Cleaning

Trying to catch up with cleaning. Mom and Doris are due out today. Claire has been helping me clean the first floor. She basically moves things into a room designated by me (mainly the front room). Moving the rest of the cheese stuff to the aging room or the cheese plant. It is odd to actually have a designated spot after months of using my front room as a warehouse!

We will be bleaching everything once she gets up from the nap. I also have two house plants to transplant and a strip of flower beds near the foundation of the house that needs weeding before they get here.

We did "Redneck" rennovations in the back room. We generally use this as a guest room. To get the 2-door cooler in the laundry room area (future cut & wrap room), we needed to take a wall down. No bother. After we did that and moved the cooler, laid the floor and finished painting the walls, we needed panneling (as I am too cheap to use anything else on this - a temporary structure- until I have another facility in a year or two). We took a wall down in the back room to use the paneling in the cut & wrap room! It is a wall my father-in-law needs to get to to do re-wiring, so... I put up two old shower curtains (I use them for paint cloths after they loose one or two ring holes) over the new hole in the wall. Staples were provided by the staple gun.

I still need to move the beds around, take the formica table and reclining chair out and bleach those floors. I should probably have Claire move some of her art supplies into the back room near the shower curtains so that I can use that as a backdrop for her art work until Kenny gets out to work on the wall...

Marcia is in the hospital. She sounded better this morning, but we are all pretty worried. We'll try to get out to see them next month instead of them coming out and Kenny obligating himself to helping us with our 8-10 page to-do list. (both sides single spaced).

I guess feta will be made on Friday Aug 5th. Harold will come to take photos of the operation so that we can post some of the basic cheesemaking steps on this blog site and our web site. Feta is such a confidence builder cheese. It is a great one to teach the beginner about acidity and brining.

Well, Claire is awake now. Back to cleaning...

Kick in the Butt

Sometimes you just need a kick in the butt. I got one today when Robin at Regional Access used info from the web site for the flier announcement. What can I say? I don't like the work that was done to the site. Now I have to actually do something about it.

The guy came by to look at the slide on to see what he can do to hook it up. He has a unit, but it may be too big. While that may sound ok, you don't want a big unit because not using it enough it just as bad as using it too much. Dave told him within 2 weeks.

Lables may not be ready until after my first delivery date unless I pay a rush fee... I know an emergency on my part... I was waiting for my plant number and a payment from... I'll have to pay the rush fee and do just the origional 3 I wanted and take the hit. I'll have a bigger order coming up soon.

Helped Elmond make ice cream for the college today. Fattening job. Had to check flavors to make sure enough "wompf" (actual ingredient name), vanilla, et al was added. Three flavors and a couple of tastes of a 14% super premium ice cream mix later and I understand why I still have the average female waste size! I think it was wise for me to stick with cheese for my product of choice.

Need to rebudget this next phase of the business and do a strategic plan. Dave's game with the window people and an hour and twenty minutes followed by Bruce looking for packaging and calf chores whiped out any chance of developing a schedule or working on anything worth while..

Life is good. Have feta and gouda on the calander for raw milk cheeses next week and frech lactic and frech moz for pasteurized cheeses. Now to get the rest of this business/life in order...

Evolution of Cheese Business

Well, I finally did it. I quite that job. I've been busier since I did that. Increased production, found a distributor, got my plant license... We've made gouda on the farm now. Need to upgrade aging facilities. Bought a slide in for our truck pretty cheap and have a guy to look at it today. (will eventually be a dedicated brine room).

Peter Dixon will be out to do an Italian Cheeses class in October. I'm working on a couple of other cheese classes. Will have a flier out today for that class. I hope to have different speakers/cheesemakers out. I want to invigorate people in this area. Have more GREAT cheese being produced here.

Our dairy plan is small. 13'6" x 14'2". That includes the boiler room. The cut & wrap room is in the house (seperate entrance to outside). I am trying to get my head around aging and caves. I think I will have to push more cheese so that I can justify going to NYC this winter for a couple of days. I want to see the new "caves" at Murray's and also see Artisinal's caves... I have a list of northeast cheesemakers to visit as well. I think a winter tour (hopefully when they are not making cheese) can work for a few people...

Gouda and Havarti. That is what I have settled on for now. They are waxed and can handle my rustic aging conditions. Eventually, we will do others... I'm still searching for that sexy cheese.

Well, off to finish business plans for clients so that I can finance aging. Yes, started consulting again. Flex time and more meaningful work...I need that aging facility (and groceries).