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| By order of the Queen |
Meanwhile, back at the farm ...
Things are chugging along apace. The mystery of why my Les Pyramids were fucked up is slowly resolving itself -- turns out it wasn't just my curd cutting but also the way in which I was ladling said curds into their molds that was making them less dense/more crumbly than is ideal. Because of the way the forms are set up, you have to sort of scoop in concentric circles until everything is full and then pile the curds into the center of the mold formation and THEN make a weird curd battlement around the periphery and continue piling and THEN wait for what Laini describes as "a while" (?!?!?!?!!) for the curds to drain before evening and redistributing and smoothing the surface. My last batch was pretty legitimate and I'm hoping to continue to refine and improve them.
Sunday I will re-attempt to make the elusive and finicky Capriola, which was what kick started this whole "Lauren is a fucking cheese reject" thing in the first place. By which I mean calling Laini's attention to my cheesemaking skills or lack thereof. WISH ME ALL OF THE LUCK pls.
Anyatttentiondeficitdisorder, I have been vacillating back and forth on whether to stay the course at LLF beyond my invented year-long commitment or whether to move on, knowing on one hand that in order to provide myself with a more holistic understanding of cheese bidness I need to work for more than just one farm (especially more than just THIS WEIRDO ONE) but on the other knowing how fucking bizarre and anomalous and special Lazy Lady is, and that it's only after almost a year here that I'm finally starting to "get it" (sort of). I've been feeling pre-nostalgic pangs of wistfulness intermittently as I contemplate leaving this place, and as much as I've struggled in the last few months and allowed myself to be frustrated and discouraged and annoyed by some of the managerial practices employed herewith, I can't help feeling simultaneously like my proximity to this superhuman has cast a small, sparkly aura around me.
Pretty much everyone I've encountered who knows Laini or knows of her agrees that she's a mad genius. And even as I find myself getting momentarily pissed at her for being just so terrible at communicating I can't help but love her and admire her and cherish my time with her and relish our strange cheeseroom conversations, many of which revolve around her latest outrage at people at the Farmer's Market or the Terrible Things happening in the news or How to Make Cold Brew Coffee (I casually mentioned the concept of it to her and then went down to the cave and by the time I came back up she had attempted to make her own without consulting a recipe or ANYTHING, ladies and gentlemen the prevailing ethos of Lazy Lady Farm).
Laini, whom I've recently decided is basically a grown up version of Pippi Longstocking, right down to the red hair and pirate parents and superhuman strength and pet
Uh huh.
Rebecca and I have discussed this at length, theorizing the motivations for this female-centric policy. In my mind, I'd convinced myself somewhat naively that Laini believed women made better cheesemakers and goatherds, something about a lighter touch, more refined sensitivity yada yada. Rebecca seemed to think it had more to do with Laini suspecting that dudes simply woudln't be as apt to take direction from a female boss, and recounted a murky story about a guy who did a day-long stage and in a matter of hours was suggesting a different way to wrap cheese. I suppose I didn't realize that Laini had any awareness about the fact that she has a coterie of fangirls that would follow her into the trenches (ie wrap cheese exactly the way Laini says to wrap it without questioning her), but from what R was saying, it seems Laini has been banking on just this sort of devotion for years to supply her with dedicated LLF acolytes/employees.
In the interest of corroboration, I innocently asked Laini whether she'd ever hired a dude, and she recounted the story of her ad in the paper. I asked her point blank if she thought women made better cheesemakers, and she said "Well no, there are a lot of men at Jasper Hill," before saying something about how she's found that most men who want to come work for her find that her operation is "too small." I wasn't sure what to make of that but R seemed to think it sort of echoed what she'd said about dudes inherently wanting to run things and how that would be EXTREMELY at odds with the structure of LLF.
I'm sure there's some truth to that. Laini is an old-school second wave feminist and she's fought hard to do things on her own terms, so I think her focus on having women as workers has a number of root causes: 1) she's more comfortable around them 2) they're more accommodating to her 3) she figures men have plenty of other opportunities in the world and this is a place where women take precedence 4) a bunch of other reasons I probably have no concept of.
It's fucked to have to think about these gender dynamics as a barrier or obstacle in 20fucking15 but certainly when I was managing a store and had dudes working for me, it was hard to be taken seriously -- I am not naturally a serious, authoritative person and found myself stuck between a rock and a hard place. I resented the notion that I had to change my personality and inhabit some invented "hardcore bitch" persona in order to be respected and frankly I coudln't really fake it, because I'm a silly goofy person, but a person who deserves respect regardless. I don't know if it was JUST that I was a woman that contributed to my overall lack of authority, it could have had to do with the fact that I had previously been their co-workers and was then promoted to a position of authority, or it could have been something else entirely, but there were times where I felt acutely, both in my job and in the broader world of the wine business, the gender politics around me.
I had dinner recently with a new friend and her partner -- she's a baller chef in Montreal and an all-around wonderful person. And up until recently she helmed her restaurant with a co-chef -- a set-up that's pretty unusual in the otherwise heavily stratified, militaristic world of the restaurant kitchen. She said that she was the "bad cop" to his "good cop," routinely playing tyrant while he smoothed things over behind her. He's since left the restaurant, leaving her squarely in charge, and she's found herself having to attempt to temper some of her despotic tendencies. She recounted an underling chef responding to one of her tirades by saying, with some disbelief, that he'd thought working under a woman would be "easier." So of course she lost her shit on him. As I would. As would any sane person.
The whole ladies-only atmosphere at LLF is understandable given Laini's political leanings and upbringing at the height of the progressive 60's and 70's women's and civil rights movements. Which is why it's a little jarring to hear another spate of anecdotes involving her less than diplomatic attitudes towards pregnant women, which I will not enumerate here, being that these are NOT from the horse's mouth. Suffice to say that for someone whose entire business is reliant on pregnant females of the goat persuasion, Laini has little to no tolerance for their human analogues on her farm. A complicated little spark plug she is. But I suppose when you've striven to have a farm of your own, you earn the right to run it the way you choose and people just have to get on board or get off.
Fan Girl #1 is on board.
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