In a long white apron, hairnet and latex gloves, I look like Laverne or Shirley, or, at the very least, a lunch lady ready to dish out tater tots and fish sticks. Not exactly how I’d envisioned my weekend starting, but then again, Sprout Creek Farm in New York’s Hudson Valley is hardly the Four Seasons hotel.
Instead of lying by a pool, as would be my typical preference on a weekend away, I was making cheese. And not just any cheese, either. In production the day I arrived was Sprout Creek’s Ouray, a hard cheese that’s won some pretty impressive awards — Wine Spectator recently named it one of the top 100 cheeses in the world. Not bad for a little farm outside Poughkeepsie.
While my goal was primarily to relax and eat cheese for a day or two, I was also keen to experiment with the concept of a farmstay, an old-world tradition popular in Europe, but increasingly becoming an option stateside. Anyone can drive up the Taconic State Parkway (Sprout Creek is barely an hour north of The Bronx) to visit the region’s growing number of worth-a-trip farm stores and stands. But I was looking to dig a bit deeper — get back to the land, if you will. An overnight stay and cheese workshop at Sprout Creek was a snap to arrange; off I went.
The man responsible for creating Sprout Creek’s tasty lineup — a dozen or so varieties, depending on the season — is Colin McGrath. Like an enologist with wine, McGrath looks for specific tastes and textures when creating cheese, achieved by controlling the fermentation and ripening process.
And as with great wine, which starts with the quality of the grapes, so it goes for cheese and the quality of the milk.
“I actually refer to it as the ‘terroir’ of the milk,” says McGrath.
Terroir is obviously defined by what the animals eat, mainly the grass that grows naturally in the farm’s pastures. And also by the herd itself — several breeds of cows and goats, who produce different qualities and quantities of milk. But I’d also like to think it’s because the animals at Sprout Creek seem pretty happy. Their days are spent roaming in the fields; when it’s milking time, the farmhands handle them gently, often calling them by name.
And when there’s a group of school kids at the farm — which hosts educational programs year-round — the animals get even more attention. On my visit, a gaggle of ‘tween girls from St. Louis were spending a week learning how to milk cows and goats, muck out barns and do other chores — though they clearly relished coddling and bottle-feeding the newborn kids. (To be clear, this is a working farm, not a petting zoo.)
Tearing myself away from the farm babies — calves, kids and lambs — wasn’t easy, but there was cheese to be made. In the creamery, things were heating up — literally. The milk in the stainless-steel tank was being raised to 90 degrees, as a blend of bacteria (what McGrath calls “microbial rennet”) was added to start the fermentation process. (Traditional rennet, produced in a mammal’s stomach, is rarely used in modern cheesemaking.)
Leaving the rennet to work its magic, we attend to other cheeses which are in various states of production. Some wheels are “brining,” floating in a bath of water, salt and whey like opaque jellyfish. Some are waiting to be further salted, which we do by hand, generously coating each wheel. In the ripening rooms, rows upon rows of pungent cheese are aging: Some need to be turned, some require brushing if there’s too much mold, some need washing to accelerate growth of the rind. (The latter includes a beer cheese — with an orange-tinted rind washed in Brooklyn’s own Sixpoint beer — that McGrath created exclusively for Whole Foods stores in the city.)
Returning to the tank 20 minutes later, everything looks the same, but when I plunge my gloved hand into the mixture, it’s taken on a gelatinous consistency. (McGrath throws out words like pH, lactic acid, casein and enzyme by way of explanation, but I’d be hard-pressed to put them into a cohesive sentence.)
The next step is “cutting the curd,” where we each grab the end of a tool called a cheese harp (which looks like a big window screen) and drag it from one end of the tank to the other, back and forth. More manual labor is still to come: Scooping up mounds of curds, squeezing out the excess water, piling the curds up, cutting them into equal-size chunks with a big cheese-cutter. We lift the hunks, which resemble giant pieces of tofu, out of the vat and put each into a circular metal mould (a process called “hooping”). Then comes more pressing — more water has to come out — but finally, the best part: lifting up the mould to reveal a perfectly round wheel of cheese. Well, in my case, mostly perfect.
The whole process takes about 1½ hours, and though I couldn’t leave with the cheese that I’d made (it would be several more months before it was ready), I got to taste plenty of others and pick up some for the trip back to the city from the on-site shop. Let’s just say, very little survived the ride.
HOW TO GO
Stay Stay right on the farm, and be awakened by real roosters, at the three-bedroom cottage, which has a kitchen, dining room, den with a working fireplace, and gardens. Weekends from Friday to Sunday, $475, each additional day $175. A percentage of the proceeds help fund programs for children who could not otherwise participate in Sprout Creek activities.
Do Make a reservation to join Sprout Creek Farm’s head cheesemaker, Colin McGrath, in a hands-on workshop. The fee varies. In September, a 3 1/2-hour session will be introduced, featuring a full farm tour, an informational tour of the creamery and a cheese tasting and wine/beer/cider pairing led by McGrath. The cost is $100. (845) 485-3438; sproutcreekfarm.org
Try them all Sprout Creek is one in a growing number of artisan cheesemakers making New York State famous for the good stuff — learn more about finding their product and visiting the farms at nyfarmcheese.org.
More ideas For information on farm stays across the United States, visit farmstayus.com.