with the animals, assisting with the birth of their babies, and becoming attuned and intimate with cycles of life and death, Nature, and the cosmos is a most rewarding experience.

The appeal of cheese making for me is that I can study it the rest of my life and never get close to mastery. It ties together so many fields of study, and humbles me when I realize that all food and life are dependent upon microbial action. I only play a small role in working with these vast, ancient, and mysterious processes.