Deborah Jantzi of Treasured Sunrise Acres with raw cow milk

Idaho, however, recently changed it’s laws to allow the selling of raw milk.  In this installment of the Market & Garden Report, correspondent Guy Hand  goes to the farmers’ market to talk to Idaho’s first licensed raw milk dairywoman

(Woman at Market) So can you tell me about this? (Jantzi) It’s raw milk.  I have raw cow and goat milk.

(Hand) You know we’ve been living in a processed, pasteurized world a long time when people ask “what’s raw milk.”  In the few weeks that Deborah Jantzi has been selling raw goat and cows milk at the Capital City Public Market, she’s been asked that question many times.

(Jantzi) Raw milk comes straight from the cow or the goat.  We don’t do anything to it except filter it and flash cool it and bottle it.  We don’t do anything else, no processing to it.

(Hand) We humans drank raw milk for millenia.  Only after Louis Pasteur discovered that pasteurization killed pathogens, did raw milk fall out of favor.  But Jantzi says there’s a downside to pasteurization.

(Jantzi) When you pasteurize something you heat it up and it kills all the bacteria in it, good and bad, there’s bacteria on everything and if the milk comes from a healthy animal and handled clean you have no bad bacteria in it.  So you’re killing all the good bacteria that’s beneficial to your gut to help digest your food.  It also has a lot of enzymes in it and when you pasteurize it you kill them.

(Hand)  Not everyone in the raw milk debate would agree with Jantzi, but the State of Idaho says raw milk is safe if it’s produced in impeccably clean conditions.

Raw goat milk

(Jantzi)  To be licensed to sell raw milk, I had to have a grade A dairy to start with.  But then I have to go beyond that. I have to test every batch of my milk before I can bottle it.  The dairy inspector comes to my farm on average of once a month, takes that milk back to the state lab and they run all kinds of tests to make sure that it is healthy and that there is nothing in there that’s going to cause any problems for any body.

Cooler full of raw milk

(Hand) Jantzi sells her raw milk at her own dairy, at several farmers’ markets and the Boise Coop.  She’s got other plans as well.

(Jantzi) I am working on a licensed kitchen in my dairy.  I will then be able to do like chocolate milk, raw milk ice cream, we’re working on putting a cheese plant in and then we’ll be doing soft and possibly hard cheeses.  We will also be doing yogurt.

(Hand) But does raw milk taste different?

(Jantzi) Yeah, there’s a difference in taste.  It tastes a lot fuller, a lot creamier, I think a lot better (laughing).

(Hand) If you’re interested in raw milk, Deborah Jantzi will be at the Capital City Public Market every Saturday.  For the Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.

Here are several articles on the raw milk issue:

Some Like It Raw
The Truth About Raw Milk Part 1
The Truth About Raw Milk Part 2
Want raw milk? Lease a farm—and hire a lawyer
Is raw milk becoming too popular for its own good?

Pierre-Louis Monteillet, of Dayton, WA, holds a young lamb at his farm. Spring lambing season can be near chaos for hard-working, sleep-deprived Northwest farmers.

(GH: Northwest News Network correspondent Anna King reports for Northwest Public Radio.)

DAYTON, WA – Farm life can look serene from afar. Shows like the old stand-by All Creatures Great and Small portray a slower pace … nothing like the hectic city grind full of traffic, nagging email and never-ending Tweets. But this time of year, life on many farms is at its most frenetic. Correspondent Anna King traveled to a sheep and goat cheese farm in Dayton, Washington. She has this snapshot of rural life during lambing season.

To an outsider, life at the Monteillet Fromagerie looks crazy. Just a short visit to the artisan cheese farm sends my head spinning.

Sound: Crowd noise

In a small cheese tasting room winemakers are trying to pair their libations with cheese for an upcoming promotion. A pro photographer wanders around in colorful muck boots snapping shots. And guests from China have dropped in for a tour.

Then there’re about 300 hungry sheep and goats to deal with. And there’s cheese to be made.

Joan Monteillet and her French-born husband Pierre-Louis have been running this farm since 2002. That’s when they gave up wheat farming to take care of sheep and goats. They’re rather calm amid this flurry.

Joan Monteillet: “Ven Aici, Ven Aici!! That’s French for come here.”

Sound: Sheep and lambs respond

In the space of a couple of spring months, the Monteillets will work to help bring 200 new lambs and kids into the world. It’s like a busy maternity ward. For the sleep-deprived farmers it’s a bit like a long distance marathon. Pierre-Louis says during the birthing season…

Pierre-Louis Monteillet: “… anything can happen during any time of the day or the night so it’s a little more stressful so when that period is over you know we are glad because it’s not as hard on us and the animal too.”

Pierre-Louis and Joan are constantly shuffling sheep and lambs into different pens. They keep the mothers and their lambs together at first so they can learn each other’s scent and call. Each mother and lamb has a unique voice.

Sound: Bleat

The newborn lambs are hard to resist. They’re friendly. They totter near the fence on unsteady legs. They stand about a foot tall, have translucent pink ears, bright-white curly coats and wet-pink little muzzles.

Pierre-Louis Monteillet: “They are so innocent. The innocence of the animal. If you treat them right, they think you are the mother and they cuddle with you. But when they get a little older then they know the difference and they get a little more wild. But at the stage they are at right now they are just innocent and defenseless.”

Still, not everything about birthing season is pleasant or cute. Joan says sometimes the mothers have trouble giving birth. And the sheep or lambs die as a result.

Joan Monteillet: “At first I would cry every time we lost a baby. I would just think Oh my God! And you can’t. It’s not just callous it’s just more realistic when you have over 200 animals. It’s different from five when every animal counts. Now we have a pretty good system of emotional control.

But the Monteillets say along with the difficult times comes a lot of joy from their chosen lifestyle. Pierre-Louis grew up in a small city in France, while his wife grew up on a wheat farm in Eastern Washington. They’ve both learned a lot about animals, and themselves, since they started. Pierre-Louis says soon the brief chaos of spring will be over.

Pierre-Louis Monteillet: “We like the lifestyle obviously. It’s a seasonal life. You work from sun up to sundown. Seven days a week, full bore for a few months. So when fall comes we sort of like the fact that it’s slowing down and it’s a more reasonable life.”

It’s a life in concert with the rhythms of the sun. Eventually, these lambs and kids will be sold for pets or milkers. Some will end up on dinner plates. Despite all the work of lambing season, the arrival of these tiny animals is celebrated. They’ve brought in the milk for the farmers’ artisan French cheeses for another year.

Sound: Bleating, farm sounds

Copyright 2010 Northwest Public Radio

On the web:

Monteillet Cheese

Listen ]]> http://www.nwfoodnews.com/2010/04/03/spring-lambing-chaos-in-northwest-farm-country/feed/ 0 http://www.nwfoodnews.com/2009/12/23/miraculous-cheese-making/ http://www.nwfoodnews.com/2009/12/23/miraculous-cheese-making/#comments Wed, 23 Dec 2009 16:07:12 +0000 Guy Hand http://www.nwfoodnews.com/?p=1843 If you noticed the post a while back, I spent several months this year trying to make cheese.  Some attempts turned out surprisingly tasty (yogurt, mozzarella, manchego), others . . . not so much (a “quick” cheddar gave meaning to the phrase “chalk and cheese”).

What my self-guided apprenticeship taught me was a deep, worshipful respect for artisan cheese makers.  They combine science and art in a way that now seems miraculous.  And what better time to pay homage to miracles than the Holidays.

For a thorough guide to Northwest artisan cheeses and the story behind them, check out Tami Parr’s website The Pacific Northwest Cheese Project.  A self describes cheese nerd, Parr offers last minute cheese gift suggestions from producers in Oregon, Washington, Idaho and British Columbia, a book on the region’s cheeses, Artisan Cheese of the Pacific Northwest, and a lot more.

Here’s a list of some of the cheeses Parr suggest for mail ordering (perfect for the New Year):

Oregon

Rogue Creamery

Tumalo Farms

Juniper Grove Farm (call farm for direct shipping)

Goldin Artisan Goat Cheese (call farm for direct shipping)

Washington

Beecher’s

Golden Glen Creamery

Mt. Townsend Creamery

Rosecrest Farm

Washington State University Creamery

Willapa Hills Farmstead Cheese

Idaho

Ballard Family Dairy and Cheese

British Columbia

Gort’s Gouda

Moonstruck Organic Cheeses

The Farm House Natural Cheeses

The Village Cheese Co.

Homemade yogurt draining

A while back it struck me that I didn’t know what cheese was.  I mean, I knew what it looked like and how it tasted — after all, I’ve had my share of grilled cheese sandwiches and molten mountains of gooey nachos — but I didn’t know cheese, how it was made, why a cheddar differs from a swiss or a brie, why the farmstead variety tastes like it came from a different, much tastier cheese planet than those glowing orange bricks stacked on the supermarket shelves.

So, I decided to make some.

My first ricotta

Cheese cave at Estrella Family Creamery, Montesano, Washington

My first cheddar

What I’ve learned over the last few months is that cheesemaking isn’t easy.  (I met with one successful commercial cheesemaker who didn’t start selling her cheeses until she’d practiced at home for 17 years.)  It takes time, some special equipment and a whole lot of patience.  But it’s also kind of magical.

What I’ve learned on the bumpy road to cheesemaking is that a good cheese sitting quietly on its shelf is a little biological miracle, a teaming universe of microscopic processes, a dance between time and temperature, art and science.  I’m not really good at it yet, but I’ve made some fresh cheeses that easily out compete the average supermarket varieties and I’m waiting for the weather to cool down so I can start aging some specimens in my newly christened cheese closet.  I’ll keep you posted . . .

If you’re interested in cheesemaking, here are some sources I’ve found helpful:

The Cheese Chronicles: A Journey Through the Making and Selling of Cheese in America, From Field to Farm to Table by Liz Thorpe

Home Cheesemaking by Ricki Carroll

The Cheesemaker’s Manual by Margaret Peters-Morris

American Farmstead Cheese by Paul Kindstedt

Milk by Anne Mendelson

Award-winning Idaho Pepper Cheddar cheese curds © 2009 Guy Hand

Idaho has become a Big Cheese state. Milk has surpassed the potato as our number one agricultural commodity and Idaho is now the second largest cheese producer in America. That’s a lot of cheese. But Big Cheese—with it’s factory farms and mechanized production—isn’t always good to the small farmer. Guy Hand visits a small dairy near Gooding with an award winning solution to the modern agricultural imperative to “get big or get out.”

The Ballards at their stand at the Boise Farmers Market © 2009 Guy Hand

 Ballard Cheese web site