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Presents: 'The Cheesemakers'
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Carol Lively
and her daughter Christina
Lively Spring Farm Rowe MA
True Home/Farmstead cheese making on a small scale
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| The Lively's have a small farm in western Massachusetts where Carol and her daughter Christina take care of a small herd of goats.... |
.... from which they make cheese for themselves and friends in their kitchen, a very traditional way much as our grandparents may have done |
click on any image to enlarge it ! |
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the work begins with the care of the goats, a labor of love as can be seen in these photographs
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Now ... If you have goats, you're going to have milk and sometimes it is a lot of milk and it keeps on coming...
.... More milk than one family can drink! |
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| So ... You learn how to make cheese !
Today Carol will be making a Feta Cheese from her goats raw milk
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Carol starts by
filtering the warm milk... |
...to which she adds... |
...yesterdays milk, which has been kept chilled |
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| the pot is placed in a sink with warm water to bring the milk up to the proper temperature |
she then adds the starter culture and allows their milk to set and ripen |
during the wait, she prepares the acid testing materials... |
... to test the milk for the first signs of ripening, at which point she will add rennet |
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| after a proper curd is formed ... |
She begins to cut into 1/2" pieces... |
...to allow the whey to separate |
stirring is continued to keep the curds separate |
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| when the curds have lost enough whey... |
... she allows the curds to settle and begins to remove the whey |
when most of the whey is removed, the remaining curd... |
...is transferred and allowed to continue draining |
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| the curd will rest for several hours ... |
... in it's draining cloth until ... |
...it mats into a nice consolidated cheese |
the curd will continue to rest overnight and dry off for 2-3 days.... |
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| ...it will then be cut into pieces and prepared for salting |
salt will be added and allowed to dissolve into the cheese... |
the pieces are then turned and salted again ... This will be repeated several times since this is a highly salted cheese |
the salt will begin to draw out more whey, which is poured off as it accumulates
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| all of this salting will make a very dry cheese preserving it for long periods in brine made up of 50:50 whey and water |
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