In case you haven’t noticed, it’s June! Time flies by so quickly that it circles the earth and laps me in my floating, flying machine. June has got to be one of my favorite months of the year.
First of all, it’s Dairy Month! There’s no better time to come visit the farm and get some milk than June dairy month!
Driving through winding valleys, to the top of towering bluffs, is a great experience anytime of year but the lush, cooler, beginnings of summer make the trip even better. Maybe you’ll catch the wonderful scent of freshly cut hay, or, if you time it right, and if you’re lucky, you’ll scent a bit of manure being spread on the newly empty hay fields.
I also love June because it’s the month of my wedding anniversary! June is one of the most popular months to say, “I do” and it’s no wonder! The days are the longest, the weather is beautiful, the fruit trees are covered in their new baby fruit and we’re not yet wishing for cooler weather. I also read that babies born in June tend to be the tallest, and June boasts the birth of the greatest number of Nobel Peace Prize winners. I missed it by two days! Just think of all the good I could have done if only I had been born two days sooner! Happy birthday to all you giant world changers out there!
On June 14, 2009, I climbed out of my sleeping bag into a whole new world! I had climbed into the bag the night before on a small, muddy island where I had only caught a few winks before waking up to the mindblowing reality that I would not sleep again until I had claimed the title of husband to my soon to be wife!
I could not be given a greater honor than having the girl of my dreams stand and declare that she would love, honor and cherish little old me until death do us part. (She was warned and she still said yes!)
It has now been 15 years and she’s still my best! When I look up gifts for the 15th, it says it should be crystal. Maybe someone of poorer taste would have taken a trip down Waterford lane, but to me, the options were crystal clear. Instead of something that my son would probably break when we have one of our sword fights (ok, it would probably be me), what about a fifteen-year-old cheese? Imagine this, while we were being married, milk was being formed into this sharp bit of goodness for you and me to celebrate the goodness of fifteen years!
After years of married bliss, hopefully more of my sharp edges have been worn off and I am more fully able to love her in the ways she needs. After all, there are a lot of cheeses to enjoy in this life, so why not enjoy each other long enough to try them all. Charles de Gaulle, a former leader of France, said, “How do you govern a country with 246 varieties of cheese?” He was actually greatly underestimating the kinds of cheeses there are to enjoy. I have been told that the number is closer to a thousand different varieties. Maybe it’s ok to have a lot of favorites.
A recent farm visitor was sitting with us in the silo farm store and telling us about what they had done with some of their milk. After making the milk into cheese, they were telling us about how they were going to be aging it for nine months. That’s impressive to me. I have a hard time waiting for the cookies to come out of the oven before eating them. If I were in charge of the cookies, half of the dough would be eaten before it got a chance to become a cookie. That’s the same way I feel about milk. It’s a good thing I can have a lot of it or I would drink it all before it was even made into yogurt or kefir. When you come visit the farm to celebrate June Dairy Month, you too can enjoy the goodness of fresh warm cookies and fresh milk. And of the many kinds of cheese, there has to be a new one to mark the occasion of your summer celebrations.
Meet your farmer – Jonathan Gerdes. He and his wife run a farm-to-table raw milk dairy in Caledonia, Minn. If he isn’t in the barn, you can find him dating his wife, playing with his kids, leading youth group, or flying in the sky. Visit gerdesfreshfarm.com for more info.
30-minute Homemade Mozzarella Cheese
1 1/2 teaspoons citric acid
1/4 teaspoon animal rennet
1/2 cup water, divided
1 gallon whole milk
In a small bowl, add the citric acid and 1/4 cup of the water. Stir to dissolve.
In a separate small bowl, mix together the remaining 1/4 cup of water and rennet. Set aside.
Pour the citric acid mixture into a large pot.
Add the milk to the pot and heat over medium, stirring constantly to incorporate the citric acid.
Once the milk and citric acid mixture reaches 100° F, using a digital thermometer, remove the pot from the heat. If you are using a gas stove, it is fine to leave the pot on the burner as long as the flame is off.
Add the rennet/water mixture into the pot of milk. Mix well, making sure to get it all the way to the bottom of the pot, while not agitating it too much. Sometimes I stir clockwise and then quickly switch to counter-clockwise to still the milk. You want the milk to be pretty still for the next step.
Put a lid on the pot and allow it to sit for 10 minutes, or until the curds have set. If you take off the lid and it looks like the milk is still pretty watery, you can return the lid and do some other tasks around the kitchen.
Once the curds have set, cut them using a large knife, while making sure to get all the way down to the bottom of the pot. Cut in a grid shape.
Pour the curds and whey into a colander over a pot, straining off the whey. If you aren’t planning to use the whey for anything, you’ll want to save a little bit of the whey for storing the cheese.
Press out any excess whey with your hands.
Continue pressing until all the of the whey is out of the cheese.
Once the ball of cheese forms and the whey is pressed out, dip the cheese back into hot water and stretch it. (You could also heat it up in a microwave.) I usually dunk the cheese into the hot water and stretch, continuing to do this until the cheese because firm and shiny. (Kitchen gloves are handy for this step because the cheese can be hot)
Stretch it a few more times and add salt to taste. I like to hold the cheese with one hand and then sprinkle over the salt in another hand. Fold the cheese over, stretch a few times and add more salt.
Roll into balls and use it right away or store for later.
– Recipe from www.farmhouseonboone.com
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