Cheesemaking and Time
Over the past six months, I've become increasingly fascinated with the concept and perception of time, especially as it relates to the long history of cheesemaking .I find myself delving into mental ruminations about how cheesemaking recipes functioned before the invention of clocks, how cheese itself serves as a marker of time, and most importantly, how cheesemaking alters my own perceptions of time. These thoughts began last fall, one late night, after evening milking- which concluded a day of cheesemaking- I had a brief but strong feeling of connection to the timeless laws of nature and all the cheesemakers of distant past. My normal mode of thinking is to perceive history to be concretely separate from my own experiences. The technology I use from day to day, the need to use social media for the business, and the way milk and cheese is perceived by the public today is much different from 10 years ago, let alone 100 years ago, or take back cheesemaking to it’s roots- 9000 years ago. Although, that night, sitting in front of my journal, pen in hand, I felt an intimacy to others that I have never met and who have died long ago. It was a reminder that we are always standing on the shoulders of giants, even if we don’t realize it.
One major reason I do enjoy making cheese and milking cows comes down to the fact that people have been doing this for a very long time. The history in this field is dripping from the seams. Cheesemaking is intimately tied up in culture and the birth of human civilization. Early forms of the written language counted flocks. Dairy and cheesemaking helped spark the first cities and empires during the early Neolithic period. I am reading ‘Cheese and Culture’ by Paul S. Kindstedt, and I have been trying to soak up all the information. It’s exactly the book I need at the moment, and I can tell, as the author describes in the beginning, I am sure the book just scratches the surface. Most information and experiences get lost in time.
Cheesemaking’s rich and long history can be overwhelming, especially as a beginner in cheesemaking. I like coming from a place of naivety, where I don’t have a blind eye, but I need to take it step by step without exactly looking at the big picture. If I were to learn the art of cheesemaking in Europe, I would likely have a much more rigid protocol to work with, at least from my own creative standpoint. Rules and protocols are entrenched in European cheesemaking of what can be made where and how exactly it is made. The 7 day class I took at Parish Hill was super helpful and that’s the extent of my formal education. The rest of my education has been from me playing around with milk. I am a by-product from the environment: which mostly is birthed from naivety and ignorance and because of that, I’m not bogged down by the tremendous amount of importance that cheesemaking has had with the birth of civilization.
BUT if there is 9000 years of cheesemaking, why am I learning everything from scratch? Or at least feels like I am. Something that people have been doing for so long, seems like it should be more common knowledge? Where does all of these experiences and these skills go? It makes me think about cooking, which is even more basic that cheesemaking. A children must be shown how to cook. If you give a 3 year old a knife and some ingredients and ask them to make dinner with no previous experience, who knows what will happen. All I can really think is that every generation starts anew. What is it about the human condition, that we so easily forget?
I am still standing on the shoulders of giants, but it sure doesn’t feel like it.
Perhaps 9000 years really isn’t that long? It’s long for a human to perceive but really a blink of an eye to the grand show? Cheesemaking has made me contemplate, time doesn’t exist without the observer. Time is also less tangible than we are led to believe.
After that late night dealing with animals and milk in the fall, I came to understand that milk has always behaved in the same way. It will culture and then eventually clabber, following its own natural path. And as a herdsman, I am constantly working with the laws of nature -- the moon, the stars, the sun, the grass, the bacteria in the air and in the soil, and the wind in the trees. These are all things that have been a part of everyday life for herders and cheesemakers for the past 9,000 years. Finding the animals in the morning among the dewy summer grass gives me a deeper understanding of what it means to be human. Yet it also sparks a curiosity and intrigue that has me questioning this illusion of time. Sometimes I feel like I can almost reach through the veil of time and touch something that remains constant underneath the ever-changing surface.
I want to write more on this… as time goes on.
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