Curds and Cider

This is dairy country up here. The whole county is covered with dairy farms and barns and fields of corn to feed the cows. One huge commercial operation has over 5000 cows. They even sell overseas. Two of our hosts sons have dairy farms and we've been hearing about them, and even visited them, and learned that farming has changed a whole bunch since I was a kid. The cows don't go outside anymore. Instead, they stay inside in "freestalls". They don't stand on concrete, however, as that would make their legs lame. So instead they are either on thick rubber mats or even thicker "mattresses". Their food is delivered to them from wagons and is a protein rich mixture of chopped hay, alfalfa and corn. A good cow may produce 100 to 120 pounds of milk a day. Being inside and not our walking on the stony ground means their hooves need a pedicure once a year.

There is a tremendous amount of hand work on the farm but running a farm would not be possible without the many machines and some automation. They have giant tractors with enclosed cabs with heat and AC. Some of the milking apparatus is semi-automated, self storing the equipment when the cow is done being milked. They don't use silos. Instead, the chopped hay, "haylage", and the chopped corn is stored in bunkers. These are concrete pads surrounded with precast concrete walls, like a three sided garage. The haylage or corn is dumped in and pushed together and packed down and then covered with white plastic tarps held down with tires. Most farms have several huge bunkers.

Of course, all these cows means lots of milk. All of the milk from my cousins' farms goes to Kraft to the largest cream cheese processing plant in the world. They even have a huge cream cheese festival once a year. I'm going to have to come back for that. I hear that they have a cheesecake the size of a good sized kitchen that gets cut up and distributed.

Some of the milk from the farms goes into making cheese, some of which is distributed by the farmers co-op store.

The cheese is mostly cheddar and varies from very mild to extremely sharp. I bought some labeled XXXX Extreme. But Diane doesn't like sharp cheese so I bought her a package of cheese curds. Cheese curd is the first stage of cheese production, before the cheese is pressed into blocks or rounds and aged. It is the mildest form of cheddar cheese. We got to go to a farm to see it being made.

The whole mornings milking was put into this huge stainless steel tub and rennet was added to separate the milk solids from the liquid or whey. The milk was very slowed heated a degree at a time and the ph, or acidity, is tested to get it to the correct level. then the whey is drained off and used to feed calves and the solidified cake of cheese curd is cut into these mats. They are then drained and turned every ten minutes until they are the right consistency. They are then sliced into individual curds and bagged and sold by the pound. And they are delicious!

After that, we went on down Rt. 12 past Copenhagen to the little town of Burrville, and the locally reknown, Burrville Cider Mill and Bakery. Oh boy, more food.

This is a good sized cider pressing facility that distributes fresh cider throughout the North Country. They also have doughnuts, baked fresh daily, and pies, and cookies, and maple syrup and other goodies.

They have a spigot in the wall where you can pour yourself a sample cup of cider fresh as it flows off the press.

Of course, where there's an old mill, there's liable to be an old mill pond and the dam that backs it up and in this case a lovely waterfall to watch while you sip your cider and munch on that fresh doughnut.