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| Goat bewbs |
It should come as no surprise to anyone who lives in the world and gives two shits about food or farming or small businesses that being a small-scale farmer presents CHALLENGES. But it is endlessly fascinating, not to say a bit discouraging, to witness the multitude of enduring obstacles that even a veritable industry veteran like Laini faces on the regular. Damn son.
To wit: The girls are "off their grain" as it were. Despite their reputations for eating just about anyfuckingthing you put in front of their faces, goats are a discerning lot and they get REAL uppity about food from time to time. Certainly this seems to be the case at the beginning and end of their milking cycles, but it can really happen at any time, and without warning. And so was the case with our girls, who began turning up their snouts to their (RIDICULOUSLY EXPENSIVE, LIKE ALMOST VULGAR) organic grain a few weeks ago. Evidently this happens, like, all the time and has been a consistent source of stress and strain for Laini. It's incredible to witness how quickly and dramatically a few days off feed effects the milk production.
This time of year, the volume of milk should be on a steady climb. While the composition of the milk changes when the girls begin to go out on pasture and graze, ie there are less solids to work with, there is overall a lot more milk to work with. I was routinely filling two full cans with milk in a given milking but within days that dropped to one and a half. And when you're working on such a small scale, every gallon makes an impact. Each batch of Laini's cheese uses roughly 40-50 gallons of milk, depending, which means a very precise number of pieces of cheese get made and thus a precise amount of cheese gets ordered by one of three distributors she works with regularly. Something as little as a one or two gallon decrease can have really big ramifications.
I asked Laini if this had happened before and she said it happens ALL THE DAMNED TIME. She began trying to transition the girls onto a different feed to see if they'd take to it -- it's cheaper and not organic but it's a small company that seems a lot more attentive and willing to work with Laini on her particular needs (grain can be custom mixed per your specific herd's nutritional needs evidently).
Initially we had to begin the process of weaning the girls off the grain they were accustomed to but had grown tired of and working in the new grain, but wouldn't you fucking know it? No sooner had we done that than some of the girls decided that "no actually I think I like the old grain after all." So now every milking session I have to attempt a very complicated feeding strategy, sprinkling a layer of the new feed down, covering it with the original organic feed and monitoring each girl's consumption and taking copious notes, including whether or not they ate if I sprinkled on some oats or sunflower seeds or Sweet Grain.
The fact that Laini's been doing this for almost 30 years and STILL hasn't managed to troubleshoot it speaks not to her competency, which is formidable, but to the constant and ever-changing challenge of managing animals, dealing with grain suppliers, monitoring production and cost and maintaining a consistent product.
FUCKING A DUDES.
Which brings me to my next grievance. It has occurred to me on more than one occasion that the sheer number of different cheeses Laini makes is sort of fucking insane. If you survey a handful of artisanal cheese producers you will likely notice that they usually make not more than a HANDFUL of cheese varieties. Some, like Jasper Hill, have a goodly number in their repertoire at this stage, but I can honestly say I don't know of ANY small-time producers making as outrageous a number of varieties as Laini does. We're talking DOZENS. I have been here for going on nine months and we have not yet exhausted the list of cheeses Laini makes on a yearly basis, not to mention she's always coming up with new ones.
In a way, I GET it. Cheesemaking can be hella repetitive and boring, and for someone like Laini whose brain ticks away at a thousand miles per minute, changing things up is a non-negotiable lest she go stir crazy. But that brilliant creativity has a price. Recently Laini experimented with a different set of cultures in one of her cheeses (the one I happen to make, the Pyramid) and the result was that the rind ripened with some beautiful splotches of blue mold. This was not a flaw per se (and there are plenty of French cheeses which are known to have these sorts of attributes -- holler at your Pouligny-Saint-Pierre whut) but when your product changes suddenly without warning, you can be sure that your customers are gonna give you shit. This creates a number of issues. It's all well and good if your cheese has blue mold and has always had blue mold. But if it all of a sudden starts displaying said mold, well then that's a different cheese. It has a different appearance, very likely a different aromatic and organoleptic profile and all around vibe.
Laini gets upset when people push back against this sort of thing. She is a resolutely innovative human and one who's dwelt in cheese for long enough that she knows what else is out there. Part of her complaint, which I think is at least partly fair, is that the general cheese consuming public doesn't appreciate the nuance and variation of artisan cheese, whether because they simply haven't been exposed to enough of it or because their experiences of it have been cossetted or they simply aren't interested in giving a longtime producer the benefit of the doubt. The fact is that while an ever growing swath of the population (and certainly the majority of my friends and peers) has a very evolved, sophisticated palate, a lot of people still get squeamish about stinky or goopy or mold-dappled cheese. France we ain't, and we won't be for decades to come, or maybe ever.
It's a difficult balance to strike between maintaining consistency/meeting the expectations of your customer and remaining true to your vision/allowing for creativity and plain old unforeseen outcomes. Cheese is a living thing, and any tiny little tweak in its production could result in a big, unexpected differentiation in end result. Not all of Laini's gambles have paid off -- I say this not from a bottom-line POV, although definitely that's true. I mean more from a pure deliciousness perspective. Much as I wanted to be her cheerleader on a wacky cheese she debuted this winter, the fact was that, even laying aside the weirdness of the cheese's appearance, it didn't taste amazing. It wasn't objectionable by any stretch. But it was not yummy enough to outperform its polarizing exterior.
Last week Laini wound up having to toss a good two dozen of her cheeses, which to my eye were beautiful and interesting, and from what she told me, tasted like flowers. Knowing how much work goes into each cheese, I know how heartbreaking that is. I was the one who milked the goats to make that cheese. I was the one who cut the curd and hooped it. I moved it to the cave carefully and lifted it every day to give it air. So I was invested, but not even remotely at the level Laini is. And it's something she has to deal with ALL. THE. TIME.
I don't really have a fucking thesis for this post, other than that it is amazing to see how many soulcrushing difficulties rear their heads routinely, and how resilient Laini has had to be -- one will have to be -- to sally onward in spite of it all.
POST SCRIPT: Next time you visit your local cheesemonger, don't hate on the cheese with the imperfect surfaces. Don't discard that ugly duckling in favor of some sterile-looking, perfectly smooth, probably bland as fuck Brie or what have you. Have you NOT seen The Princess Diaries? Up your game, challenge your palate and give small time producers the benefit of the doubt. Let your mouth enjoy a rom-com happily ever after teachable moment moment.
Lecture over.
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