Cheesemaking Is Fancy Composting: Why Milk Wants to Transform with Robyn Jackson

It's so important that we learn at least a little bit of the skill of cheese making on our homesteads or in our communities because we don't want it become a lost art. We want to preserve all of these traditions that are lost already, and so we don't want to lose the ones that we're finding.

Welcome back to Everyday Ancestral. I'm your host, James Berry. I'm really excited about this next guest. I only met Robin Jackson of Cheese From Scratch at the Modern Homesteading Conference just this year in 2024. Robin is a mom of three children, a rancher's wife, a homesteader, and a milkmaid. She's been milking a cow and making cheese in her kitchen since 2014, teaching others through her business, Cheese from Scratch, since 2021. So since launching her business, Robyn has taught thousands of students. She is passionate about not only teaching the skill of cheese making, but educating people about cheese as a traditional form of fermentation and preservation of milk. And I really loved how she talked about it, and she's definitely gotten me interested. So I hope you leave this episode wanting to try to make your own dairy from scratch, you know, basically your cheese. So enjoy this episode. If you like it, leave a comment, share it with a friend. Follow us. We would love your support. Thank you again, and enjoy this episode with Robin Jackson. I learned on the Internet that Brie and Colby are your favorite cheeses to make. So what is it about it that make those your favorite?

They're such different cheeses, which is cool. Colby is definitely. I love making it because it's the cheese that my family loves. So my husband Zach is originally from Wisconsin, and so he loves Colby cheese. He loves mozzarella string cheese. He loves all those kind of traditional Wisconsin cheesesteak cheeses. And then my kids also just really love Colby. They like that it's kind of mild, and it sort of tastes like the cheese that you get from the grocery store. Just like, I don't want to compare it to Kraft, but, you know, like, it tastes like something that you would just buy at the grocery store, and it tastes normal to them. And then I love making Brie. So Brie is like my favorite cheese ever to make. It's so fun to make. It's my favorite cheese, probably to eat.

And when you think about cheeses and what you've found from just your hours of working with cheese, and then, of course, you're teaching so many people, what do you think is the kind of attracting point? What's the linchpin around cheese for people, do you find its texture?

Yeah, texture. The fat, it just is like satiating to your body. Like when you have a piece of cheese, it just is like, I needed that. That was good for me as like a homesteader or rancher kind of thing. It's a way to preserve my milk. So I really love it in that sense that it's a way that I can take something that's highly perishable and turn it into something that is going to be shelf stable almost, or not quite shelf stable, but cold room stable basically, and is going to last me for years.

Yeah, I think that's really the key, right? I mean, this is a preservation technique. You're getting really good fat, as you mentioned. You're getting good protein and then of course, lots of flavor. But you began cheese making what, like 2014, is that right?

Yep, 2014, yeah.

What were you doing before and then what brought you to cheese making?

Zach and my husband and I, we've had our cattle ranch for 12 years now. I guess it is. And so as I said before, my husband is originally from Wisconsin. We live in Canada now. And so he moved with his family to Canada. I am from Canada. And we met and we married and both of our families had cattle ranches. We wanted to be cattle ranchers too, so we bought a cattle ranch. But ever since I met Zach, he's always wanted to have a dairy cow again. And he just always talked about it and I kind of. I never grew up with a dairy cow. I didn't know why he was so excited about them. But then one day he just brought one home and he's like, can you make me some cheese? And at that point I had like been growing a garden and doing a little bit of fermenting and stuff like that. So it wasn't like this preposterous idea. So I was kind of excited to do it and I just started turning our milk into cheese from that cow. And the kind of the rest is history.

You had never made cheese before, right? So what was your resource for learning and how did it grow from there? I mean, did you like it enough to say, ooh, this is fun, let me keep exploring, or was it more just like, oh, I want to make my husband happy, I'm going to find my way, you know, a little bit of both.

So I had already made been making yogurt from store bought milk, so I was already really interested in food preservation and making more things from scratch and stuff. So that kind of got me excited about it. I had a book that I read through. It was 200 easy homemade cheese Recipes by Deborah Amron Boys, who's also Canadian. Actually, it was like my bible for cheese making. And there was a lot of trial and error. So I would say the learning curve was very, very steep. But it was also very exciting because even though it was steep and I had a lot of failures, I also had like some successes along the way early on. So that kind of just drove me to just keep learning and keep wanting to improve.

You eventually founded Cheese from Scratch, which is your educational platform. How long did it take for you to take this interest and turn it into really like a career? Right.

I think it was three years ago that I started Cheese from Scratch. So I'd been making cheese for about seven years. I was kind of looking for a way that I could stay home more on the ranch. I was working in town full time at that point. So I was looking for a way that I could stay home on the ranch, be with my kids more. And so I was like, I've got this really cool hobby of cheese making. Lots of people are asking me, like, how is cheese made? Can you teach me kind of thing? So I decided to just kind of dive into it and start teaching other people online how to make cheese. And cheese from scratch kind of took off. I think it was a good time because there was a lot of people just looking to stay home more, make their own food from scratch more post Covid, basically. So I think it was a good time to kind of start a business like that. You know, I've taught a lot of people how to make cheese. It's so exciting to see that people are starting to enjoy this really age old skill of cheese making.

You're a bit unique though, right, in how you teach, because don't you emphasize traditional cheese making.

I'm a learner in traditional cheesemaking myself. Right now a lot of people are learning kind of at the same level as I am for traditional cheesemaking, just because it's almost been lost. Like in the last hundred years, cheesemaking has changed so drastically, it's almost unrecognizable to how cheese has been made for thousands of years. The last hundred years has just changed it all. So we're trying to get back to that, how cheese was made before, you know, pasteurization and sterilization and freeze dried cultures that you're buying from the cheese supply store. So we're trying to relearn things that we've kind of forgotten almost. So I would say I'M definitely a learner in that area, just like everybody else. But it's an exciting sort of journey that we're all on. Sort of reclaim natural cheese making.

So the pasteurization of milk, I mean, how did that affect cheese making? And what had to change or did anything.

Pasteurization just sort of almost set like a precedent for sterilization and it changed everything. Is what, what the answer to that is. At the time when pasteurization came in, it was a good solution to a problem that was happening. A lot of people were getting sick from industrialized milk. You know, industrial revolution. Everything had changed in the way that we were raising our animals and the way that milk was being transported. And so pasteurization was sort of like this band aid solution that came in and okay, if we heat our milk up to a high temperature, it's going to kill all of the bacterias and people aren't going to get sick. Because in milk that is not handled appropriately. There is good bacterias, but there is also bad bacterias. And some of these bad bacterias were making people sick. And so pasteurization was that band aid solution that fixed it and made it so that people weren't going to basically die. But then with that came all sorts of other things where now that you have changed the structure of milk, now you have to do different things in your cheese making to make it successful. And so it was sort of like this thing that just domino affected everything in the cheesemaking world.

It's interesting too, because in many ways, pasteurization just gave permission for poor, inhumane, you know, dairy cow conditions or raising of dairy cows and dealing with milk. Right. I mean, it's almost like here we have this technique, so it doesn't matter as much about all the other things because we'll just kill whatever you create.

When milk is picked up from the dairy farm, there's an acceptable amount of somatic cell count that is in that milk. Like it's acceptable for that milk to be dirty because, or contaminated or have these bad bacterias in it because you're just going to pasteurize it and kill it off anyways. So, yeah, it is. It's given permission for bad milk handling practices, bad animal husbandry, the breeding of animals to be used just for production rather than, you know, like healing the land and looking after the animals.

And you work with both raw and store bought milk. So what do you see? Like, what's the difference in the cheese making? Are you sort of restricted on what cheeses you can use or make? With, you know, raw versus store bought milk. Maybe just talk about your experience with both in terms of cheese making.

So I would consider myself mostly a raw milk cheesemaker because I have dairy animals on my farm. You know, that's my kind of expertise. I'm very pro raw milk, pro having your own fresh dairy source, pro being able to kind of access that. But I know that that's not going to be something that everybody can access just because the state of how everything is. So I do teach pasteurized milk as well. Pasteurized milk can be turned into cheese, but you know, there's different things that you have to do to get that milk to turn into cheese. So just as an example, raw milk, it comes out of a cow's udder and it's perfectly designed to be turned into cheese. That little calf that is going to drink that milk relies on this ability of milk to turn to cheese to actually be able to survive. So that milk comes out of the udder, it's nice and warm, it goes into the little calf's stomach where it's also warm. It's acidic in there. There are enzymes, we know these enzymes called rennet. And all of these things kind of combine to cause that milk to go from its liquid form to its solid form or its cheese form. So when we're making cheese with fresh raw milk that's, you know, almost straight from the udder, we are able to sort of mimic this natural process and that helps us to make better cheese. Whereas if you are making cheese from pasteurized milk, that's at the grocery store, not only is that milk cooled, so you have to warm it back up to the correct temperature, that it kind of comes out of the udder during the pasteurization process, the composition of that milk has been damaged. So there's not, you know, these natural, good beneficial bacterias in it. There's the mineral components of it has been damaged, so you have to add something back in called calcium chloride to make that milk actually coagulate. A few of these things have to be done when you are dealing with pasteurized milk, where it's just so much easier. If you're dealing with fresh raw milk.

I would should say when you're working with the raw milk, you're literally taking the warm milk and making cheese straight away.

Yeah, you're just like, I bring it in from the barn, strain it so that it's nice and clean, there's no barn debris or anything, and put it into the cheese pot. If I have time that day, you know, I'M not opposed to putting into the fridge. But I try not to make cheese with milk that is older than, you know, two to three days because you're going to have more problems with that. So I am kind of like as much as I'm pro raw milk, I'm pro fresh raw milk. And if you don't have access to that fresh raw milk, then you should probably be considering dealing with pasteurized milk. But it should be like low temperature pasteurization. It shouldn't be ultra pasteurized. So ultra pasteurized milk cannot be turned into cheese. Which is interesting and also concerning.

Say that again. The high temperature milk cannot.

Yeah, so ultra pasteurized milk, which a lot of milk actually I found in the States is ultra pasteurized. In Canada, not so much. Most of it's just low temperature pasteurization. But ultra pasteurized milk can't be turned into cheese.

I think you are right. I think in the US I've never seen low. It's very rare. Maybe I have once or twice, but it's usually bultur pasteurized.

It's concerning because that won't turn to cheese. So if you are in the States or you're in an area where raw milk's not legal and you're having to rely on the grocery stores, you know, you still, it's beneficial to make those connections in your community. Even if you're having to buy pasteurized milk from small farms around you, at least that's probably going to be low temperature pasteurized. If milk can still creamline, that's also a good indication that it's a little bit less processed. If you're listening to this and you don't really know what real milk is. So real milk, the cream rises to the top of raw cow's milk and you are able to kind of scoop it off and make your butter or whatever. So if you are able to find creamlined milk, it's probably gonna be less processed. It hasn't gone through the homogenization process.

That's a really great tip. And so what can you do with ultra pasteurized milk? Can you make yogurt? I mean, is there anything you could do yogurt?

I'm 98% sure you can make yogurt. I've never dealt with it, I've never used it before. But yeah, I just know that you can't get it to coagulate with that enzyme rennet that I talked about. Rennet is something that we add during the cheese making process to cause quick coagulation. And ultra pasteurized Even if you add that calcium chloride that I talked about, it won't coagulate.

Have you messed around with vegetable rennet versus animal? And if so, any difference?

I prefer animal rennet just because I am trying to mimic that natural process in my cheese making. You know, I'm the more natural I can go, basically the better my cheeses are. Vegetable rennet does make good cheese, but it causes bitterness in cheeses that are aged over like four months. So it's better for fresh cheeses. So there's basically, you know, a couple different types of rennet that you can get. You can get animal rennet, which is harvested from young animals. So usually they're about two weeks when they're harvested. So that comes with its own sort of ethical things for people. And then vegetable rennet is usually coming from like figs and cardoons and thistle, I think maybe feels a little bit more ethical, but you also need to harvest a lot more of those vegetables to be able to make a small amount of rennet. Whereas a animal has enough rennet in its stomach to turn all of its mother's milk into cheese throughout her entire lactation. So there's a lot more rennet actually coming from those animal stomachs. And then you also have rennet that is made in labs. So it's called FCP rennet. It's not a genetically modified organism itself, but it's created using a genetically modified process.

So it's neither animal nor vegetable. I mean, what, what is it?

If you looked under a microscope, it looks exactly like the animal rennet, an enzyme called chymosin. That's the enzyme that is in the lining of young calves stomachs. But this chymosin is produced, I believe, using like a bacteria or a fungus. So they genetically modify that organism to produce this enzyme and then they kill that organism off and then they're left with this enzyme. So it isn't really listed as a genetically modified product, but genetically modified organism, because an enzyme can't be an organism, but it is created using a genetically modified process.

Did you say you have worked with it or you have not?

I haven't, but it's apparently does the exact same thing as animal rennet. So if that's what you have available to you, it doesn't cause bitterness in cheeses that are aged over the four months. People that are vegetarian, I believe can use it because it's not actually an animal product. So those are kind of the benefits of it, I guess.

Can you talk a little bit about the aging, just assuming no one knows anything. Like can you just talk about why and how the aging affects the cheese? Cuz you already are mentioning that it, it sounds like the longer it's aged, the less bitter it is. Is that accurate?

So just for vegetable rennet and cheeses that are aged over four months. So different cheeses are going to age in different ways and you're going to use different techniques to age different cheeses. And kind of it all starts in the cheese pot. It starts at the very beginning of your cheese making, not only with what bacterial culture. So just like if you're making any other fermented product, you're adding a bacterial culture into your milk. So different cultures are going to help you make different cheeses. And then the way that you handle your milk in the cheese pot, so how much moisture you're releasing, how much you're allowing it to ferment, what heats you're bringing it to, all those things are going to define aging and then the actual aging process itself. And there is. So it's such a vast conversation basically about all the different ways that you can age cheese. And maybe you can make one cheese the exact same as you make another cheese, but you can age it differently. It will become an entirely different cheese. Just so much to it really.

So let's talk about the bacteria used. Obviously it's tied to the environment as well. Right? So what are the different bacterias? Where, where do they come from? I know obviously some are coming from the air, but maybe just talk about that process and then in turn the environment that then you're allowing the cheese to curd. How does that affect the product?

So cheese making is really a lot like other fermentation methods. So same thing. If you are using vegetable fermentation, you're relying on a type of bacteria called lactic bacteria. So that's this huge head category of bacterias that like to feed on sugar. So lactic bacterias were actually named for their love of milk because lactic bacterias live in raw milk and they like to feed on the sugar, which is the lactose in the milk. And as they feed on that sugar, they fermented into lactic acid and cause that fermentation. So that's sort of the first process of fermentation and cheesemaking. And there is multiple different stages of fermentation. But all cheeses are starting with this addition of lactic bacteria and it's fermenting and acidifying the milk. So there's different types of lactic bacterias. You can get warm loving ones that are referred to as thermophilic. And so they're going to be used for cheeses where you're cooking the curds to a higher heat. And then there's the mesophilic ones, which are where you're cooking the curds to a lower heat with a sourdough starter, where you can bake all sorts of different types of bread. With one starter. You can make your own cheese making starter. A lot of people refer to it as clabber culture. So it's a raw milk starter culture. It kind of harnesses the power of the raw milk. So instead of adding a freeze dried starter culture that you're going to buy on the store, that's just one specific strain. These homemade cultures, they have a whole ecology of different bacterias within them. And these bacterias you can isolate the ones that you want depending on your cheese making techniques. So if you want those thermophilic bacterias, you're going to be heating your milk to a higher heat during the cheese making process and that's going to encourage those ones to thrive. Whereas if you want your mesophilic, the lower temperature ones, you're going to be heating it to a lower heat kind of thing. So that's something that is a little bit more advanced. But it's super exciting because we haven't really been talking about this for very long. There's this guy named David Asher, he's written a couple books now and so he's sort of spearheading all of this natural cheese making thing and we're all sort of just learning from him. But I've been making collabor culture for a couple years now. And it was almost mind blowing because before that I was using that freeze dried cultures and I just kind of was like, oh, you could not make your own starter cultures at home. But yeah, I've been having really, really good results using this collabor culture, which is very exciting.

That is really exciting. So really it's truly like a homemade cheese. Like every aspect of it is coming from your farm.

Just other than the rennet, everything else is coming from our own farm.

So before we get into the actual making of the cheese, I imagine there's probably some people listening that are like never gonna make cheese. So can we just support them in what should they be looking for when they go to the grocery store? And let's set the criteria as most nutritious, maybe most flavorful. And I know that's gonna vary hugely, but maybe just pick some of your favorites and what criteria people should be looking for? Should it be aged a certain, a minimum of a certain amount of months, you know, and anything that's going to help the cheese store buyer?

Yeah, I think primary first thing on my list would be local. You know, local. It's probably made using freeze dried bacterias, but it's going to, you know, be supporting your community. If it is made with natural cultures, which I don't think there is any cheesemaking plants in North America at this moment that are using cheese making cultures, natural cheese making cultures, but you know, it would have the microbes from your community, your area. On the ingredient list of your cheese, you want there to be four ingredients. If there's more than four ingredients other than maybe if there's like spices or anything like that, you don't want to buy it. So the four ingredients that you are looking for on your cheese making label is your milk, your bacterial culture, your rennet and your salt. So those are the only four ingredients that need to be in cheese. Anything else is just extra or has been put there unnaturally. Rennet. Sometimes it will probably be listed as rennet or it'll be listed as enzymes. And bacteria would be listed as lactic bacteria, live bacteria, probiotic, something like that.

Do you think organic, conventional, do you focus on those when someone's buying cheese or do you think with the process it doesn't matter?

I think it does matter. Cows that are raised in the way that you want to buy your milk for example, are going to give you more nutritious cheese. I should say the grass fed cow, it's a whole, a whole thing. But milk cows, I don't a hundred percent believe that we have bred them to a point where they actually can't sustain their health on grass alone. As long as they're healthy grass fed cows, then I promote grass fed cheese.

And then from there what? Organic?

Yeah, organic. You know, any ways that you're kind of looking to buy your regular foods anyways are good practices to bring in there. But yeah, I would say the big one is local. Then making sure it only has those four ingredients, making sure you pick out one that your family loves.

And for anyone that's sensitive to lactose, is aged cheese gonna have less of it? Is there a truth to that? That the more aged the cheese or the harder the cheese, the, the more possibility they won't have issue?

Yeah, absolutely. So the lactic bacterias that we talked about, they feed on the lactose and they ferment it into lactic acid. So if a cheese Is age longer, for example, a Parmesan, there's probably very little lactose actually in it. So if you are truly lactose intolerant, you can probably consume those cheeses.

So Parmesan is one. What's some others?

That would be an example, long aged cheddar. Colby, what other ones?

Is there like a specific age with the cheddar? Like that? It should be. Do you happen to know that?

I don't know exactly, but I would say any cheese that was aged probably over like three months, honestly, by the time that they get to where they're being wrapped and stored, there's very little lactose left into those cheese anyways. But if you're truly, truly lactose allergy, you shouldn't consume cheese. But because there will be traces of lactose in there, if you're just intolerant of it, you know, you could probably even consume fresher aged cheeses.

You have been working with cheese now for 10 years. Has there ever been like a kind of concern or fear that what if I become lactose intolerant, you know, from just consuming it so much? Because, you know, there's a possibility when someone does something so much that they can become sensitive to it. Is there that been a fear or has that ever come up for you or your family?

I don't think it's ever been a fear that I've thought about too much. I actually think that a lot of people that presume that they're lactose intolerant, this is again, just my opinion, but I think a lot of people that presume that they're lactose intolerant might actually be sensitive to the proteins in milk. So there's different types of proteins that cows can have in their milk. So I think a lot of times that's maybe where that's kind of stemming from. I feel like if you're fermenting milk, it's just way more easier to digest. I actually don't drink a lot of just raw milk that is fresh. Most of the dairy products that I'm consuming have been fermented. Yeah, I haven't ever worried about it, but I think that really helps with digestion.

Yeah, in a sense, it's almost like you're saying, like, if you just kind of properly prepare it, use the cleanest and most natural ingredients, that, you know, life kind of will protect you.

In a sense, it's like pre digesting it a little bit for your body so that it's more bioavailable for you and that you can actually take those nutrients and use them.

So let's just say now someone's like, okay, I really, I want to make my first fermented or cheese dairy product. Where should they start? Should they start with yogurt and what's your thought on that?

Yeah, I think yogurt is a great starting point. Kefir is also a really great starting point if you have access to fresh raw milk. That clabber that I talked about is also like probably my number one starting point. If you have a dairy animal, you have to be keeping a clabber culture because it's such an amazing product. You know, we eat a lot of clabber in our house. So probably if you don't have a dairy animal or anything though, if you can get access to some kefir grains, they're gonna be a really easy dairy product for you to kind of keep. Just like a sourdough starter feeding every day, getting this product every day that you're able to consume. And if you can't get your hands on any kefir grains, that yogurt is also a really great starting point.

Can we actually give people a basic recipe for you choose either yogurt or clabber.

I'll give a recipe for yogurt because it's probably just kind of the one that is most available to most people. But basically what you're doing when you make yogurt is you're pasteurizing the milk, which seems funny, but don't worry, we're going to add bacteria back into it. So you heat it up to a high temperature. So usually about 190 degrees Fahrenheit. And this pasteurizes out any of the raw milk bacterias, or if it's already pasteurized milk, it pasteurizes out any other bacterias that have environmentally been introduced. And it also changes the composition of the milk so that you're going to get a creamier texture. So it's also important for that creamy texture of yogurt to heat up to that high temperature. And then what you're going to do is you're going to lower the temperature back down to a good fermenting temperature. So usually this is about 110 degrees for yogurt culture because it's like I said before, that thermophilic, warm loving bacteria. So you're gonna cool it down to 110, then you're gonna add in your starter culture. And so if you don't have any yogurt culture, you can just use yogurt from the Grocery store, just make sure that it has live bacterias in it so it hasn't been pasteurized after the making of it. Cause it's crazy. Sometimes yogurt is made commercially and then they pasteurize the yogurt out, basically kill all the good stuff. So just plain yogurt from the grocery store that still has live bacterias in it, you can add that in. You're gonna add a quarter cup of yogurt in per gallon of milk used, and then you're going to just stir it up and let it sit in a warm place for about eight hours. And then it should be nice, beautifully thick yogurt.

You're only putting in the refrigerator when it's kind of at the flavor or the culture that you want it to be. Right. So in many ways I know, like for example, eggs don't always have to be kept in, particularly if you're getting them from, from a fresh farm. They don't have to be kept in the refrigerator. Is that true with some cheeses as well?

To a point. Cheese making is the decomposition of milk. So it's like fancy composting. So cheeses that you're making would be safe to consume even though you left them at room temperature. But they're going to continue to evolve, they're going to continue to ferment. And because they're at a warmer temperature, that might not be a desirable ferment. It might not taste good. So cooler temperatures are good for cheeses to be stored in, just not as cool as your regular refrigerator. So, like fresh dairy products like yogurt and stuff, they can be stored in your regular refrigerator. In fact, I recommend it. But for like, actual cheeses, usually they're stored between about 50 and 60 degrees Fahrenheit. So a lot of people store them in like their cellars or their attics. I have a special refrigerator that I have a thermostat hooked up to that. I just keep it at that temperature.

Oh, similar to how people, you know, keep wine or something like that.

Yeah, exactly. Wine fridges, like lots of people use wine fridges as cheese. Cheese caves.

You've taught a lot of people how to make cheese. Do you find that there. There is a specific mindset that helps for, for them to enjoy making cheese.

I think, just not overcomplicating it. I think that it's very easy to go into it and one, you don't know anything. And then there's all these new things that you're learning. And so you're, as you learn it's really easy to become overwhelmed. So what I recommend people do is don't research too much before you dive in. Just order your ingredients, basically pick one recipe, make that recipe, and then make it over and over and over again until it feels comfortable before you start branching out and trying to do too many different things. I think that is sort of the best mindset to get in because it is so easy to overwhelm yourself. And cheese making isn't just the especially aged cheese. Making is not just the making part, it's also the aging part. And so, sure, you learn how to make this cheese, but then now you have to learn how to age it. And so it just helps so much if you just do one cheese and get really, really good at making it and then add, add in more cheeses after that.

What do you think the learning curve is like if someone's brand new to it? Are we talking a month, are we talking six months to actually start to feel like you? Not a master, but like that. Okay, I got this.

Depends what type of cheese you're trying to make. I recommend that you just start with simple dairy processing. Start with making, like, yogurt, and you can become a master of yogurt in, like, two, three batches. You might even feel like you're a master of making yogurt after the first batch because it really is just that easy. And so that's going to just give you some confidence to sort of go from there. And then if you just sort of pick one cheese, plug away at it, get good at it, you're going to kind of become a master of each cheese as you go along. And that's going to propel your learning a lot quicker than trying to bounce around all sorts of different cheeses.

What's a good first cheese for someone to start? We mentioned yogurt for, for that yogurt or kefir. But what's a good first cheese?

Make some yogurt, then make some cream cheese, and then maybe like some fresh cottage cheese or something like that. A really good sort of aged cheese to start with is feta, especially because you don't really need a lot of fancy equipment. You probably have everything in your kitchen that you already need to make feta. You just have to order a few of the ingredients. So that's the first good aged cheese to make would be feta.

You obviously focus on cow, but how does species affect the cheese? I'm sure you've worked with goat as well, right?

I haven't done much of it, but I Teach a lot of goat milk cheesemakers and also sheep milk cheesemakers. I wish I had a sheep. Sheep's milk is like, it's amazing. It makes such good cheese. All ruminant species of animals can. Their milk can be turned into cheese. And you can make all of the same cheeses that I make with cow's milk, with goat's milk or with sheep's milk. It's going to be basically the same process. The taste is going to be a little bit different. You can't take the goat out of the goat milk and you can't take the sheep out of the sheep's milk. But those kind of nuances, they're fine. They just, I would say, add to the cheese.

Have you ever worked with camel?

I've never worked with camel, but that would be cool. I think if I had, like to have a wish list for species, it'd be like camel, yak, donkey. I want to try making cheese with all those ones.

It's funny. I asked about the camel, though, because I was. I was in some Amish country in Pennsylvania, and I learned that they, at least in that area near Gap, Pennsylvania, they have a camel farm. And. And it was really interesting. I was talking to a functional doctor who was dealing with a patient whose child was having lots of issues, and he recommended that they try camel milk. And they did. And the child's issues completely went away. So I was like, wow, so there's some power in camel milk. What's that all about? But I didn't get much further than that. But it sounds like it's new to you as well.

The only observation I had of someone using camel milk was there's this guy, his account is the Milk Trekker on Instagram. He goes all over the world looking for traditional cheesemaking. And so he was. They were moving camels from someplace and yeah, had all this camel milk and stuff, and they had these little udder covers to cut so that they could calf share with the camels. It was pretty cool.

Now, what role do you think cheese making plays in building resilience in our homesteading communities or just in general, when you are supporting people and learning it, what do you find, particularly in today's world where resilience is maybe potentially a lost art, but it's also so important for us to be moving more towards because we need more of it. Right?

It's so important that we learn at least a little bit of the skill of cheese making on our homesteads or in our communities, because we don't want it Become a lost art. We want to preserve all of these traditions that are lost already. And so we don't want to lose the ones that we're finding. So that's really important. And it's also really important to know how to preserve your milk. Like milk was never meant to be refrigerated. Refrigeration is brand new in cheese making, if you're looking at, in terms of the thousands of years that cheese has been made. So we don't want to lose the skill of being able to preserve our milk and save it for seasons when we don't have milk. Because there is seasonality to milk and to cheese making that we just don't recognize these days because you can always go to the grocery store and you can always get milk. And so that's important to kind of recognize as well.

Cheese making, as you mentioned, is a lost art. I mean, in many ways. And so there's a real effort and clearly you're leading, you know, one of the leaders of this effort to support people in maintaining traditional cheese making skills to help spread the knowledge of that. If we were to see cheese making disappear as a skill, but you had to preserve, you know, one part of that process for future generations, what do you think that would be and why?

I think that we would never see cheese making completely disappear because milk wants to be turned to cheese. If you milk out of a cow and you let it sit out, it's going to clobber, it's going to turn into cheese. And. And so I think kind of that knowledge that if we lean into natural cheesemaking, we lean into the natural properties of milk, that would be what I would want to preserve. You know, the idea that, okay, we've lost everything, but if we lean into what milk actually wants to do, we could learn what we need to know. It would reteach us if we really leaned into the natural properties of milk.

I love that thought like that. It's almost like the milk, it has a desired outcome and we just have to listen to it. You know, we just have to be patient and listen to it and let it do its thing. That's really cool. Obviously you provide educational programs. Anyone that's interested in learning more particularly if you want to dive into the collabor, where would they find you and what should they. Where should they start?

I have a website, so cheesefromscratch.com jump on my newsletter list. So I send out a newsletter every Monday. I've got a book coming out in spring 2025. It's being published through Homestead Living. So I'm very excited about that. So if you're on my newsletter list, you'll, you'll find out about that first and then for like the kind of day to day things. I'm on Instagram, I'm on YouTube. So you can find all sorts of kind of inspiration and tutorials and stuff on both of those channels in your.

Handle and we'll put that in the show notes. But if you just want to verbally.

Say it at and then cheese underscore from underscore scratch underscore.

What's the Milkmaid Society?

So that's my monthly membership club. It teaches all things cheese making and dairy processing and milk cows and dairy goats. Information created by me, but also I've hired, I think I've got like 30 people have contributed content to the Milkmaid Society. So it was kind of like the goal of it was to become like this ultimate resource for people, milkmaids or milkmen, who wanted to have everything in one spot. It's been going for two and a half years now and there's a ton of information on there.

That's a good point though. Do, do you find that cheese making skews more female or male?

I don't think so anymore, but I think that it maybe used to be sort of more of a male art. In the last 100 years it was sort of more of a male dominated area. But I think as more people are learning how to make cheese on their homesteads, it's kind of, it's for everyone.

Well, thank you again and we'll put all the links in the show notes. I hope that this episode has inspired people to start making, whether it's yogurt or kefir, making something from scratch. Because I really do believe that controlling our ingredients is the way to go. And you know, what you find in the store, whether it's ultra processed, ultra pasteurized, has more than four ingredients, there's lots of things that you just have to be aware of. And, and I love that you're really teaching people to kind of take that power back. I'm looking forward to hopefully converting lots of people to starting to make their own cheese. Before we go though, where would people like, let's just say if they do want to make kefir, are you teaching them how to make it themselves without outside source or where do you usually recommend people purchase the freeze dried cultures if they are using anything?

So in the United States, the best one probably is cheesemaking.com it's New England Cheese Making Company. And if you're in Canada, probably the best one would be Glengarry Cheese Making out of Ontario. You can also order from there if you're in the States too. So those are good places to sort of start and get your ingredients. As far as kefir, it's nice if you can find somebody in your area that is already making it. And so kefir is very cool. It's, you know, the grains are all probably derived from one grain that was made like thousands and thousands of years ago. So if you can find somebody in your area that has kefir grains kind of going, then you can take some of their kefir grains and start your own.

How should someone try to source raw milk if they are interested in going that, that direction?

So it definitely depends where you are located. If you're in the States, there is a cool map. It's on a website called realmilk.com so you can go onto that map and it kind of links you with people that are selling raw milk. If you're in Canada, we don't have that map and it is quite illegal to buy raw milk. But, you know, just ask around. There's Facebook pages for almost every province to help farmers sort of discreetly link with consumers. Ask around in your communities. Ask around at your farmer's markets. In a lot of parts of North America, raw milk is illegal. So you do have to be discreet about it, but you probably will be able to find it if you dig hard enough.

Well, thank you again and thank you all for listening or watching this episode of Everyday Ancestral. Make sure to follow us, make sure to subscribe, make sure to share. This is the way we get the word out. And please stay curious. Thank you again, Robin. Thank you so much for joining me on Everyday Ancestral. If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe. Subscribe so you don't miss the next one. You can find the show notes, links and resources mentioned@eatpluck.com that's e a t p l u c k.com and hey, if you know someone who gets something out of this, share it with them too. Stay curious, live well and keep it Ancestral.