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Monday, August 26, 2013

Cheese making

We the people use the farms animals to our own advantage, you see, we sell the calf to the butcher and then we milk the cow, from the cow milk we do many thing including cheese

A container on a fire that could also be used to make cheese in the farm, as most times in the farm we were pushed to use whatever there was available, when I was young and working in the farm.

Cheese making in the farms

The king of cheeses must be Parmigiano Reggiano, as its name suggests it is from the province of Parma and surrounding territories in northern Italy, here I would like to point out, what is the Difference between Parmesan and Parmigiano-Reggiano?

The answer to this question is this: (I am going to use this explanation from the internet) Due to Italian D.O.C. laws that protect the names and recipes of certain cheeses, a cheese cannot be called Parmigiano-Reggiano unless it is made using a specific recipe and production method within the provinces of Parma, Reggio-Emilia, Modena, and specific regions in the provinces of Bologna and Mantua. The D.O.C laws are meant to preserve the integrity of traditional cheeses by insuring the flavor and quality. Therefore, any cheese made outside of these regions with a slightly different recipe or production method cannot be called Parmigiano-Reggiano.

One may guess that the recipes for this great cheese has been the work of very many generations of Italian cheese makers in the first place, and then many generations of organizing the great factories of cheese making, one has to look at some of these photos where they cure and store the cheese until it matures to see what I mean.

Now, I am saying this because I know for a fact that in the old times lots of people made their own cheese; in fact I have made some cheese myself and I would like to tell you how it was done the old way, as most farmers had to do it anyhow, and because I was in the farm I did it also, so let us see how I have learned to do it.

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Working in the farm

When I was young I ended up to work in our family farm, as I have already said before, therefore while I have been writing about my life in the farm, I have become aware that I have learned how to make cheese in the farm and I am sure that some of you would like to know how it was done in those times; well I have to tell you that this is not exactly making parmiggiano cheese, but is it more like the poor farmer cheese. So here I am going to tell you hereunder how to make this types of cheese and ricotta my grandma way.

Now before I start I need to say that what I am writing here has really happened in the fifties, I had to tell you this because a lot of things have changed since then, but the principle of how these things are done does not change much, so what we did then can still be done now, so let me tell you what we were doing then?

In southern Italy and perhaps in many other parts of the world, the farmers use to milk the cows the goats, the sheep and perhaps other animals as well, so that they would have their milk and also could make their cheese and other milk products, so this was also happening in our small farm. For those people that is not familiar with this sort of farm life I need to explain that milking is done twice a day in the morning and in the evening, milking is a must to do at the right times otherwise the animals will suffer, and also if you don’t milk them then slowly those animals will produce less and less milk. So, what to do with all this milk that we collected by milking the cows etc.

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Cheese making grandma way

In our case we had two milking cows, so we would collect up to 30 litres of milk every day in spring time, when there was plenty of green food for the cows to eat. In those times everybody needed to be self sufficient and nothing would be allowed to go waist, the theory was waist not want not, therefore everybody was ready to do those things necessary to save whatever had to be saved, therefore the milk we had collected from the cows we used to made cheese, this is what all farmer would do in the old days and I am going to explain it to you how all this was done, including some description of how in the very old time was done.

When I was very young my Grandma would come to the farm to make cheese from this milk that we had for a few years, and she taught me how to make cheese. The whole process was simple but at the same time it was hard for a young bloke, but as I grew older and stronger and able to do it I was left most times on my own. So, if you don’t mind let me go over the process, because I would like to make a record of how these things were made in the past. You see, today in the farms things are different, because now there is a vehicle that collect milk from these farms and take it to the cheese factory to make cheese and any other milk products. So let me tell you how I made cheese and ricotta when I was young and how my forbear had made cheese themselves for centuries if not thousands of years before me.

After milking the cows the evening before and the morning I had about 30 litre of milk that I could make cheese with. Now the first thing that I had to do was to light a fire in the fire place of the farm and make sure that there was enough fire wood ready beside the chimney for the whole process, set a strong three legged steel device on this fife that I had started that was capable to hold the weight of the milk in this special container safely. Then I would get this special large copper kettle, but this copper kettle had to be clean and treated from a specialist perhaps once a year with a coat of tin or something like that, this treatment is very much like galvanising the inside of the pot, and it needs to be done properly, so that all copper surfaces inside the kettle should be covered in full. Now that I had this large kettle ready, I would strain the milk with a fine strainer while I am filling the kettle with the milk and after that I am ready to make cheese.

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Making cheese and ricotta the old ways

My dear readers, I want to point out that the way I am making cheese and ricotta this time here, is the way that we used then and of course there may be other ways to make cheese and ricotta, but hereunder is the way that I was taught from my grandma.

So now that I have the fire going steady but at a slower pace, this three legged device set over the fire to hold the kettle safely, I had to be extra careful to lift the kettle containing milk over the fire without getting burned. Here I had to be very careful that the milk would warm up only to 37-38 degrees and no more, otherwise the whole process would not work. So once the milk reached this temperature I would take the kettle off the fire. Now let us go on to see what I need to do next, you see to make cheese you need to add something like enzymes or an extract so to speak in the milk while it is around 37 degrees to make the milk curd. In my young days I was lucky here because this extract could be bought at the chemist and so it was a lot easier that the old ways, when you had to prepare your own extract. Anyhow at this point I would measure the amount of (caglio) this extract and mix it in the milk with a wooden devise which was purposely made.

You see in the old time people had to do most things in wood for this purpose because wood does not rust, it does not contact heat so while one end is hot the other end will not be affected and remains cold, and also it does not react with milk, therefore wooden utensils were safe to use; and last of all but not the least important was that these wooden utensils could be carved from the farmers themselves, when in winter was cold and miserable to go out of the farm building.

Now let me tell you how the enzymes to curd the milk were collected or prepared in the past, when there were no chemists to help the process how to curd the milk. I know this is going to be a shocker for some people but that was the way that it was done in the old times. First of all a very young lamb is killed after feeding on milk, so that its stomach is full of milk. You see in the young lamb stomach there are these enzymes that curd the milk for the lamb to digest, as this is the way for the lamb to absorb the milk nutrients and grow. You need to harvest the stomach of the lamb, because this is where all the process starts. There are a few ways how to use this stomach, and one of the less shocking ways is that once you have this lamb stomach you seal it by tying top and bottom and hang it up to dry in a cool clean place. When it becomes dry you can use the powdery stuff inside to curd the milk. You need a little bit of this powder and a little lukewarm water to mix together and you are ready to add it to the milk you want to curd. This is how it was done in the very old days when there were no chemists to help, this is the ways our forbears have done it, since this is the way that Mother Nature itself has set up.

Now let me go back to cheese making as we have left the milk to curd for a while. 10 minutes or perhaps a quarter of an hour has passed since we have added this caglio to the warm milk and now the milk is firm like jelly, my next move now is that I use the wooden devise the I stirred the milk with and push it into this curd and start breaking it to small pieces. After that I stop and wait a moment for the particle of fresh cheese to start sinking to the bottom as the whey and the cheese become separated, now I put my washed clean hands in the kettle and go to the bottom of it, the fresh cheese has all sunk at the bottom, so I start pushing it slowly to one side of the kettle, by doing this I am slowly compacting the new cheese by pushing the whey out of it, I am going to do this until a firm ball of new cheese is formed. Once I have this firm new ball of cheese in my hands I lift it into a container; wait a minute this is not a real container, but it is something like a woven basket purposely made for this task, so that the whey can continue to run out the fresh cheese. Now I have about four to five kilogram of fresh cheese and by the time it matures may become three kilograms. The whole process does not end here, because there are a couple of other things I need to do. One is that I need to get all the whey in the kettle so that I can make ricotta, and after I make ricotta I have to dip for a few minutes the new fresh cheese that I have just made into the hot whey after I have made ricotta. This action is a sort of pasteurising the new cheese, you see the milk we have used has never been pasteurised. Having made the new cheese now that cheese needs to be cured for a few months, this curing usually involves sea salt and vinegar. Now in this hub I have made cheese and in my next hub I will make ricotta. See you then.

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Genzano it story

Cheese making

IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, ricotta cheese making in the farms

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Tuesday, August 6, 2013

We use the farms animals

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. ENJOY YOUR TIME WITH US AND IF YOU WANT WRITE A COMMENT
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Welcome to my blog, Genzano it story
and out post, We use the farms animals
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We use the farms’ animals

As soon as we mention the word farm, we cannot help thinking about the farms’ animals and the ways that the farmers use their farms animals, this has been going on for thousands of years, and very likely it is going to go on till the world ends; here we may have to point out that not everybody agrees with the ways the farmers uses their animals, however the animals have always been used and we will continue to use them in the future. Now let us see how the animals live according to Mother Nature, and how we the people use them to our own advantage.

It would be important to note that the order in Mother Nature setting of how things happen is almost faultless, most of the farm animals give birth to their offspring when there is plenty of food to go around, and when mild and fine weather is usually expected, it is for this reason that in springtime most of the animals offspring are born, starting from the sheep, and also the cows that usually calf once every year and they make plenty of milk especially when there is plenty of green food to eat, also other animals have their offspring, the sheep have their lamb, the mares have their foals, and other animals have also their young’s whatever it is according to their specie. We suppose they are born in spring so that they can grow big and strong during the spring and summer, so that when the cold weather comes back they would be able to cope with it easily, this is really how Mother Nature wants it to be. But we the people sometimes do things that go against Mother Nature, as we want to control everything around us. Sometimes we do cruel things also, and one of those things that come to my mind is that we take away the veal from mother cow, we sell the veal to the butcher who will kill the veal and sell the meat to the people to eat it, for doing this not only we get some money from the butcher, but then we can happily milk the cow, so the poor cow cops it both ways. You see we take plenty of milk from the cows after selling their veal, and what we do with most of the milk? We sell it if there is a market for it or we make cheese; at least this is what we did when I was young and I was working in the farms. So in my next hub we will be talking about, how we made cheese when I was young.

This cheese making in the farms when I was young, is not going to be spectacular at all, so do not expect a great deal from it, our writing about it is more to do with showing you how things were done in those times and how they were done even before those times, One can still learn something from this cheese making, but above all one can learn a little bit of the history of mankind from those parts that I am coming from, perhaps we could compare this to the ways we are using these days.

See you in our next post Cheese making.

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Genzano it story

We use the farms animals

IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, cheese making in the farms

-------------------------------------------

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Australian houses in Brisbane, Australia affordable houses

Some hub links

Travel Videos - Fountain cavallina, Genzano, Italy - The Compulsive ...

Most interesting photos from Genzano di Lucania, Basilicata, Italy

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Sunday, July 21, 2013

Springtime in the farms

WELCOME TO FRANK MENCHISE BLOG OF GENZANO DI LUCANIA, YOU ARE INVITED TO BROWSE AS LONG AS YOU LIKE. ENJOY YOUR TIME WITH US AND IF YOU WANT WRITE A COMMENT
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In spring all trees start to flower and it is wonderful to see Mother Nature work at its best.

In the fields there are flowers everywhere in springtime.

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SPRINGTIME IN THE FARMS

Dear readers, after the boring winter as I have written in my last post, a winter day in the farm, the only time that one can say that living in the farms could be better that living in town was and is at spring time, because those natural things that make life interesting in the farms happen, you see one can observe Mother Nature wonders as they occur at very close range; and springtime is the time when most of those wonders occur one after another. Therefore, life in the farm becomes more interesting and wonderful after a cold and boring winter when finally spring comes. Early in spring when the weather is fine it is nice and warm to stay outside doing odd jobs, like preparing the soil in the kitchen garden and planting some seeds that will soon grow, you see in the temperate zone as the temperature rises the plants start growing very quickly, this fact of life even by itself seems to bring some joy after the cold winter, as one observes what is happening in spring time.

For a start we would be thinking finally wonderful spring is here

During early spring it would be wonderful, if one could be able to forget all worries in the world, and look at the work of Mother Nature at its best. You see, today you look at one tree and you wonder whether it is alive or dead, because its twigs seem really lifeless; but in a few days, when you look at that same tree again you can see a few flowers and some small leaves on its twigs, and in a few more days the whole tree will be in flower, and also its leaves will be growing on its twigs very rapidly, all the trees start flowering and growing quickly at springtime after winter, all grass and seedlings grow faster and everything is greener and full of life, also the birds that throughout the winter seemed timid and sad, now start to sing and they sound very happy. In the country there is a change in the air in springtime and everything and everybody feels happy in spring, there are lots of sunny and mild days in spring, so the sunshine and the mild days tell you that the dreadful winter is past, so better times are ahead for the farm people and for the farm animals as well.

So let me describe the changes that spring brings in the country of the town that I came from: After looking after and hand feeding all farm animals during the winter, which was a very boring job, now spring is welcome. I am saying this because, in springtime the way of looking after the farm’s animals changes a lot, because in spring most of the farm’s animals will be feeding on grass, and most of them will be grazing in the paddock during daytime, and there are a lot of other interesting happenings. During the winter and perhaps most of the year, the large animals have been hand fed in the stable with straws, oats and hay, but now gradually they will be let loose to graze in the paddocks. So as soon as the grass in the paddock grows enough early in spring, the cows are let loose in the paddock for a few hour each day to begin with, and then as the grass starts growing faster they will graze in the paddocks all day long. The next on line to graze in the paddocks are the pregnant mares, followed by the rest of the animals: So that in mid spring all animals that are grass eater will be feeding only on grass; that is during the day in the paddocks and at night with fresh harvested grass, which has been purposely grown and cut from the farmers. As you can see the farmers are still busy to look after the farm animals, but now it is not as hard as in winter times and the weather is usually fine, and every day that go past it becomes warmer, so a more relaxed way of life can be enjoyed and there are also other happy happenings, you see, spring is the season of hope and in spring we start to harvest many things, there are plenty of vegetables in spring as everything grows pretty fast, also in the fields things grow fast, there are plenty of fresh peas, green beans, broad beans just to name a few, the farmers go around with great hope in their hearts, they hope to harvest plenty of everything, when they are ready to be harvested. But at the same time the farmers always look at the sky, as they fear bad weather that can ruin their crops. This can really be a real problem when stormy weather approaches, as all the work they have done during the year can be ruined or destroyed in a few minutes. So hope and heartbreak are there ever present, it is not an easy life being a farmer. This was also one of the reasons that I left farming and migrated to Australia when I was still young, hoping for a better and easier life in Australia. But now let us talk about the farm animals, as they are a very important part of farming and also how we the farmers use the farm animals in many ways; but I think that I have said enough in this post, so see you in our next post, Cheese making the old ways.

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Genzano it story

Spring times in the farms

IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, Cheese making the old ways

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Tuesday, July 9, 2013

A winter day in the farms

Farms are usually very lonely places in the middle of nowhere specially in winter times

The country in winter is almost bear of all vegetation it is a lonely place. So one is waiting for spring times to come, because everything becomes better during spring.

A WINTER DAY IN THE FARMS

In order to compare these days to the old days, it is necessary to tell you a story, now the story that I am telling you is the story of my own life when I was young, you see life was very different in those times, but we accepted life as it was and did not complain, because that was the ways of life in the farms of those days, so what did we do during a winter day in the farm.

In the morning we would get up early usually just before dawn, and at once we would start doing our chores, we would start by feeding the horses and other farms animals, and we would also be grooming those animals, and at the same time we had to clean the stables as well, virtually we would collect all the manure that the horses and the other stable animals had made during the night before, we would load it on a strange devise like a field stretcher made of timber and wire, and then two of us would lift it and carry it to the manure heap, which was outside about 20 meters or so away from the building, at the same time we would still be grooming the horses with a hand brush, and at the same time we would continue to feed the horses and other farm animals, such as cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals with fresh serving of straw, oats, hay, grain, and whatever else was needed according to the animals needs, and sometimes according to the tusks that those animals were supposed to do during the day, because if the horses were going to do some work, we would give them more oats than normally did.

Once we had finished grooming the horses and cleaning all manure from the stable, the chicken coop, the pig stay, sweep the floors and everywhere else; then one of us would go to the well with a couple of buckets or other containers, so that we could bring some clean fresh water for the small animals to drink, and also for ourselves to drink and to wash our hands and face, and everyday even if it was very cold we used to wash our hands and face outside the building: Here I can assure you that this was the main hygiene that could be had in the farm each day, and this was the only time and place where we used to clean ourselves; at any other time when we got our hands dirty, we had to find a way how to clean ourselves with anything available around us.

By the time we had done all these chores, it would be time for the horse and the cows to be taken to the well to water them, (the horses and other large animals were watered only twice a day in winter time) and of course we had to stand on the well head in order to draw water with a bucket attached to a rope, we had to let the bucket down the well, and then with a flick of the rope we would make the bucket turn upside-down to fill itself, and then we would pull the bucket up the well and empty it into the trough; we had to draw as many buckets of water as they were needed until all the animals would not drink anymore; and now that I think about it, it really was a hard and dangerous job for a youth of my age.

After we had done all those chores as I have said above, it would have been time to eat something, so we would sit down on some sort of wooden stools to have breakfast. Breakfast was usually brought in from town, from one of us or one of our neighbours, there was always somebody on horseback that would go to town the evening before, and then would bring prepared food in the morning. Breakfast would usually consist of a few fried dry capsicums and a few olives, and at the best one or two small pieces of sausage, or something similar which my mother would have fried in the early hours of that morning, and then placed it in a saucepan with a few drops of fried oil at the bottom, we set around a larger wooden stool which acted like a table, and with a slice of bread in one hand and a fork or knife in the other hand, we would try to eat our small share of breakfast from the saucepan with as much bread as possible, as there was plenty of bread of very good nutritional quality, but not much of everything else. At lunge time we would have something similar to eat, but in the evening we had a large meal which we had to cook ourselves, sometimes we would cook homemade pasta, but usually we made a quick meal called ‘panecotto’ which was just cooked bread; to you this may seem strange that we cooked bread a second time for our main meal, but then over there it was the simplest meal to cook and very filling, therefore after a cold and long day of activities this very simple meal was very welcome, and it was also very easy to prepare: To prepare ‘panecotto’ all that was needed was a lively fire to boil some water, then we would throw in this boiling water as many slice of durum wheat bread as required, and in a minute or so we would drain the water out of the saucepan, we also would fry a small amount of oil in a frypan with garlic and pepper or tomatoes and pour it on the cooked bread, and that was all that was required, at this stage the ‘panecotto’ would be ready to be eaten.

Anyhow let me go back to breakfast, after breakfast weather permitting we would have to do some minor jobs, like hoeing in the kitchen garden, which was about half an acre of land, or working in the vineyard, or going out to cut and collect fire wood for ourselves, and also for our families in town, as they depended on us for their wood supply, in order to cook our meals and keep themselves warm, as at that time there wasn’t anything else to burn in order to keep warm.

During the day we would still feed the animals every now and then, and bring in the stable new straw and hay for the following night.

This is how life in the farms was in winter times, when the days were short and the weather was cold and wet.

But when the days became longer and the weather was fine, there was work to be done in the fields even if it was winter. We would have to get up earlier then, in order to feed the horses and get them ready for the tasks that they had to do: it could be just that we had to plough a field or something similar, but in order to do that we had to harness the horses and attach them with their harnesses to the appropriate devices; all this had to be done early enough in the morning even if it was very cold, so that some work could be done during the short winter days in the fields.

Apart what I have already said above, there were also other chores which had to be done in the farm in wintertime, like pruning and hoeing the vineyard, planting trees, pruning fruit and olives trees, cutting and collecting wood, and many other small jobs, so everyday there was always plenty to do.

But even though in wintertime we were busy in the farm, wintertime was very dreadful and sad especially for young people, because we were more isolated that at any other time of the year, and therefore it was very boring and it was very easy for one to become dull, therefore if we young people became dull it was due to this harsh environment, at other times of the year it would always be a bit better as there was more contact with the town’s community, and also because there were some important happenings to talk about, even if it would be in a restricted way, so we were happy to see springtime coming.

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Genzano it story

A winter day in the farms

IS GOING TO BE CONTINUED;

Next time with, a spring day in the farms

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