Sour Milk School, April 19-23, 2024, $600
Natural Cheesemaking Workshop with Trevor Warmedahl
Trevor Warmedahl is a nomadic educator, cheesemaker, volunteer and researcher, who has meticulously observed and documented traditional dairying, grazing, and cheesemaking practices of pastoral people in Mongolia, Tibet, Italy, Austria, Spain, Albania, Slovenia, and Georgia, as well as around the United States. He studies the rich variety of relationships people have developed with landscapes, livestock, and indigenous microbes, as well as the lives and traditions of the people involved with raising dairy animals and fermenting their milk.
We are so delighted and honored to have this opportunity to use our space and our life to host Trevor and his Sour Milk School.
The Sour Milk School is a mobile educational project that collaborates with fermenters, chefs, dairy farmers, communities, and cheesemakers to offer workshops on methods of natural cheesemaking and milk fermentation. The focus is on working with fresh raw milk, its microbial ecology healthy and intact. By cultivating the microbes indigenous to this milk, starter cultures can be cultivated to make essentially any style of cheese. Milk for the demonstrations is sourced from local producer of goat and sheep milk, hopefully some cow milk as well.
This intensive workshop will be hands on, with morning and afternoon sessions, featuring thoughtful simple, local, farm spun lunches, and will provide a diverse educational experience, blending demonstration, experiential sensory development, intellectual, and philosophical components. Workshop guests will be invited to participate in our morning milking routines and shared potluck-meals in the evenings. Camping and a few delightful cabins are available on site for a small added cost. We are trying to cap this workshop at 20 folks, to maximize the quality of experience.
Tickets can be purchased at: https://wondernutfarm.square.site/. Email questions to eve@wondernutfarm.com.
Areas of Focus
What factors lead to good cheese milk, how milk microbes behave, which methods are available for steering the fermentation.
How to make and use rennet and plant coagulants. How the choice of coagulant shapes the cheese flavor and texture.
By seeing, smelling, touching, and tasting the process, students are participating with microbes and fermentation in a multi-sensory experience. We will use measuring tools (pH meter) to begin to train the senses, as a foundation that can lead to students becoming competent makers.
We’ll focus on methods of making lactic style cheese (chevre) to be aged or eaten fresh, Feta, and Ricotta. We’ll also plan to make Tomme and Halloumi.
What common tools and DIY equipment can be used to make and age cheese, natural materials for cheese shaping and storage.
MILK WANTS TO BE CHEESE.
WE ARE SIMPLY STEERING IT DOWN ITS MANY POSSIBLE PATHS.
WITH RESPECT FOR MICROBES, LIVESTOCK, LANDSCAPES, AND OUR BODIES.
