Cheese & Other Challenges…

After that first week of shadowing Sophia on the farm we were definitely about to be thrown in at the proverbial deep end. Late morning on Sunday I drove them down to the bus station and dropped them off for the beginning of their own adventure and break away from the farm and then made my way back to get our stuff moved into their house for the next 3 weeks while they would be travelling. I should probably frame this next part of our tale by revealing a little of what had been going on in our own minds up until this point. Way back when we first agreed to look after the farm it was a distant notion way off in the future. It was something interesting to tell people about; something that we were going to be doing in the future. That continued to be the case for the next couple of months, even when we were in Colombia it was something we would tell people about when they asked where we were going next “Oh we’re back to Costa Rica to look after a farm”. I’ve always had a bit of a bee in my bonnet about the saying ‘easier said than done’ – it seems like a bit of a useless statement when you dig into it because I struggle to think of many things which are actually more difficult to do than they are to say. So in pretty much every instance things are easier said than done. However, even though I loathe the frequently pointless use of that throwaway phrase it definitely applies to the words ‘we’re going to look after a farm’. Saying those 7 short works requires little effort and we had been happily saying it over and over for a few months so it had probably got even easier. Running a farm. Three words. We were about to discover that this was definitely, most certainly and without a shadow of a doubt ‘easier said than done’.

That first afternoon, for the first time, we had the responsibility for milking the goats, feeding all the animals and putting them to bed. We set off with our milking canister, milking jug, pot of warm water and a towel (for cleaning the goats teats prior to milking) and a couple of bananas for the horses Paloma & Smartie. It was pandemonium as soon as we went through the gate. The heavens had opened and so in addition to the stress and panic you might expect from suddenly finding yourself having to look after livestock we were doing it all in the middle of a tropical downpour. The rain also had the effect of driving all of the animals up towards that first gate to wait for us and so as soon as we went through we were faced with 5 wet sheep, 2 large horses and 7 hungry goats… and we were carrying bananas. So the goats were straight up to us trying to help themselves to the bananas which were meant for the horses and the horses were not especially happy about that either. On that first occasion we were definitely afraid of the animals. Horses are big. Really big. And when they’re right up in your face they can be at least a little bit intimidating. Goats have horns. Big pointy horns and they seem to enjoy ramming things with them, including people. Rosa is pretty much at the exact right height to be face-to-face with a goat and I’m still not sure if it was this or our protective parental paranoia but they seemed to be squaring up to her quite a bit. So naturally she was terrified of them.

We panicked and did a bit of shouting at each other because none of us really knew what to do but we did know that it wasn’t going quite right. Looking back on it now it reminds me a little bit of the early days of parenting when you suddenly find yourselves with a small baby that is crying for some unknown reason: neither of you knowing what needs to be done but both stressed by the situation you end up shouting at and blaming one another. Which doesn’t help. It also doesn’t help when trying to round up a bunch of animals for bedtime. Panicked humans, confused livestock and a deafening downpour of drenching rain. At the time I remember that we thought that the animals were giving us a hard time. That they were playing up, being difficult. Looking back now I think that they were probably as worried and confused as we were and our panic only fuelled the situation. Rest assured that over the coming weeks we were going to get better at this but after that first exhausting evening we returned to the house wondering what we’d gotten ourselves into. Putting animals to bed. Easier said than done.

The following morning was to be the first of many early starts to get up and do the morning milking. Exhausted by the first evening we’d all got to bed by around 8:30pm and so up just before 5am I’d had a decent amount of sleep. One bonus here was that the weather pattern was clear beautiful mornings and rain in the afternoon. Not so good when it came to the family routine of putting the animals to bed but a blessing for me in the early morning. The morning routine was also not so difficult. I had to get the milking gear together and then head down to start the process. I would first feed the horses a banana each (they eat the whole thing, with the skin) and then some of their feed goes in the bucket. Then get the food ready for the milking goats and get first Lily down to begin the milking. Usually by the time I had milked Lily, Diego would arrive and then he would take over the milking while I went off to get some breakfast. When I had been shadowing Sophia she told me that this gap between 6am-7am was the chance to get breakfast but in reality I never really settled into the same pattern. The rest of the family would usually still be sleeping and so it worked out better for me to grab a coffee and then keep going with some jobs so that I could stop for breakfast with them a little later in the morning. Usually I would get some bottles sterilised or get something else set up so that when the milking was finished I could get on and process it.

We had taken over operations at the beginning of a week and there was a bit of a backlog of milk in the fridge so I was straight into making hard cheese with that. The process takes around 5 hours of active attention; on and off tending to the cheese and then leaving it for a period. Finally it goes into a press and after the first 2 presses (gradually increasing the weight) is left overnight to be collected the following morning. Then it has to be floated in brine for a total of 8 hours. At this point it can either be waxed or aged. In total that’s almost a full 24 hours to turn around one cheese. In addition to it being a lot of work we were really struck by how much milk is required. The process I’ve described begins with 4 litres of goats milk. Bear in mind that before we get to that start point of 4 litres we have all of the feeding, tending and milking that goes into producing the milk! Each milking of the 3 goats would yield about 3 litres of milk so it was one-and-a-bit milkings to get enough to make one cheese. From those 4 litres we would get one 500g cheese. We are by no means ignorant about the realities of food production but cheese was something of which we were fairly regular consumers but with little understanding of what goes into its production. This was simply staggering and cast things in a whole new light. When we would pop to the shops and pick up some cheese I had never really given a thought to how much milk was required to yield one, nor did we have any real understanding of how much time and attention goes into making one. I don’t mind repeating myself to remind us all that this is only the final step after everything that goes into producing the primary product of milk which involves all of the animal husbandry plus maintaining the farm so that the goats can graze. Making cheese. Easier said than done.

In this first week we were also not managing our in-family handover quite as successfully as we might have hoped. I was getting up first thing and getting straight into looking after things. It was about as much as I could manage to keep on top of all of the arising tasks while Rachael was having to keep the girls entertained up at the house. Trying to find the same time that I had got with Sophia to induct the rest of the family into the various processes was not so easy. Little by little we did manage it and certainly over the coming weeks we would all find ourselves doing bits and pieces.

There were a few successes that we managed to notch up in the early period of our farm adventure though. The bunches of bananas hanging up from the previous harvest were starting to turn and so we all got stuck in processing those. We had a lot of bananas to get through and each of them needed to be cut lengthwise into slices just under 1cm thick. Those slices are quickly coated in lime juice to prevent them oxidising and then they are all arranged on the trays to go into the dehydrator. In the end it was just as well that we dried such a large batch because the girls also loved eating the dried bananas! Nothing goes to waste on the farm so the ones that were too ripe (turning black) Rachael and Rosa made into a banana cake. The skins went to the goats.

I also managed to get in a good cooking session with Zia in that first week in spite of the chaos all around us! Rachael and Rosa went down to the river for a break (I think the girls needed a bit of time apart at that point) and so we set about making our own chicken nuggets. Zia got to work on her knife skills, slicing the chicken breast into the right size chunks and she made the breadcrumb with the old bits of bread that we had accumulated. I set up the final stage for her and then she did the rest, taking each piece and dunking it first in flour, then in egg and finally the breadcrumb. I was happy to see that like I would she carefully lined up all of her nuggets neat and tidy.

Obviously having taken our children away from things back at home and particularly Zia away from school after the ongoing interruptions of the pandemic we are aware of when and where they are learning. Of course, we believe they are learning all of the time but we still need to give it our attention. We were finding that the farm was proving to be an excellent context for this and we felt that they were learning things which would be really useful, important and informative in the years to come. In just this first week they had learned so much with their interactions with the animals, preparing food and even in the time that they would spend going down to the river and jumping across the rocks (not a bad P.E. lesson!).

Thursday came around quickly and the first week was busy in terms of orders. There were quite a few bags of salad and this was another task where the girls were able to come along and help harvest and then wash and dry the leaves ready to bag them up. Meanwhile my job was to keep moving around and get the yoghurt, cheese, bunches of herbs and other bits and pieces together and ready to go. It was at least a little chaotic the first time round but there was no way to anticipate this before getting into the whole process. The orders come in at different times and a lot of them come in very close to the deadline. There are a number of products such as ricotta, cream cheese and the salad bags which cannot be prepared in advance because they have limited shelf life plus you would not want to prepare a fixed number and then find they do not sell because then you’d have wasted both your time and the product.

This is a constant reality of food production which we are blissfully ignorant of as consumers – the producer takes the responsibility for making sure there are enough units to fulfil the orders. They have to produce enough to fulfil all of the orders without over-producing. So basically they have to predict the future. When the customer decides they don’t want to place an order it is the producer who then has to take the hit when their sales have dropped that week and they have a surplus to deal with. How exactly we ended up in this situation with our food system is something that I often think about. If we assume that at some point in history we each had responsibility for our own food production (or gathering) then it’s hard to imagine how we got from there to here. Our own experience with growing and gathering our food has taught us that there are highs and lows; some years you invest a lot of time and effort into growing a crop only to be caught foul by the weather or some pest which wipes it all out and brings you nothing in return for you labour. So the thing that strikes me as odd is how we might have managed to persuade a few individuals to take the responsibility for producing all of our food?

Let’s say that after a few years of struggling to get a decent crop of potatoes I notice that John on the plot next to mine seems to be doing alright with his. So I now manage to persuade him to grow my potatoes too. Perhaps in the early days this could have functioned on a barter level. Maybe I did well growing carrots and so there was a natural equilibrium where we could exchange according to our respective aptitudes and successes? But that all works out ok in the years when the crops did well but what about the years when there were crop failures? On a small scale we might be able to imagine how this all fits together; sharing the highs and lows of production but in the modern context this situation has become so amplified that it just seems like an injustice to continue in our current vein. We have producers who are constantly trying to predict what the consumer is going to want and having to take a hit on a massive scale. You might reasonably assume that this is the same for every business, that they have to make sales forecasts and adjust their production accordingly. True. However, most businesses are not dealing with a perishable product. Most businesses can over-produce and then put the unsold units in storage until they do sell. Most businesses are not selling things which are consumed (actually consumed in the case of food) on a daily basis. Perhaps most significantly for me is that most businesses are not producing things which are so vital, so fundamental for us to consume on a daily basis. I can live without a new smartphone, without a TV, without a car, without any number of the things which are being produced. I cannot live without food. In spite of this we have a modern situation where the companies producing these ‘unnecessary’ commodities (things which make us more comfortable) report annual profits in the billions. I don’t know of any food producers who are reporting similar profits. How can this be? How can our value system be such that food is valued so little?

For us this first week taking full responsibility for the farm was full of insights. What really surprised us was not just how much hard work is involved but also how hard it is for producers to find their customer base. This element really struck a chord with us because we have been on both sides of the relationship. It’s fair to say that the first 6 months of our travels have largely been about food. This probably wouldn’t be the case for everyone but for us it has been a constant search and struggle to find ‘good food’. Now we were on the other side of the equation seeing how producers find themselves struggling to sell good food! Over the past few months we have thought and written a lot about the systemic issues that bring around this problem – from the subtle and discrete image which the alternative food system has ended up occupying to the fact that so much is built around the infrastructure of supermarkets and car ownership. Nevertheless, for us it was really mind-boggling. We had gone from one place to the next in Latin America searching and seeking out food that we wanted to eat and producers that we wanted to support; now we were seeing that those same producers who we would have bitten your hand off to find are struggling to find their customers. It seems very much like this is simply a missing piece of the puzzle. They need to be easier to find. My hope is that as new technologies and different social structures are enabled in the coming years that it will become increasingly convenient and easy to connect with local producers who are working to a high ethical standard.

Our first week in charge of the farm had been exhausting, frustrating, fascinating and incredibly fulfilling. In spite of (and as a result of) all the hard work we slept like babies every night. We loved eating the farm fresh produce and being so close to the source of the food that we were feeding ourselves and nourishing our daughters with. Nevertheless… Running a farm. Easier said than done.