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Friday
19Mar2010

Life is Beautiful

These are the days you live for. The winter was one of the strangest I've experienced in Georgia.  Cold days and nights combined with unrelenting rain created an inhospitable environment for humans and machines needing to navigate the pastures and a hospitatable environment for worms and parasites.  Sure, we've all seen very cold days in Georgia before, but generally winters are punctuated with the occasional 65-70 degree day in December, January and February. Not this year.  Consistently 10 degrees or more colder than average and tons of rain made the winter seem to last forever.

And then, this week, Spring came.  With every day in the 60's and the next two days in the mid 70's, life is indeed beautiful. These are the days you dream about during the bad days.  These are the days that we all want to bottle up, put on the shelf and magically open on the days when the farm is flooded and animals are uncomfortable. But nature doesn't work that way, so we endure.

Both eggmobiles are on pasture now and over 800 pullets and hens are foraging and following the cows.  A few weeks ago we were getting less than a dozen eggs a day; now we're getting over 15 dozen a day and it's rising steadily.  The cows and sheep are a couple of days ahead of the hens as you can see in the photo above, and the 30-odd lambs that were recently born are enjoying the wonders of life.  We never tire of watching them group up and run laps late in the day, every day.  It's as if a contagious spark ignites them while they're grazing. First one literally jumps straight up in the air where it is standing and then the others do.  And then, they're off to the races.

Incubating EggsPoulet Rouge Chickens at Nature's Harmony

As I mentioned, egg production has gone through the roof recently. The turkeys were the last to start laying, which is normal, but now even they are laying nicely.  As readers of our blog know, we made a decision to hatch all chickens and turkeys on farm.  This is partly because we don't want to support industrial breeds such as the Cornish X (pronounced Cornish Cross) chicken and the Broad Breasted White turkey.  Other farmers find that raising them fits with their goals, and that is fine. In our experience, it's not sustainable nor is it particularly humane to subject them to the forces of nature.  There is an easy alternative to broad breasted white turkeys, which is just to maintain your own flock of heritage breeders. This year we are breeding White Holland, Black Spanish, Bourbon Red and Standard Bronze turkeys on farm.  It's also easy to breed and hatch out your own laying hens. We maintain breeders of Australorp, Rhode Island Red and White Rock.  For those of you interested, White Rocks are fantastic layers and even lay exceptionally well in cool winter months. They significantly outperformed our other layers this past winter.

For meat chickens of course, the challenge is more pronounced in regards to breeding and hatching.  The Cornish X has been perfected (if that's what you want to call it) as a meat machine over the past several decades.  Farmers wanting to raise this frankencreation must rely on hatcheries for their supply, as the bird itself is a hybrid cross. As a result, if you kept Cornish X and bred them the result would be wildly inconsistent.  So we've been working on developing three different breeds of meat chickens on farm for our needs. The first is of course the Poulet Rouge, or naked neck variety.  The meat quality is fantastic and predictable, although the growth rate is very slow (14 weeks compared to 7 weeks for Cornish X) and they are not good layers. This means we have definite limitations on the number of meat chickens we can produce. Right now, we're getting about 100 eggs a week from our Poulet Rouge layers.

We are also crossing Dark Cornish roosters with the White Rock hens in an effort to produce a local, sustainable alternative to the Cornish X. These birds will never grow as fast as the latter, but may result in a hardy bird with excellent meat qualities. We'll see. Finally, we're also crossing Poulet Rouge roosters with White Rock hens.  All of these eggs are being hatched on farm in one of our two incubators. I really love this old redwood incubator that we bought last year off an ad on Craigslist. It holds about 1,200 chicken eggs and has a neat manual turning system.  Right now it's about full, as is our second incubator, which holds another 300-400.

So, as you can probably tell, the farm is abundant with life right now. The grass is green and growing right in front of our eyes. Hens are laying, chicks are hatching, lambs are bouncing, cows are grazing, milk is flowing, cheese is being made, the garden is being tended and happiness abounds.

Life is beautiful, once again.

Sunday
14Mar2010

Hog Butchering Class

Well our 2010 event schedule is starting at full speed. Yesterday we had our first public farm tour of the year and also offered our first butchering class.  A sold out group butchered half of a Berkshire hog with me while we made lard, smoked bacon, ate pig's head and had some great, primal bonding time.  The class was a lot of fun and we all learned a lot together. The video below quickly recaps the experience.

Other events this year include "offal" cooking, curing classes, chicken and lamb butchering, cheese making and so on. Details are on this page.

Thanks everyone who participated yesterday and...enjoy the pork!

Sunday
07Mar2010

Farmcast # 4

Farmcast #4 is on the website now and on iTunes. Click here for details.

Wednesday
03Mar2010

Pricing Farmstead Raw Milk Cheeses

Yesterday I made Fortsonia all day while watching the snow blow outside.  Good thing we moved away from Massachusetts years ago to escape the snow! It was a long day, as making this type (Gruyere) of cheese is Tim making Fortsoniaphysically demanding.  After hours of hand turning the curds in whey that I heated to 126 degrees (ouch is right!), hand pushing the curds back against 500 lbs of whey and then forming and flipping for almost 12 hours, I couldn't help but compare the process of making various types of cheeses.  And that led me to thinking about how cheeses are priced, the yields realized from the milk and the aging requirements.

At this point, we make three styles of raw milk cheeses. As a result, they all have to be aged for at least 60 days before sale.  One is a bloomy rind cheese (Harmony Crème de la Crème), one is a blue cheese (Elberton Blue) and one is inspired by the best Gruyere (Fortsonia).  Other well known cheeses in the bloomy rind category include Constant Bliss by Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont, and Green Hill by Sweet Grass Dairy in Georgia.  Both of those cheeses are made from pasteurized cow's milk and can be found online or at Whole Foods for $30-$35 per pound, although you can get Green Hill for much less (about $20 per pound direct from their website).  They are both very well made cheeses that we have tried and enjoy very much, and I'm very confident that if you enjoy these cheeses you'll also love Harmony Crème de la Crème.

Compare these cheeses to a well-aged alpine cheese like Gruyere, which is one of my favorite cheeses and indeed is my inspiration with Fortsonia.  The best reserve cheeses aged for 16 months by Rolf Beeler can be purchased online for about $32 per pound, which is comparable in price to the bloomy rinds mentioned above.  But does this make sense?

In making Fortsonia yesterday, it was an all-day commitment that was quite physically demanding.  By contrast, when I make Harmony Crème de la Crème tomorrow, I'll start at 9:00 a.m. or so and be done by 2:00 p.m.  There's no doubt that the Alpine cheese is a tougher make, so this is a disadvantage to the cheesemaker relative to making the bloomy rind.

Crème de la Crème on the Draining TableLet's turn our attention to yield.  When I make Harmony Crème de la Crème, I consistently get a 15% or better yield. This means that for 100 pounds of milk I get at least 15 pounds of cheese, and I have yielded as much as 17%+!  Part of the high yield is thanks to the Jersey cows, but the real thanks goes to the fact that we only feed our cows grass or hay. No grain, ever. Like many people, I was shocked to learn that other grass-based dairies feed grain to their cows.  Our department of agriculture inspector described other grassfed cheese makers and how they feed a daily ration of grain (twice per day) when the cows are milking.  I guess that's why they're "grass or pasture based" rather than "100% grassfed".  But I don't have a problem with that, as long as everyone is just upfront about what they're doing so consumers can decide what makes sense to them.  We only get just over a gallon per day per cow, which would put us in the hall of shame among other Jersey dairies, where 5-6 gallons per day are the norm.  Naturally this results in MUCH higher costs for us, but we believe the milk itself has better flavor and nutritional qualities, and we think the cows are healthier.

So...where was I?  Ah yes, yield. The Forstonia I made yesterday yielded 11.5%, typical for an Alpine make.  This resulted in 4 pounds LESS cheese per 100 pounds of milk than with the Harmony Crème de la Crème.  So much for all that work.  This makes sense given that bloomy rinds like Camembert typcially have a moisture content of 50%-55% compared to 38%-41% for Gruyere, with blue cheeses falling between those two.

After the cheeses are made, the bloomy rinds need only be aged for 60 days in our case since it's raw milk, or about a month in the case of the others who are pasteurizing their milk.  The Fortsonia and Gruyere's on the other hand have to be hand turned, hand smeared and aged for well over a year, resulting in much higher labor costs and cooling costs during that time.

So let's add this all up. 

Right now, farmstead cheesemakers can make a bloomy rind, age it quickly, sell it for over $30 per pound and the consumer gets 50% moisture.  Or, the cheesemaker can handcraft an Alpine or similar cheese, age it until it's marvelous and get the same or a lower price, work much harder and have a much lower yield.

I think I understand why it's the fresh cheeses and bloomys that artisan or farmstead cheesemakers focus on then.  Easier to make, shorter cash flow cycle and consumers are, curiously, willing to pay more.

So how will this impact our pricing strategy?  Simple...we'll reverse this model.  It costs us less to make a very good bloomy rind and we'll price that accordingly. We're hoping to hit a price of $20 per pound for raw milk, organic, no fine-print Harmony Crème de la Crème.  Elberton Blue yields less than Harmony Crème de la Crème, must be aged longer and tended to more carefully and therefore will be slightly higher in price. However, the pricing on Fortsonia will reflect the effort to make, the reduced yield and the time and care it will take to age it properly. It's too soon to tell, but I suspect it will be in the $35 per pound range next year when we offer it.

The tough part about this is it makes it difficult to estimate how much Fortsonia we should make.  Given that we'll age it for 12-18 months, if we make too much now and run into resistance in the marketplace next year, we would have made quite an investment with a limited return. We could instead just focus on making Harmony Crème de la Crème or Elberton Blue, both of which offer the ability to get a "report card" much more quickly.  On the other hand, if the market really likes and wants Fortsonia, and believe me, they're aren't very many really well made and carefully aged cheeses of those types around, then we'll quickly be out of cheese and 12-18 months away from having much more.

So what's a cheese farmer (ha!) to do?  Make what the wife likes I guess.  Probably 40% Harmony Crème de la Crème, 30% Elberton Blue and 30% Fortsonia and see what happens.  I already know our bloomy rinds are coming along VERY nicely, but I'm still not sure about the Elberton Blue and what adjustments will be needed. As for Fortsonia, initial tests are promising but we won't know for a long time...but I'm pretty optimistic. 

 

Friday
26Feb2010

Our First Blue Cheese

OK, so we made our first "commercial" batch of blue cheese, which we call Elberton Blue, back on December 3.  Designed to peak at 3-4 months, it's getting close to the time when it would be ready for market.  Of course, with all early cheese endeavors, there's a "but".Elberton Blue

The "but" in this case is that we meant to make it with whole, raw milk, "but" we didn't agitate the tank first, and as a result pumped out skim milk to make our Harmony Crème de la Crème, leaving us with pretty much high fat cream with which to make the Elberton Blue.  If that sounds yummy, it is, but it creates a problem.  The problem is that the blue mold won't grow too well in that high fat environment.  So what we have in our first attempt, our friends, is a wonderfully delicious creation that tastes more like raw milk butter with a little salty/blueness to it rather than blue cheese.  Anyway, these journeys are what make farmstead cheese making fun and interesting.

Two nights ago I took some Elberton Blue and made a broccoli/blue cheese soup for Liz. She made some small round loafs of bread that I hollowed out for the bowl. To go with it, I pan seared some Ossabaw pork chops and made a simple blue cheese/cream gravy to go over it.  The cheese was great to cook with, but I have to admit I do cut off hunks of it and just sit and eat it. Always wanted an excuse to just eat gobs of butter!