Love of cheese seems almost a universal principle uniting humanity. I know only a handful of people who won't eat it, most due to intolerance. We Americans are not regularly exposed to excellent cheese, but that doesn't hamper our fervor for it. My own ardor has led me on a long journey to attempt to craft it with my own hands. To make cheese, you need milk.
Step 1: Buy Goats. No wait, Step 1: Build Fence. Goats are notoriously mischievous and crafty escape artists. Conveniently, I already had a barn at my disposal. Let me share a little secret of my ability to do cool things: my dad does them for me and I pretend to help. So I "helped" my dad build fence, but did eventually catch on to the point that my cousin and I were a mean wire-twisting machine. After all that work, the paddock still appears disappointingly small.
Step 2: No, really, buy some goats. After months of half-baked planning and delays, in the midst of a bitter January, three pregnant goats were toted home in the dog kennels in the back of a pickup (my dad's), wrapped in packing blankets. Those three barely-grown ladies belonged to me. I already had a dozen ducks, but these were mammals, the real deal in livestock ownership.
Step 3: Wait. The constraints of nature are such that Who, Which, and What, named for witches in A Wrinkle In Time, would not lactate until after the births of their kids. It can be a challenge for people to understand, until compared to the female of the human race. Oooooh. Right.
As time marched forward, the freshenings drew near, utters filled and vague due dates approached. Every day was a gut-wrenching good morning as I drew back the barn door, and day by day no kids awaited me, better yet no mutilated fetuses or dead mothers. I lived in dread of the hand-up-the-vagina scenario. One joyous, jittery morning, I could see that What was in labor. She was scratching at the ground and draining from behind. I tripped happily back home to inform the world via Facebook of this impending miracle, and returned a bit later to witness it. A floppy-eared babe sat complacently curled in the door. The final two also came in their respective weeks without a hitch, or a witness, bursting into the world with disregard to any meaningless symbolism I may attach to their births. Isis and Ra, veritable twins from different mothers, and little Neptune, a carbon copy of his Who from Whoville mother.
Step 4: Milk the Goat. Now there's nothing left but to squeeze some milk out of the old girls. Before purchasing my very own goats, I had the experience of only milking one time, or more accurately half a time, from an affable goat named Once (Spanish for eleven). I knew the procedure, pinch off the top of the teat with thumb and forefinger to trap the milk, then squeeze subsequent fingers to expel, aim for the bucket. This is much harder than it sounds. This was my deal, my dad wasn't going to milk them for me. I practiced in the pasture, hanging upside-down over their backsides, I lured them into the milking stall with feed, and neglected and neglected to wean the kids until I felt confident.
Finally the time came, I penned up the babies so they couldn't nurse, and let the milk flow. The routine of milking was routinely a debacle. I put one in the stanchion to have her kick over the bucket, while the others accosted her from each side, the babies bleating pathetically in their pen to be released. The only way I ever got it done was with ample bribes of cracked corn. The kids refused to take the bottle, and for fear of starving them, I let them continue to nurse, only taking them out at night to milk in the morning. I eventually moved the milking stanchion (designed by my dad, screwed together by your's truly) out of their pen to work with them one at a time. Finally I reached a level of comfort with the process, gleaning about half a gallon of milk from them a day.
Step 5: Make cheese. I will divulge my cheesemaking secrets once I attain any. Until then...Would anyone care for some squeaky curd?
