We got into cheese making in a funny sort of way.
We had bought our first sheep as lawnmowers and a friend recommended we look into milking
them because he'd been to the Middle East and seen all the dairy sheep there and the
cheeses and yogurts they were making and we thought about it and said why not, let's
give it a try and we built the dairy and started milking.
My name is Liam Callahan, I'm the owner and cheesemaker at Bellweather Farms.
We're a farm in Creamery located in Sonoma County, California, we've been making cheeses
right here on the farm since 1990.
So this milk we've already added the right bacteria to start the fermentation and then
we add the coagulant which is what changes the protein in the milk and makes it go solid
and now it's a little bit like tofu and you want to see that you get a clean break, you
see how clean that smooth that line is and the whey starts immediately draining out.
This is the first step in cheesemaking and we're starting to remove that extra moisture
from the milk because cheesemaking is about condensing the milk down to cheese.
Sheep's milk is naturally higher in protein, higher in vitamins and minerals, higher in
fat as well so per gallon of milk going in you're going to get more cheese but there's
also some different qualities to it that produce different flavors.
All different milk has different amounts of protein and different types that produce
subtle different changes in the flavor that you're going to get from your cheese.
So every cheese has a moisture content that you're trying to get and the way you determine
that is by how finely you cut your curd.
This knife was made just for this back, it fits side to side, top to bottom so we can
get a uniform, relatively uniform cut on the curd.
I have an Italian cheese knife I picked up on a trip to that I use to cut it down even
finer.
Again, this extra cutting helps us to remove the leg, we don't put our cheeses into a
cheese press which is a real common method for removing the leg because of that we have
to try and get more weight out of the curd here in the back.
We are making food in traditional ways using our hands and that is something that is becoming
more and more popular and there's certainly a lot of interest on the part of consumers
to get cheese, to get food products in general that are made on a small enough scale that
there is a human element to it.
There is variability due to that as well as the seasonality of the milk that goes into
it.
Now we are done cutting and because this curd immediately wants to sink to the bottom of
the back and stick together we need to keep it moving.
If we don't keep it moving it will just form into one big solid block of curd at the bottom
of the back and won't drain the way we want it to.
It's not a machine that is making it, it is a person making it and so that is something
that in the last 25 years in the United States has become something much more sought out
by the consumer, food products that are made in traditional ways and that carry a story
with them, that are from a place and are made by people.
The best thing about what I do is making cheese, I still get a real kick out of that.
There is chemistry, there is some art to it so it kind of appeals to both sides of my
personality and then you get to give it to your customer and get the feedback, the positive
energy that they get from your product and that is a very satisfying thing to do and
it is a big turn on at the beginning of us, the bellwether when we started doing it over
20 years ago and it is still what keeps us excited today.
I just feel like I am one of the luckiest people out there.
I got to do something that kept me interested now for all these years, I have people that
are seeking me out to talk about it because they are interested in food and want to know
where their food comes from and learn about food that they may not have had before and
I just think that we are at a time in this country, a time in the world where this sort
of communication about food is just exploding because people are realizing that there is
so much more to the food than nutrition and it can be so valuable to them and add so much
enjoyment to the food that you are going to eat anyway to know more about it and so I
just am so satisfied that people seek me out to learn about what I am doing, I encourage
others to get into the business and do it as well and just talk to people because it
is infectious, the excitement about food and the excitement about good traditional foods
is something that is only going to keep growing.
In shepherding terms, bellwether is an animal that was kept with the flock and he wore a
bell to know where the flock was.
