Cheese again.

The weather outside is bloody horrible today! Apparently there is a Low grumbling around up in the gulf that will turn into a cyclone tonight. It is not likely to become more than a Cat 1- not a real cyclone- but it will dump a heap of water on us and probably knock over a few trees out of spite. The usual. In any case it is no day to be outside, so I am making cheese again.

Well here is the cheese I had in the press a few days ago. I am very pleased with the texture and I think the extra pressure is what I needed in the new press. So far so good. The cheese will now be waxed and stored in the cheese fridge at ten degrees for a couple of months. I try to make one cheese a week to keep a sufficient stock at hand. We eat a lot of cheese.

I am also making a batch of Quarg. It is simplicity itself, just add a small amount of the culture to fresh milk at room temperature or better still at cow heat and let it sit out for the day. By evening it will have thickened into a yoghourt consistency. You then hang it to drain until it is firm enough to your liking and stir in salt to taste. I like it at a firm cream cheese consistency. Cheese logs and dipping cheeses are made from Quarg. It is superb on fresh baked bread for breakfast.

Also making a batch of yoghourt today. The littlest cloud farmer likes his yoghourt. This is my home made yoghourt tub. It works as well as anything you can buy (but cost me nothing) and I can make up to ten litres in one go. We like a somewhat thick and tart variety of yoghourt. The child bride likes hers flavoured with vanilla pod and sweetened and I like mine straight as it comes. The littlest cloud farmer eats whatever is put in front of him and yells for more.
There is a real satisfaction to making so much of our day to day food, and good food too. Although it is a lot of work I get real satisfaction when I store away the finished product at the end of the day. However we are finding it a chore to use our rather small kitchen for production as well as trying to cook meals, often at the same time. So the plan (there is always a plan) is to build a second shed alongside the current shed outside. This second shed will be a little larger to accommodate my workshop as well as farm paraphernalia and the first shed will be refitted as a food processing area. Hopefully this will happen in the next year or so. We shall see.

The new cheese press

This is my new cheese press mk2. It is essentially just a refined version of the first one I made with the ability to apply a lot more pressure. The basic design is that of a "Swiss press", which is to say that it applies pressure through the lever arm. As you can see I have added pulleys which allows me to apply the force needed to make cheeses like Parmesan and Cheddars. The cheese in the press in the picture is a "farmhouse" which is what we mostly make and eat here. It is a simple rennetted semi hard cheese with no added cultures or moulds. It tastes like a mild cheddar and can be eaten with only one months ageing. Better after three though.
We also make Halloumi, Cheshire, Fetta, White Wesleydale, Quarg, Cheddar and Grana (Parmesan) cheeses. Once in a while I will do a batch of Camembert and Blue Vein.
Cheese making is addictive. I could happily do it for a living on a small scale but on only one cow it will not be happening. Now, if I could buy out the neighbour on the hill above us, I would be able to run a small dairy herd of twenty odd cows. Enough for a small cheesery. I wonder if she wants to sell cheap?

The humble farm gate

I designed these gates myself. They are nothing special, just a variation on the slide bar stock gate. I like them because they are not only a lot cheaper than steel gates but they will last longer, yes longer, and are far more versatile. My design uses a sliding top bar to open or latch the gate. The body is made from 25 X 150mm treated pine and is just bolted and nailed together. When the timber finally does give way the bolts can be re-used on the replacement gate. Longevity wise, I put up a steel gate five years ago at the same time as I made a batch of these timber gates. Today I noticed the steel gate is almost completely rusted out and will probably not last more than a few more months. The timber gates look as good as the day they were made.

As it goes

Ever had one of those days where you work all day yet don't seem to have anything to show for it at the end?
I spent the day busy. Milking and doing the morning feeds. Scything the driveway (must go pick the hay up when I have finished this). Moved the pigs to their top paddock. Spent the middle of the day in the workshop where I am making a new cheese press. Then in the afternoon I put up some more framing on the new chook pens. I have cream out to make another batch of butter tonight and a big bowl of jalapeno chilli's to make sauce and some pickled chilli's for myself waiting in the kitchen. Yet here I am at the end of the day and although I am tired I feel like there is little to see for my efforts.

Mmmmm chilli sauce. Not for the faint of heart!

Uncle Ulfs Chilli sauce.

• Two big handfuls of fresh Jalapeno chillis
• One big handful of fresh fiesta chillis
• One brown onion
• Half a cup of brown sugar
• Half a cup of cider vinegar
• Half a cup of water

1. Mince or blend chillis and onion to the desired consistency. Leave the seeds in if you like it hot. Remove the seeds if you do not like to live dangerously.
2. Fry, on a high heat, with a little olive oil in a heavy pan until the onion turns translucent.
3. Add sugar, vinegar and water. Stir until the mixture comes to the boil then turn the heat to low and continue stirring occasionally until the mixture begins to thicken.
4. Spoon while still hot from the pan into sterilized hot jars and seal. Allow to cool and ensure the seal is tight.
5. Age for at least one week to allow the flavour and heat to mature.

Other news. We have had a bad run of luck with the geese. Last week four geese turned up with their throats torn out by some predator. I am completely mystified as to what exactly- the bite marks are too small for a cat or dog. Besides we have a maremma on the place and she has been completely successful in keeping the local feral dogs away. A Quoll perhaps? Or some other native predator. Whatever it is it certainly must be tough to take down a goose. A cat or even a fox would not be able to do that. Anyway, goodbye geese and I will not be putting anything else in the orchard until it is properly cleared.

Only half grown at the moment. They are currently the size of a large dog. For reference, the fence is 90cm tall.

The pigs have grown. No longer cute little piglets who could all sleep in their trough together. Their trough now could only just contain one. Feed time is sort of a porcine opera combined with all in mud wrestling. Fun to watch though. We had a good stroke of luck with a local potato grower. They are dumping their seconds potatoes in the fields for cattle and were only too happy for us to have as many tonnes as we wanted for free. We made a donation though as I feel it would be poor manners to take without any return. So I drove over last week and they loaded a one tonne crate of potatoes on the back of my truck. Now the piggies are eating like kings- boiled potatoes at every meal and we are saving a lot of money on feed.

Happy as a pig in mud and they are too. It is great fun to watch them digging and rolling about.

Pumpkins

Pulled these two out of the veggie garden today. They are giant atlantic pumpkins. These are the breed that holds the-largest-in-the-world title each year. As you can see, mine are nothing to crow about. They were not cared for at all, just plonked in to a spare space a while back and left to their own devices. I suppose if I actually manured them properly and weeded their bed I would get some serious fruit. I might give it a go after the wet. It would be nice to have something to put on display at the local show this year.

Baking bread

We bake our own bread. It is not only cheaper, it is also much better bread!

Although we could go through the whole process of kneading, and we used to, we prefer to mix a single large batch of dough in our light industrial mixer. It takes away the main obstacle of making bread- the labour. I took a while to learn to use the mixer. Does that sound strange? You see, when you knead dough by hand it is easy to tell when it is done by the texture and pressure under your hands. With an industrial mixer it is a lot harder to tell when it has been kneaded properly. I tend to stop it after ten minutes and test a small sample for spring and stretch. The first few batches we did were not tested and turned out somewhat leathery when baked.

The dough when done properly should have a silken feel and should spring back when poked. When it is done I leave it in the mixing bowl and cover it with a couple of tea towels for a few hours. it will rise to at least twice its original size.

The child bride then takes the dough out and knocks it down before dividing it into eight parts. Each is quickly kneaded by hand and placed into a bread tin for a second rising.

The loaves on the left have been done earlier than those on the right. This is so they can be baked in groups of four, the maximum the oven will take.

The smell of fresh baked bread is one of the greatest pleasures in life I reckon. I usually try (unless caught by the wife) to sneak a couple of hot slices with fresh butter and a glass of fresh milk, absolutely magnificent!

Our recipe is simple enough. We used to use a much more complicated method but this one works at least as well.

• Fourteen sifted cups of bakers flour
• Three tablespoons of raw sugar
• One and a half tablespoons of salt
• Seven cups of lukewarm water
• One sachet of good bread yeast. - I like to put the yeast into the lukewarm water with a handful of flour. Do this a couple of hours before mixing the dough up. It will "wake" the yeast up and gets the rising off to a flying start.

Knead the bejabbers out of it until it is silky to touch and will spring back when touched. Let it rise for a couple of hours until it has doubled in size. Divide into eight portions and knead briefly. Place each into its own baking tin and allow to rise again until it looks like a loaf of bread. Bake at 175 degrees Celsius for forty minutes. Easy.

Making Butter



I made butter today. A by product of all the milk we bring in is a surfeit of cream. You can only eat so many scones or pancakes with cream before you will explode so we turn the rest into butter. The process is simple enough. Save the cream from your milkings for a week or so. The oldest should not have soured yet and the youngest should be at least forty-eight hours old. Cream that is too young will not turn and too old will give you sour butter. Actually sour butter is quite nice if you like sour cream. Keep in mind that it is completely different from rancid butter. Rancid butter is only good to make ghee. Butter will go rancid if it has not been properly washed or if it is exposed to too much air and warmth.
So you put your cream into a churn.
It must be at around twenty degrees Celsius or it will not turn. Too cold and you will just make whipped cream. Too warm and it will go off rapidly. Shown on the right is the old daisy churn I use for small quantities. For anything upwards of four litres I use our industrial mixer.

If your cream is at the right temperature and age it should turn, or come, in about ten minutes. You will feel a difference in the pressure as you turn and then see globules of butter floating in buttermilk. Keep turning for another two minutes as this will help drive the buttermilk out and firm up the butter. Then turn it out onto a wet board, butter won't stick to a wet surface. You might like to save the buttermilk. It makes the best pancakes.

Now using your wet "scotch hands" or butter pats you knead the butter to get all of the buttermilk out of it. Wash it with cold water periodically and keep kneading. It is absolutely essential to get all of the buttermilk out at this stage or your butter will go rancid much more easily. When no more buttermilk or water can be squeezed out of it, spread it out to be salted.

Now I know some folks prefer unsalted butter but salted butter will keep better, plus if you don't want salt in your butter you can just wash it out. Use however much salt you like to taste. If you find it too salty, wash some out. I would have used about a tablespoon on the amount above. Mix the salt in well and then pack your butter into airtight containers. I like to store it in the freezer where it will keep indefinitely.