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On the 19th of October, Owen and I attended a cheese making workshop at Huapai (near Hellensville). It was a fabulous experience, and I can’t believe that it has taken me nearly a whole month to write about it! The course was held at the home of Alison, who runs the Auckland chapter of the Weston A. Price Foundation. Alison’s daughter, Natalie, makes wonderful cheeses and was generous enough to share her expertise by running this workshop.

It was an action-packed day, during which learnt to make cheddar, feta, ricotta, and soft curd cheese. Natalie also discussed how to make yoghurt and kefir. The workshop was set up so that all the participants could get hands-on experience at cheese making. We took turns stirring, checking the temperature, and cutting and handling the curds. Each participant went home with a folder full of clearly explained recipes, tips, and information. Now, I feel so much better prepared to start making cheese at home.

Highlights of the day included the delicious lunch prepared for us by Alison and Natalie, and a chance to sample some of Natalie’s delicious cheeses. The workshop was a neat opportunity to meet some other people with a common interest in good food. . . including a couple of people who I’d already been in touch with through this website.

Natalie was very kind and accommodating about letting me bring Owen to the cheese workshop. All things considered, this arrangement worked out pretty well. Everyone was very kind to Owen, and I don’t think he was too disruptive to the workshop. Still, a lively eleven-month-old does demand quite a lot of attention! In truth, my attention was probably only focused on the cheese making about 50% of the time, and I didn’t manage to meet and chat with the other course participants as much as I’d have liked, either. Owen was happy to stay in the back or front pack for some of the time, but at other times he was very busy trying to kiss the dogs, launch himself off the verandah, or get himself made into a big lump of cheddar cheese. Actually, it was a pretty neat day for Owen in the end. I’m not sure he’s an expert cheese maker yet, but he enjoyed learning all about dogs.

Coco is VERY in-calf

I’m not going to write about the details of making cheese in this post. Rather, I’m going to save that part for when I actually start trying out my new skills at home. Once Coco’s calf is born and Kevin is milking her again, we will finally have lots of lovely fresh raw milk for some exciting cheese projects. We can’t wait! Coco’s udder is springing already, and she looks very big and fat. I am watching her with great anticipation, even though she’s still not actually due to calve for about another week or so. Owen’s favourite foods (aside from breast milk and cod liver oil) are raw milk yoghurt and kefir, so our supply of raw Jersey milk can’t start soon enough!

Even a small steer like Herman Beefsteak produces a lot of meat. At the butchery, the weight of his skinned carcass was 255kg. This didn’t include the tail and offal, which we kept aside at home. Both Lloyd (the slaughterman) and Ngaire (our wonderful butcher) guessed Herman’s age at around 15 months. He was actually only 11 months old, but considering how well the grass grew this season, and considering that he had access to his mother’s milk until his dying day, it’s not surprising that he grew faster than average. It’s probably more normal to slaughter an animal at 18 months old, in order to get more meat. In our case, we only wanted to carry three animals through the winter, in order to avoid the possibility of running out of grass. That’s why we slaughtered our steer at just 11 months. So. . . what have we done with all that meat?

Owen gums a piece of delicious rump steak

For starters, we have given half of the meat to our neighbours, Dennis and Mary. We have an arrangement with them that they will share half the meat from each of Rosie and Coco’s calves in return for grazing our animals on their pasture. We are pleased to say that Dennis and Mary now have a freezer full of beef to share with their six children.

The other half of the meat is for us — me, Kevin, Owen, and my parents. We do not have a large chest freezer here on the Farmlet, but my parents do have one out at the coast. They are keeping most of the meat in their freezer. We visit them often, so it will be easy to pick up some meat whenever we are over there.

When Kevin, Owen and I went to pick up the meat from the butcher, we could barely squeeze all the boxes of meat into our little car. Boxes were jammed into the trunk, and wedged into the back seat next to Owen’s baby seat. We had to leave the box of drippings to pick up next time we are in town. And that was only half the meat! Dennis and Mary had already collected their share earlier in the day.

We were happy to support a fine local business like “Personal Choice Meats” by having our steer processed there. Ngaire, the butcher, has an excellent reputation around here for running a clean business and taking pride in her work. She was really helpful when it came to deciding what cuts of meat to choose, and gave me advice about how to make customised additive-free sausage fill for the sausages. Since we were taking the meat to my parents’ freezer, I was glad she could blast freeze it for us. This saved the hassle of blood leaking into the freezer from lots of unfrozen meat. It also saved my parents the hassle of having to keep turning the meat as it froze to stop it all sticking together in a great big lump!

Kevin looked very happy after we picked up the meat, as Ngaire had praised its quality and tenderness. She noted: “that steer wouldn’t have wanted to be any fatter.” (Lloyd said that it looked too fat!) For our part, we are pretty pleased to have raised a nice fat beast. We think the fat is very useful and tasty. Also, we are not suffering from fat phobia: Pasture-raised beef fat is health food in our book!

We are all enjoying the delicious meat. So far, we have tried scotch fillet, rump steak, sausages and shin-on-the-bone. The steaks were wonderfully tender and juicy. Owen has been given a piece of rare steak to gnaw on during dinner, and looked like he was taking the job very seriously. Did he just squish the piece of steak and play with it? No. It went straight into his mouth! No worries about that. So far, meat is one of Owen’s favourite foods (next to cod liver oil, which is the most favoured treat of all!). We are glad to have an abundant source of healthy organic beef for our baby to enjoy.

Kevin and I were especially excited to try the sausages. We refrain from eating “regular” commercial sausages in order to avoid MSG, preservatives, and other unhealthy ingredients in the sausage fill. The only additive-free sausage we’ve found around here was too expensive for our budget. It is wonderful now to eat a meal of tasty sausages, knowing that they contain only the special fill that I supplied to our butcher. What was in the fill? We kept it simple: Rice flour, sea salt, cayenne pepper, ground cumin.

(Note: According to Ngaire, iodised “table salt” should be avoided in the preparation of sausage and preserves. We don’t use “table salt” in any of our food, in any case, so this was no hassle.)

The sausages came out really tasty, with just a hint of spiciness from the cayenne pepper.

My parents have also enjoyed a meal of rump steak, and we all tried the shin-on-the-bone when we were over at my parents’ place for dinner last night. Mum put beef shin and vegetables in the slow cooker to make a delicious soup.

More culinary adventures are in store:

I’m planning to render the drippings to make tallow, and boil up lots of the bones to make rich and healthful stock. We are looking forward to beef liver pate, steak and kidney pie, pot roast, rib roast, corned beef tongue, oxtail barley soup, beef stew, sourdough crackers and pastry made with beef tallow, beef chile, empanadas, spicy meatloaf. . . I hope to be posting some beef recipes on this website in the not-too-distant future.