Mary and the Cheesemaker

The daylight begins in a slower manner.  The morning sun takes a different path across the floor of my room and does not warm the floorboards as it does in the summer.  I, too, wish to begin my day in a slower manner;  it is so warm under my covers.  But I know today will be a long day.  After my lessons, Mother is taking me to a farm nearby to watch the task of making cheese.  Father said it is smelly work and not everyone makes a good cheese. The making of good cheese is not merely a task but a completion of a godly cycle.  I am not certain what he is trying to tell me.  He sells only the best tasting cheese in his store. The farmer's wife who puts her cheese in Father's mercantile receives store credits.

I hope Josh and Brent come along today to watch the making of cheese.  They will not be underfoot. No one ever seems to notice them but me.  They are my favorite friends.  Mother has told me that one must pay careful attention to make a really fine cheese.  She explained that fresh, raw milk is heated with rennet, which had been dried and saved from the fall slaughtering.  Rennet comes from the stomach of a cow.  Josh made a horrid face when Mother spoke about that.  I watched the curd form on the mixture of heated milk and rennet.  It took a long time.  Josh and Brent and I walked about outside while we waited. Brent was leaping about, trying to catch a fly in his fist.

Then Mother called me into the dairy house to see the farmer's wife break the curds and begin to drain them. She worked in some butter and wrapped it in a cheese cloth before she placed it in a round mold and settled it in a cheese press. It seemed to take an hour.  She would change and wash the cloths as the whey seeped out. The whey was smelly.  It smelled sour to Josh and Brent and me.  Brent said he was breathing through his mouth the entire time!!!  She would repack the cheese in a dry cloth and put it back in the press for almost two days.  We went home while the cheese was aging.  But the attention to the cheese making would still continue.

Mother told me that the woman who is making the cheese will turn the ripening cheese each day and polish it with butter.  Sometimes sage is used to flavor a new milk cheese.  Father will only accept the best cheese in his store.  Because I have a good, light hand with butter making, it is his hope I shall become proficient in the making of cheese.  Josh and Brent have watched me making butter and singing.  They tell me that I know how to speak to the milk that comes from the cow that feeds on our tender pasture………and that is what makes my butter turn sweet.  I am really going to try to learn about this godly cycle.  I think I can.

A person who works with their hands

is a laborer,

A person who works with their hands and head

is a craftsman,

A person who works with their hands, head, and heart

is an artisan!

-St.Francis