First Day on the Farm

Yesterday, Shelly and I spent our first day on the farm. We helped Abbe and Anderson trim hooves and vaccinate all the goats in one of their two barns. The other barn houses a few prize pigs, two horses, a llama named Darrel (a herding animal used to protect the goats from coyotes), four billygoats, and a few other creatures.



The female goats are remarkably gentle, docile, and even affectionate. In reality, they're probably looking for a little grain, but it seems that they're eager to be pet when they stand up on the gate and extend their necks to greet you.

The kids (babies) are especially cute. As we gently pinned the adults to the ground to trim their hooves and administer the oral vaccine, the babies bleated for attention and nibbled at the backs of our shirts from their nearby pen.



It took about four hours to do all of the work, and after we finished up, we joined Abbe and Anderson on their deck for lunch in the sunshine. It was a pretty rewarding day, to say the least.

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Today I'm going to meet Shelly at the Tremont Farmer's Market on Cleveland's West Side, where Lucky Penny sells cheese every Tuesday.

I'll post later this week with a little about Book 2 of Vergil's Georgics. Until then--

Portage County: The Goat Cheese Capital of Ohio

As bizarre as it might seem, there are actually three creameries producing goat cheese and goat's milk products in Portage County. All three of them are run by women.

There's Lucky Penny, where Shelly and I are interning; MacKenzie Creamery, located in Hiram; and Ornery Goat, a smaller operation located in Edinburg, near Ravenna.

Last week while grocery shopping at Heinen's in Hudson, I spotted a few of MacKenzie's chevres in the cheese section, so I decided to pick one up. The next day, Shelly brought home some fresh chevre from the Lucky Penny creamery, and on Friday night, we had a "taste test" with my mom and dad.



To be honest, both chevres taste similar. There may be a slight difference in texture: the Lucky Penny chevre is perhaps creamier, more spreadable than MacKenzie. But both have a subtle lemony taste, and neither of them--especially when spread on a cracker--are overly funky or farmy.

It makes sense that they're so much alike: both come from grass farms close together, so the type of grass that the goats eat is probably the same. In sum, both are good, local products.

And speaking of local products, we stopped by the Hudson farmer's market on Saturday morning. The Lucky Penny booth (third one down in picture below) was sold out of all its product by the time we got there at 11:30.



So a lot of people are eating goat cheese around here. Cool.

First Cheesemaking Day

This past Thursday, Shelly spent her first full day at the creamery learning how to make cheese. Here's how most of the process goes:

1. The goat's milk is pumped from the raw milk vat into the pasteurization tank. Because it's a fresh cheese (as opposed to an aged cheese), it has to be pasteurized for a minimum of 30 minutes at 145 degrees, according to Ohio Agricultural code.



2. After pasteurization, the milk is cooled and cultures are added.

3. After another hour, the rennet (made from vegetables) is added.

4. After another hour, the milk begins to solidify and the curd separates from the whey. This took about 50 minutes.



5. Then the curd is cut and stirred with a huge plastic shovel to prevent reforming.

6. The whey is then drained into buckets for use in brining. Eventually, some of the whey is taken back to the farm and fed to the pigs.

7. Next, the cheesemaking team uses big ladles to scoop the curd into cheese molds, where more whey is drained off and the cheese begins to set.



...at this point, Shelly had been at the creamery for over nine hours. She'll find out more about the final few steps soon, and I'll post more when I can.

Georgics - Book 1

The title of Vergil's poem about farming, the Georgics, comes from the Greek verb georgein, "to farm." So Georgics roughly translates (or translates roughly) to "Farmings." Here's the quick and dirty:

• It was published in or around 29 BCE, so it was written after the Eclogues and before the Aeneid. Octavian was not yet declared "Augustus" (this will happen in 27), but having defeated Antony & Cleopatra two years prior at Actium, he is now sole ruler of Rome.

• Like the Aeneid, it is composed in dacytlic hexameter verse - 2,188 lines, to be exact. It is divided into four books. For more on dactylic hexameter, click here.

• Most critics would call the Georgics a didactic poem on farming, but at times it has the tone or feel of an epic poem. At the end of Book 1, for example, Vergil leaps from agricultural portents into contemporary history/politics: "Who dare say the Sun is false? He and no other was moved to pity Rome on the day that Caesar died..." (solem quis dicere falsum / audeat? [...] ille etiam exstincto miseratus Caesare Romam) (I.463-466ff; trans. Fairclough).

Vergil grew up in the north of Italy in a small village just outside of Mantua. Although he was sent away to school at a young age to pursue a life beyond his native farmland, his familiarity with agriculture and pastoral landscapes enables him to paint many remarkably vivid images of crop fields, pastures, and all other kinds of flora and fauna in Book I. Here's a nice example:

Mark, too, when in the woods the walnut clothes itself
thickly in blossom and bends its fragrant boughs: if the
fruit prevails, the corn crops will keep pace with it, and a
great threshing come with a great heat; but if the shade is
abundant in the fullness of leafage, in vain shall your floor
thresh stalks, rich only in chaff...
(I.187-192, trans. Fairclough)

While a critic would be quick to point out that Vergil draws from many classical predecessors, like Hesiod, Nicander, Lucretius, and others, it's clear that he knows his way around the countryside. I'm ashamed to say that I couldn't identify this or that tree in the woods; that when I'm driving past a field of greens I can't say for sure what crop is growing there.

I imagine that long ago, when you traveled by foot or horseback or wagon, you moved at a slow enough pace to get to know the names of nature's vast catalogue by look, touch and smell. Next Monday when I take to the fields at Lucky Penny, I hope at the very least to begin this sort of education. What kind of grass? What type of tree? What weeds are poisonous?

Vergil knew--or appeared to know--such wonderful details about the flora of his native land. If I have time, I'd like to post about his equally replete knowledge of the sky and stars; he has a lot to say about them in Book I too.

But that's enough about the Georgics for today (perhaps too much: sorry, had to nerd out a bit!). Meanwhile, Shelly's been busy afield and at the creamery. On Tuesday, she went on a milk pick-up at a small goat farm in Amish country about an hour away (see the picture above). Turns out that Lucky Penny also collects milk from a few small farms in the area to meet their demand and to support the slow food movement.

Today, Shelly's at the creamery all day making feta with that milk. Tonight I'll find out how it went, and I'll be sure to give the details soon...

Meeting at the Creamery

This morning Shelly & I had a meeting at the creamery in Kent with Abbe Turner, the founder and owner of Lucky Penny. She gave us a tour of the creamery, which has been up and running for five months now, and then we discussed what our duties will be for the next 2 months as interns.

The creamery is housed in what used to be the Kent Labor Temple. It's a strange coincidence that my parents had their wedding reception in the Temple's main hall (which is now used partly as a retail space) 36 years ago. Shelly will spend much of her time there learning the ins-and-outs of the cheesemaking process. Currently, Lucky Penny produces fresh goat's milk chevre, goat's milk feta, and cajeta, which is a caramel sauce also made with goat's milk.

Abbe showed us the makeroom (where the making of the cheese actually happens), the raw milk room, the packing and brining room, and other areas of the creamery. The picture above features the raw milk vat, which is currently loaded by hand.

Oh, did I mention that the farm is home to over 160 dairy goats? I'll be finding out more about that next Monday, when I spend my first full day there. The tentative plan for day one on the farm is to build a fence. We'll see if Vergil has anything to say about that...I'll post later this week with something about Book 1 of the Georgics, which I finished reading a few days back.

In the meantime, I'll be spending my days with Rheinhart, who turns 2 years old today! We have lots of visits with friends and family planned, and we may even start swimming lessons tomorrow. And I thought I was done with the Roosevelt High pool for good back in 1995...

Mus Urbanus -> Mus Rusticus

Yesterday morning we packed up the car and I made the 7 hour drive from Brooklyn to Ohio. Shelly and Rheinhart took a flight in the afternoon and we all arrived at my parents' place just outside of Kent around 4:30 in the afternoon. Hence, the title of this entry: Mus Urbanus ("City Mouse") -> Mus Rusticus ("Country Mouse").

The title of the entire blog is simply Mus Rusticus because for the next 2+ months I'll be here in the Ohio countryside (far away from the magna urbs - New York), and once a week I'll be working at the Lucky Penny Farm in rural Portage County and, from time-to-time, at the farm's creamery in town. Shelly will be interning at the farm and creamery too--but for five days a week (while I look after Hart!).

Our objective? To learn how to make cheese. But along the way, we'd both like to find out what the hard work of farming is really like...

The strangest thing about this experience for me (as it begins, at least) is that in the 18 or so years that I grew up here, I never paid any mind to what goes on in the surrounding farmland. To be honest, I wanted nothing to do with the parts of Portage County outside of Kent. But after college I moved to the city and I began to think more about the food I eat. Where does it come from? What's in it? Is it safe and healthy enough to share with my son? And one of the many corollaries of these thoughts was that I should see for myself what "farm-to-table" really means.

Hopefully, I'll figure out what it means in this blog, where I'm going to share anecdotes about my trials and bloopers on the farm. But I can't forget that my job as a Latin teacher back in the city is what gives me the freedom and means to move to the country for a little while. So I'm also going to work in a bit of Latin: each week I'll be reading a little from the Georgics, Vergil's poem about farming. If I'm lucky, I'll make some meaningful connections between the verses in the four books of his "most polished masterpiece" and the real everyday experience of laboring on a farm. We'll see if my

hoe is ever ready to assail the weeds,
[my] voice to terrify the birds,
[my] knife to check the shade over the darkened land,
and [my] prayers to invoke the rain...

(Translation of I.155-157 by H. Rushton Fairclough).