Story by Karen Brucoli Anesi
Photos by Yodit Gidey

Remember that day in kindergarten when you heard the story of the shepherd whose pouch of milk magically turned to cheese? According to the folk tale, the shepherd usually filled his cow-stomach skin with drinking water. One morning he filled it with milk. When he stopped hours later to drink from the vessel, he found curds and whey, the result of heat and agitation created during the day’s hike.

One of the first steps of cheese making is warming the milk and adding ingredients, as Tom Riesing does here on Feb. 6 during a four-hour demonstration at the La Plata County Fairgrounds.

Class observers strain to watch the straining process. Riesing separates the curds (solid) from the whey (liquid).

Next comes the pressing process. Here, Riesing mixes the curds with his hands to rid it of any remaining whey.

Oakhaven Permaculture’s cheese maker, Tom Riesing, is spreading the curd: You, too, can make your own cheese. The 67-year-old cheese maker revealed some of the science behind the magic in the folk tale, but for some who watched his recent demonstration at the La Plata County Fairgrounds, cheese making remains a captivating art rather than a science.

"I romanticize about being in Italy when I think of how fascinating the whole thing is," says 42-year-old Durango landscape designer Troy Pugh. "It’s such an art to me. The whole process is impressive."

As the four-hour demonstration began, Riesing noted that he had flash-pasteurized the fresh whole milk. Then he painstakingly showed how to make a round of Swiss from the required use of scrupulously clean equipment to the actual cutting and pressing of the curds into a circular cheese press. Onlookers tasted aged Swiss and cheddar from Riesing’s own cellar, while he addressed time and temperature requirements for the heating of the milk starter, cultures, brining and waxing of cheeses.

Riesing removed the gourmet veneer commonly associated with high-priced cheese and instead reduced cheese to what it is: a simple, but gratifying, peasant food staple. All varieties, he emphasized, originate as milk – a raw material full of living organisms, to which bacteria cultures, rennin, careful handling and time determine the creative outcome. Cheese making was a regular part of a dairy farmer’s existence and a resourceful means of preserving an abundant food product. Nothing is wasted in the process, recycling even the final remains, the whey, as a nutritious food for animals on the farm.

Riesing forms the wheel of Swiss cheese. The cheese is weighted (pressed) to help compress the curds and make the wheel.

After the wheel if formed, a process that takes several hours, the wheel is wrapped with cheesecloth. It may be pressed some more. Then it's soaked in a brine.

For Riesing, who has been making cheese for about three years, the reward in teaching others to make cheese is all about empowering them to do things on their own and to feed themselves using a local supply of food. Making cheese is just one more way of returning to self-sufficiency, he said.

Cheese making becomes a science when large batches are made commercially, Riesing said. But it obviously began as an art, centuries ago, when there were no thermometers or instruments to measure acidity. And it remains an art, considering the manual process and attentive handling required when creating artisan cheeses one unique, small batch at a time.

Troy Pugh was one of two dozen locals who attended the Feb. 6 cheese-making demonstration. Some attended because they were merely curious about handcrafted and farmstead cheese, but for Troy’s wife, Susan, the class was a reminder of her Wisconsin roots and childhood visits to her distant cousin’s creamery "where you regularly sat down and ate fresh cheese curds."

"I think my heart is still there," she says of her birthplace, a "land of dairy cows, cheese factories and creameries."

"We squeezed our own grapes, made jam and traded with our next-door neighbor who made maple syrup. We bartered a lot. We had cows and we milked them morning and night," she recalled.

The Pughs have an opportunity to move back to Susan’s family farm near LaCrosse, Wis., where they can combine interests in horticulture with agriculture. They’re ambivalent about moving to the Midwest, and trading one paradise for another. A more immediate goal is to be as self-sustaining as possible.

"One of my goals is take the time to make some cheese. It’s an all-day affair, but it’s the best cheese you’ll ever taste," the busy mother, homemaker and registered nurse admitted.

Riesing waxes a finished wheel of Swiss cheese, using red wax melted in a pie tin. It’s best to wait 10 to 14 days after production before waxing.

When you are finished making the actual cheese, you can use the remaining whey to make fresh ricotta, simply by adding cream.

"Now that’s really something," she said of the bonus byproduct, the two cheeses for one price.

"Now that's really something," she said of the bonus byproduct, the two cheeses for one price.

Susan Pugh claims she remains enthusiastic about having taken the class, but it took just one question from her older sister to put her feet squarely back on the ground:

"'Where's your cow?,' my sister asked."

Reach Karen Brucoli Anesi here .