CheeseFate, Pt. 2

The CheeseFates, obvs

I know all five of you who are reading this regularly have been on the edge of your seats waiting for the second installment of my Gittles As Cheesemaker creation story, so you're welcome. 

As previously cliffhangered, I saw this posting for my dream cheese job back in June and immediately took to the internets to draft an email to Laini. It hearkened back to my multiple prior communications with her, once just after her profile in the Times came out and I'd offered my services as an apprentice back in early 2010 (no response) and then again when I tried and failed to pay a much anticipated farm visit to her in the summer of 2011, when she agreed to and then cancelled on my plans because things got too hectic for her. I mentioned these things in passing and filled her in on the cheese things I'd been up to since our last communication (a couple of introductory cheesemaking intensives at Jasper Hill and the Vermont Institute of Artisan Cheese, a part-time gig behind a couple cheese counters and a graduate level independent study survey of the landscape of artisan cheese in the US of A). 

I'm still unsure whether any of that shit mattered to her, and how much of the email/resume she actually read (more on this later) but she replied the very same day, further describing the job's requirements:

The job also involves farm work............milking the goats 4 chores per week.  This takes a lot of skill also.  A lot of attention to detail and moving very fast to get the goats milked and chores accomplished in a proper amount of time.  In March we have kidding season which involves lots of feedings and cleaning.
This is a full scale operation:  milking to cheese to wrapping to shipping.
The work week as it stands now for this position is Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, half day on Wednesday (evening milking only), Thursday, Friday.

There are close to 700 pieces of cheese to be wrapped up per week.  There are washed rind cheeses that have to be washed.  There are 700 forms that have to get washed up per week.  The wrapping and washing are shared jobs between all of us.
There are 40 goats to milk 4 evenings per week.
what else..........lots of little things
if you are interested you are welcome to stop in

"...welcome to stop in." Guffaw. If I were a more romantic or fantastical individual I would perhaps have seen this as part of the hero's journey -- the gauntlet thrown, Laini's subtle challenge for me to prove my intent by engineering a way to come up and meet her without any guarantees or other details provided. But in reality, this is just how Laini operates. She probably didn't give much thought to how I'd manage to "stop in" being that I lived an eight hour drive away. But if I was serious, I imagine she figured, rightly, that I'd find a way. Thus began the delicate dance of trying to pin her down about a time for me to visit (because I'd be damned if I bought a plane ticket or rented a car and took time off work only to be turned away again like some less successful, tyrophilic version of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz). 

After some fortuitous maneuvering, I put together a plan to drive up with my friend Liz, who is a lovely Liverpudlian and terrible driver, as was made clear to me only AFTER we got on the road to make the eight hour drive. Obstacle two: survive aforementioned drive with aforementioned Liverpudlian and self, who has not driven extensively ever. Let's just say the trip up and back was action-packed, picturesque and white-knuckle petrifying at times. At one point, going nearly 80 mph on the highway, we realized that the driver's side door was not all the way closed. Just to give you an idea.

A surprisingly attuned sense of direction pure luck allowed me find Lazy Lady Farm, which is located on a private road -- hard to find on a good day but nearly impossible when one is attempting to use Google Maps on a smart phone that has no service. I sincerely believe that the CheeseFates were guiding me there, pausing intermittently for pee breaks and to laugh at my befuddlement, but nonetheless ...

I pulled up to the little farm and Laini was no where to be found. I peered into what turned out to be the cheese room and was advised by a nice young hair-netted lady that she was "probably in the house." So I just, like, go up and knock? Ok then. 

I walked up to the door, called out tentatively, "Laini?" And after a few seconds she appeared, swaddled in stretchy corduroy work pants and a sleeveless cotton shirt, her hair a brilliant shade of vermillion and white at the roots. Her features were delicate and elvish, her movements quick and precise like a woodland creature. She invited me in summarily and I handed over my resume, which she'd requested I bring a copy of. It became clear within moments that this was the first time she'd actually looked at it closely. She blanched at my lack of actual farm experience and then launched into a story of a woman she'd ultimately had to let go because she wasn't "getting" the job, which I gathered was meant as a cautionary tale/warning. 

What I've come to know and understand about Laini since then is that despite her rather brusque demeanor, she's an incredibly generous and caring person. She was understandably reticent to hire me, knowing what I'd be sacrificing, because she didn't want to have me get up there and things not work out. From both of our perspectives, it was a gamble.

Following a few more seconds of reiterating the job's requirements, stopping to interject animatedly her opinions regarding work visas and, by extension, the federal government and asking me earnest questions about other dairy farms I'd visited, she showed me around the farm: the two aging caves, the cheese room and the barn, where she gave the world's most abridged description of goat-milking. "It's a lot," she intoned, eyes widening with an intake and release of breath as though even she was overwhelmed by it. 

After weeks of planning the trip and two days of travel, the whole interview took less than thirty minutes. She muttered something about the possibility of a three month trial, mentioned she was meeting with a couple of other people. I sheepishly handed her a gift bottle of wine that I rather unconvincingly tried to assure her was not a bribe, asking whether she even liked wine. "Yep," she replied, in what I now recognize as her rejoinder for most things. The refrain is not dissimilar to that of the Martians from Sesame Street. Before I got out the words to thank her for making time to meet me she was off, walking purposefully back to her house to answer more emails, being that it was Tuesday and that was her computer day. 

In the hours and days that followed I tried to wrap my head around the meeting, around my prospects for actually landing the job, and whether I was really and truly up to the challenge. I was not all that optimistic about the impression I gave or indeed my appeal as a potential hire given my limitations. I kept rolling it around in my head, going back and forth between trying to mentally prepare for all of the things I'd need to put in motion if she gave me the greenlight and getting only so far before I told myself that it was all moot until she said yes. 

I got back to New York, my ebullience corked like a champagne bottle, unsure of who to tell and what to tell them, my excitement tempered with uncertainty and outright apprehension. Back and forth back and forth swinging in the wind, I finally made up my mind that if Laini offered me the job I would take it. 

The Sunday after my visit I got a message from Laini. "Hey, it's Laini. So I've been thinking about it and I think what we'll do is start you just in the cheese room, 33 hours a week. The barn is just too crazy this time of year .... " 

I got the job? I GOT THE JOB.

Things just .... fell into place after that. All the bullshit I'd fretted over, the obstacles as far as leaving my job, leasing my apartment, packing my shit, buying a car, finding a place to live in Vermont ... just sort of took care of themselves. I hesitate to say it was was easy because it was stressful and emotional and scary as hell. But I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop, for something insurmountable to block my path and make all of this seem impossible, like the pipe dream I'd imagined it to be. 

Three months to the day since my interview, here I sit. Who the hell knows for how long, or to what end. But I trust that the CheeseFates have plans for me.