Food, Glorious Food

Another morning of farm chores, including milking the goats, this time with Rafael who lives with his partner, Valerie in the little cabin above the river. They just came back from a two week canoe trip on a river up north with their dog, Nori. They parked their truck at one end of the river, then took a train with their canoe to the other end and put in. So very cool! They spent a couple of summers working on an almond farm on the Lost Coast of California and that’s where they learned to milk goats as well as cows. They also spent a winter in Kirkwood, near Lake Kirkwood where the kids and I went to Two Sentinels Girl Scout high sierra camp for many years. That happened to be one of the winters with lots of snow, so the highways were closed which meant they got to enjoy fresh snow with very few other people around. They’ve been here since March and will stay until winter when they will go to British Columbia for the ski season. 

For breakfast I made myself toast from the bread that Noé baked last night as well as a nice slice of cheese and some coffee. It’s cloudy and a little rainy today, so no Internet at this point, which is not not such a bad thing especially on a Saturday.

I spent some time reading in the glass enclosed conservatory (not sure what it’s called here), when it started to rain I moved out to the covered patio so I could hear and smell the rain better. Noé continued to work with the electric saw in the rain and I tried not to look. A lot of the trees in the front yard are pine, but a few are maybe maple? Not sure but the leaves are starting to change color. I’m excited as I think I’m going to see a lot of beautiful natural changes during my time here. I picked a good time of the year to come.

This afternoon Rafael showed me around the fromagerie, putting on a hairnet and apron brought me back to the days of working in the dining commons in college!  I got to help turn the cheese and wipe off the fuzzy mold, which is called cats fur in French. For the first month the cheese is turned every 2 days, then for the second month it is turned every 4 days and after that it is ready to sell. They do have some sheep’s milk cheese that is 3 or 4 months old as some people like it aged that long. They don’t have any sheep on the farm, but a local farmer supplies sheep‘s milk. They aren’t able to age the goat cheese more than two months because of the high demand, they end up selling out of everything. They are considering getting more goats and expanding the farm, but that means getting more help with the milking and making of the cheese.

Valerie worked at the farmers market today and came back with baskets of fresh corn, apples and pears and some yummy, very dense, filled donuts. Even though I’m getting a fair amount of exercise doing chores and walking around the farm, all the bread, cheese and treats, like the donuts, are counterbalancing the exercise. Luckily, dinner was much healthier- Greek salad, corn and wild mushrooms. Everything except the olive oil in the Greek salad was either from the farm or the farmers market.