Posted by admin | Posted in Country Know-how | Posted on 04-11-2009
Welcome to a new regular feature in the News. The Skills Exchange introduces you to local people who are willing and able to share some country skill with you. It could be some part of gardening, making stuff, fixing, using tools, living successfully “up here,” making do, getting it done. The column will tell you a bit about the practitioner and what they’re doing. It’ll also let you know about a mini “workshop” in three weeks time, at which you can see the skill in action (hopefully well enough to do it yourself) – and meet some of your neighbours.
There could be unexpected benefits like eating awesome homemade cheese. I believe “filling my face” is the technical term for what Lynn and I did at the interview with Suzanne Clarke. Suzanne, from down hear Picadilly Rd., has learned how to make a variety of easy-to-do cheeses. She swears that you don’t need special expertise to really succeed with them. “At first I thought I couldn’t do it because I was no good at chemistry experiments,” she says, “but I succeeded at this from the start.” She and Doug have a small mixed farm near Godfrey and the cheese comes from milk from their two Nubian goats. Cute as they are, you don’t need goats to make cheese. Cow’s milk from Freshmart will do and you’re pretty sure to have the basic kitchen utensils you need. Cheese culture and rennet are needed too, but Suzanne will supply you with at cost.
Suzanne likes to make the cheeses because they’re fresh, one-of-a-kind, and under the maker’s control and direction; they’re infinitely improvable. (Doug pointed out that at small Canadian producer won the world’s best cheese competition recently.) What I liked was having quantities of handsome, tasty and abundant cheese that I didn’t feel I had to ration. Usually I feel the world doesn’t have enough cheese; today I feel it just might.
Reduced to too-simple, making cheese is about scalding milk, cooling it, adding culture and rennet and allowing them to set while the whey drains out, and setting it aside to ripen. Hard to do wrong and highly improvable and you can make cheesecake with it. Cheese it turns out, is pretty easy. You can come and meet Suzanne and get a basic lesson on how to get started yourself on such and such a day at this time. Call the Clarke’s at 613.374.2198.
If you’d like to share a skill or recommend someone with a skill, call Andrew at 613.279.1966 or email countryknowhow at frontenac.net.