Peaceful Heart FarmCast

Food preservation techniques is the focus of this FarmCast. You may learn some new lingo. There is also a great deal of information about how food preparation and presentation has evolved over time. History leads us from one place to the next. As the need arises, the world updates traditions to adapt.

Today's Show

• Homestead Updates
• Garde Manger and Food Preservation
• Making Home Made Butter

Homestead Updates

We like to keep a close eye on the sheep when lambs are about to be born. Like goat kids, lambs are fragile for the first week or so. After that they grow like gangbusters. In preparation for births in the next month, we brought the sheep up close for monitoring. They are now in a paddock right outside my window. It's my favorite time of the year to look out the window. Well, I don't know about that that. I really like looking out my living room window every day. Scott built the room and it is an awesome testament to his grasp of aesthetics.

Yesterday was another day of goat chasing. A tree fell on the fence. It's the perfect opportunity they were looking for in order to venture outside their normal boundaries. A simple scamper up the tree and over the fence. Just another day where plans were altered for a couple of hours. A day in the life.

We are also closely watching for the first calf. The calendar says it could be within the week. None of the cows, however, appear to be going along with that plan in this moment. Who knows, it could change tomorrow. Mostly we are looking for udders to start filling up. That can happen many days, weeks or even a month ahead of the birth – or it may be that her udder doubles in size overnight and BAM, birth the next day. You just never know. We keep our eyes on them and eagerly anticipate the new arrivals.

The weather is finally providing a better environment for Scott to get those creamery walls up. I look out my dining room window and see the walls rising on the creamery. It's a beautiful sight. I'm excited about making cheese again soon. And eagerly anticipating when I can actually make cheese in the new creamery.

Today I want to bring you some great information about how traditional roles can change over time according to the needs and circumstances of the day. The term we are going to explore is garde manger.

Garde Manger – Keeper of the Food

Garde manger is both a person or people and a place. The word is French for "keeper of the food". As a physical place, it is a cool, well ventilated area where cold dishes such as salads, hors d'oeuvres, appetizers, canapés, pâtés and terrines are prepared. Other foods may be stored under refrigeration there as well. The person in charge of this area is known as the chef garde manger or pantry chef. Today, larger hotels, restaurants and catering services may have garde manger staff to perform additional duties, such as creating decorative elements of a buffet presentation like ice carvings and edible centerpieces made from materials such as cheese, fruit and vegetable carvings, butter, or tallow.

How did it all start? What was it like in the beginning?

History

Before the invention of refrigeration, the garde manger – literally, "keeper of the food to be eaten" – was a place for preserving and storing cold food until it was needed in the kitchen. This storage room or pantry then became a convenient workspace for the preparation of an array of cold foods. Two hundred and thirty years ago in pre-Revolutionary France preservation, storage and maintenance of a large supply of food and beverages was an outward symbol of power, wealth and status. It was this duty of supervising the preserving of food and managing its utilization that expanded the use of the term to include the person or people.

Today, the garde manger goes far beyond a cool storage facility. It may be an entire department in a large hotel, fine restaurant, or catering outfit. These garde manger staff members focus on the preparation and creative presentation of cold food items, including appetizers, salads, smoked meats, and cheeses, terrines, pâtés, galantines. Today's garde manger chefs earned their place in this long tradition through meticulous work and artistic expression. I'll include images of these dishes on the website so you can put the name with the food.

Traditions

Here's a brief idea of the timeline. In 3000 BC Sumerian's began using salt to preserve meat. A.D. 1100s cold food storage and preparation became common. In the late 1500s charcuterie guilds oversaw preservation and sales of pork products. After the abolishment of the guild following the French revolution, 1790 guild members and garde manger household staffs turned to restaurants and hotels for work. Let's look at this in greater detail.

The garde manger's original purpose – to preserve food – has been a concern since prehistory. Hunters and gatherers first faced the challenge of keeping food for later use. They likely stumbled on ways to do so, finding brine coated fish drying in the sun by the sea or hanging meat by the fire to keep it away from animals, and later noticing its dry texture and enjoying it smoky flavor. The Sumerian's appear to have been the first to salt meat in order to preserve it. Later the Chinese, Greeks, and Romans salted fish and other foods. Cured pork such as bacon and ham, prepared in the Roman province of Gaul (now France), was served to connoisseurs in Rome, the capital of the Roman empire.

By the middle ages, peasant farmers had developed many ways to preserve meat after the autumn slaughter of livestock. Salted, pickled, dried, and smoked meats filled the storerooms of the nobility. The term garde manger made its appearance with the arrival of special chambers for keeping food. A variety of food items common in the garde manger of noble households eventually found their way into medieval markets, where individual guilds, or merchant groups, began to oversee their preparation and trade. The guild known as charcuterie, for instance, prepared and sold pork products, including pâté, bacon, ham, and sausage.

The guilds exercised enormous power over commerce in food and other goods until the late 18th century when they were finally abolished. By then, many noble households had also dissolved. Former guild members and garde manger staff found work in the hotels and restaurants that had begun to develop from traditional inns and taverns. Gradually a kitchen hierarchy emerged, in which different workers had distinct responsibilities or areas of specialization. In the late 19th century, Auguste Escoffier, a French chef, restaurateur and culinary writer popularized and updated traditional French cooking methods. He organized kitchen procedures and staff into what is now known as the brigade system. The garde manger, or cold foods chef, was among the primary figures in the classic brigade.

Modern Garde Manger

Early on in the craft, a person working the garde manger station at a restaurant was limited to the preparation of salads and preserved and cold foods. Today the garde manger profession has a broader scope. In addition to traditional items such as sausages, pâtés, and cheeses, the brigade is often responsible for the preparation of salads, cold sauces or dressings, sandwiches, and both hot and cold hors d'oeuvres and appetizers. Foods prepared by garde manger appear at banquets, buffets, receptions and other formal and informal parties. The presentation of these foods often includes elaborate centerpieces and artistically designed platters. We've come a long way from simple food preservation and management.

To perform these very duties, the classic garde manger station has its own brigade. The chef garde manger supervises operations and oversees the various other positions in the garde manger. Examples of positions are:

• Butchering of all meats and poultry except those that are preserved
• Responsibility for cleaning, preparing, and storing fish and shellfish and creating fish sauces
• Maintaining the buffet
• Responsibility to create and prepare all hors d'oeuvres
• Charcutiers make all the sausage and smoked items
• Apprentice

Now let's focus on the beginnings – food preservation – and how far we've come with it. You may already be using one or more of the techniques I'll talk about. Or maybe you are preparing yourself for the task. That makes you a grande manger or, at the very least, an apprentice.

Curing, Smoking, Drying, Preserving in Fat and Cheesemaking

Cheesemaking is its own field. I've included it here as a method of food preservation, though the garde manger brigade member utilizing cheese would work a different station. Using all sorts of cheeses would be central. Creating fresh cheeses and leaving the preservation of milk via aged cheeses to other professionals would be the standard.

Food preservation has been central to the garde manger from its beginnings. Preservation techniques used in the garde manger today exponentially surpassed their original purpose of keeping food safe for later consumption. They create new flavors and textures for meats and other foods. The main preserving methods of the garde manger are curing, smoking, drying, and preserving in fat.

Curing

To cure a food, either dry it in granular salt (dry cure) or immerse it in a salt solution (wet cure, or brine).

Dry cures

To use a dry cure, rub the mixture over the surface of the food. Then put the food in a container or wrap it in a cheese cloth or paper, packing it with any additional mixture, and refrigerate it for the required length of time, which varies. During refrigeration, turn the food regularly to keep it evenly coated. Large items often require additional rubbing during curing. After curing, wash the food to remove the curing mixture, and either cook the food item or allow it to mature by drying, aging, or smoking.

Prosciutto is an example of a meat preserved with a dry cure. The usual procedure is to cure the ham for approximately four weeks and then hang it to air dry. It is an Italian dry-cured ham that is usually thinly sliced and served uncooked.

Wet cures (brines)

A wet cure, or brine, is a dry cure dissolved in water. Brines usually contain sea salt, a sweetener, spices, and herbs. To make a brine, combine the mix with water, and bring it to a boil. After the solution has cooled, immerse the food in it, refrigerate, and soak for the required time. The brine should completely cover the food. Brining times will vary. After brining, rinse the food, and either cook by boiling, poaching, or baking or allow it to mature by drying or smoking.

Common examples of brined meats include bacon, brisket, corned beef, and pastrami.

Smoking

Originally a means of preserving food, smoking is popular today for the unique flavors it imparts to a variety of foods. The main chemical components of smoke – tar, creosote, alcohol, and formaldehyde – supply both flavor and small quantities of preserving agents. The best woods for smoking are low in resin, which makes food bitter. Commonly used woods include hickory, cherry, apple, maple, oak, mesquite, and alder.

Smoking alone is not enough to preserve food. Pretreat food to be smoked with a dry cure or brine to ensure a longer shelf life. After curing, air dry the food, and rub it with oil to prevent a crust from forming during the smoking process.

The process for smoking depends on the method used. The four methods of smoking are cold, hot, pan, and liquid.

Cold smoking

Cold smoking, also known as slow smoking, is the best and only true method, according to the definition of smoking. The cold process imparts flavor but does not cook the food. It must be either cured before cold smoking or cooked afterward. Temperatures for cold smoking generally range from 50°F to 95°F (10°C to 35°C).

Hot smoking

Hot smoking, or fast smoking, cooks and smokes the food at the same time. Commonly used in commercial settings, this method requires temperatures above 140°F (60°C).

Pan smoking

Generally considered a hot smoking method, pan smoking also occurs at temperatures above 140°F (60°C). Sometimes called roast smoking, this method smokes food in a covered pan. Line the bottom of the pan with wood chips, and place it on a burner on high heat. When the wood begins to smoke, put the food in the pan on a roasting rack and cover sealing the edges of the pan well. Adjust heat as needed then smoke the food to the desired doneness, generally 7 to 15 minutes.

Liquid smoking

This method gives food a smoky flavor without subjecting it to an actual smoking process. Liquid smoking involves the use of a liquid with a smoke flavor made by rubbing resin, which builds up on the walls of a smokehouse or chimney, with a liquid. Rub the smoke flavor liquid into the scored skin or flesh of the food, and allow it to marinate for a few hours.

Drying

Air drying can be an important step before and after smoking. It may also replace smoking as a stage in preserving food items; going from curing straight to drying. Certain foods take weeks or months to air dry.

A lengthy air-drying period is the final step in the preparation of various cured and cold smoked hams. The process for beef jerky and various Italian and German beef sausage products includes air drying.

Preserving in Fat

Confits and rillettes, two classic methods of food preservation, use fat as a preservative. The meat keeps for several weeks under refrigeration.

Confits

A confit is meat cooked and preserved in its own fat. The meat is usually poultry, especially duck or goose, or small game, such as rabbit. To make a confit, simmer cured bird or animal parts in rendered fat, preferably the fat of the same bird or animal. After cooking the pieces, pack them in a crock, and cover them with the fat. The fat seals out the air, keeping the meat from spoiling.

Rillettes

A rillette is also preserved meat. To prepare a rillette, slowly cook meat such as pork or poultry, particularly duck or goose, in broth or fat with vegetables and seasonings. After cooking the meat, mash it, and mix it with some of the cooking fat. Then pack it into a mold, sealing it with rendered fat. Like confits, rillettes will keep for several weeks under refrigeration. Rillettes are usually served cold as a spread for bread or toast. Confits are served hot.

Cheesemaking

Cheesemaking is also a form of food preservation cheese is made by curdling the proteins in milk (either with a live culture or with a mild acid) and then squeezing most of the water out of it leaving only the protein and fat.

Thus fresh milk, which is itself highly perishable, is transformed into a product that, because it is low in moisture, can be stored for months and years in a cool cellar or cave.

That's it for garde manger food preservation. On to the recipe of the day. What a coincidence. Yet another way to preserve food.

Home Made Butter Recipe

People have been making butter for centuries. Humans initially used butter as a way of preserving the fat in milk. Butter rose to prominence as a spread and cooking fat in northern Europe during the Middle Ages, when it was eaten by peasants. The upper classes also ate it periodically, because it was the only animal fat allowed by Rome on days when meat was forbidden. In the 16th century it was allowed during Lent.

In the early days, it took a little while to get enough cream to churn, and so it was collected over various days. Because the milk in these small old-timey dairies was not refrigerated, the lactic acid bacteria inherent in dairy would ferment slightly. This cultured butter has a very tangy and rich flavor. Most butters made in Europe still taste this way, although they are made from pasteurized cream inoculated with lactic acid. Uncultured butter made from straight-up pasteurized cream is called sweet cream butter, and is what we're used to in the United States.

At its very essence, making butter requires nothing more than agitation. What you're doing is separating the fat from the milk. You can use a blender, a stand mixer with the whip attachment, or just shake by hand in a mason jar. For those who desire to dedicate themselves to making it regularly, you might invest in a butter churn. If you use a stand mixer, be sure to place a kitchen towel over the mixer and the bowl to stop the buttermilk from flinging all over your kitchen, which will happen when the butter globules form. The buttermilk becomes thin like water at that point.

How to Make Homemade Butter What You Need

• 1-pint heavy whipping cream
• Large bowl of ice water
• Salt to taste (optional)
• Stand mixer with a whip attachment, blender, or a jar with a tight-fitting lid

What To Do

1. Set a pint of heavy cream out to warm to room temperature, about 2 hours.
2. Pour cream into your device or into a jar with a tight-fitting lid. If using a machine, turn on low speed, then raise to medium speed. If you're using a jar, start shaking (you'll need some serious elbow grease if doing it by hand).
3. First, the cream will turn into whipped cream with soft, then stiff peaks. Keep going until the cream breaks. If you're shaking the cream by hand, you'll hear a sloshing, then you'll begin to feel something more solid hit the sides of the jar. If you're using a stand mixer, you'll see the butter clinging to the beater. This usually takes anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes or even 20 with an electric butter churn. It's gentler. Churning by hand will take longer. In this process, you are separating the butterfat from the liquid.
4. Once the butter has solidified, pour off the buttermilk and save it for baking (or drink it!). Scoop the butter into a bowl. Rinse the butter by pouring ice water over it and pressing the remaining buttermilk out with a small spatula or a spoon. Pour off the water and repeat the process. Keep rinsing and squishing the butter with the ice water until the water runs clear.
5. Add some salt if you like and work that through the butter.

There you have it – old-fashioned butter, churn optional! Spread on pancakes, biscuits, toast, corn on the cob, a baked potato, or whatever you like and enjoy!

Recipe Notes:

Butter freezes really well.

What makes butter yellow? It is the beta carotene that creates the yellow in cow milk. Butter made from our Normande cows' milk is an even deeper yellow than butter from the grocery store. The reason is a combination of the richness of our Normande cow's cream and their 100% pasture-based diet.

Final Thoughts

We are ready for spring here at the homestead. I'll bet you are too. We are prepped and ready. I'm sure spring will bring more goat escape stories to share. Seems like they come nearly every week. Expect that if you choose to raise goats.

I hope the history of food preservation and presentation was entertaining and educational for you. Perhaps I've inspired you to investigate a new garde manger food preservation technique. You too can be a keeper of the food. Let me know how it goes for you. What did you try? Leave a comment on the website and sign up for the monthly newsletter. Each month you'll get cheesey food news I've consumed as well as a convenient, clickable list of the podcasts and recipes I publish here.

Speaking of recipes, don't forget to try that traditional butter making recipe. If you are able to purchase raw milk from a local farmer you have the advantage of skimming that cream off and making your own butter with it. How cool is that?

Find even more recipes available for download at www.peacefulheartfarm.com.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for listening and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

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In today's show, we are going to talk about: Cooking Through the Ages.

The conversation today – and every day – revolves around the value of tradition; traditional food prep and storage, traditional cooking, the new traditional farming practices, and of course, traditional artisan CHEESE. Topics discussed here are designed to create new perspectives and possibilities for how you might add the taste of tradition to your life.

Today's Show

• Homestead Life Updates
• Cooking Through the Ages
• Cooking on the Hearth – Mary Randolph's Corn Meal Bread

Homestead Life Updates

It's snowing again today. Sigh. Will this winter never end?

Creamery Update

The trough drains used to carry waste away from cows doing their thing during milking has a brand new cover. It is covered with molded fiberglass resin floor grates. These are strong, non-slip, non-rust grates; and they look pretty cool to me. Walls in the creamery are going up, slowly. Very slowly. It is still winter and the weather is impeding our progress there.

The Orchard

A regular winter task is pruning the fruit and nut trees in the orchard, trimming and repositioning canes in the blackberries and so on. Done!!

Other projects interfering with getting the creamery done:

1. We will be trying a new method of separating calves from moms this year. We need a calf pen to accomplish that.
2. We eat a lot of eggs around here but raising chickens is still on the back burner. Instead we are going to raise quail for eggs and likely some meat as well. This decision is based on time restrictions in building the chicken infrastructure. Making quail cages is much quicker. The birds are easy to raise. Or so they say. We shall see. This is my project. Scott will build a couple of cages, but everything else will be up to me. The incubator is on its way. It will be here later this month.

Cooking Through the Ages

Now let's take a very quick trip through thousands of years of history. How did we humans survive as a species? What kind of food did we eat and how did we preserve and prepare it? How did we get to where we are now? Let's start with the Stone Age shall we?

The Stone Age

During the Stone Age, the Paleolithic period, or Old Stone Age (beginning as early as 750,000 BC), and the Neolithic period, or new Stone Age (beginning around 8000 BC), humans began to make and use stone tools and acquire a larger variety of foods in new ways.

Paleolithic Tools and Foods

Paleolithic tools include axes and blades for cutting and chopping.

In order to survive during the Paleolithic period, humans hunted wild animals, birds, and fish and collected nuts, fruits, and berries. Artifacts show that people ate mammoth, reindeer, horse, fox, wolf, and tortoise.

Cooking techniques included broiling or roasting food over an open flame or hot coals. Brazing in clay cylinders over ashes in a pit is also indicated.

The Neolithic Food Revolution

One of the most significant changes in human food habits occurred around 8000 BC, when people in the Near East began to grow food rather than gather it. This is the Neolithic period. Humans started raising cereal crops such as rye and wheat. We began keeping livestock, including pigs, cows, goats, and sheep. Archaeologists have discovered millstones in these areas, an indication that Neolithic peoples were grinding wheat and other grains to make flour for bread.

Changes in cooking methods included using water brought to a boil in earthenware pottery. They also built the first closed ovens for baking. Now let's move to the Bronze Age

Early Civilizations – the Bronze Age

Advances in food production and preparation in early civilizations had a broad reach. People in Northern Europe began to farm sometime after 3000 BC. Farming practices advanced with the invention of the plow around 3550 BC, and food production increased.

In the Bronze Age, which began around 3000 BC in Mediterranean areas, people began to cook using liquid in pots made of copper and bronze. New tools and utensils also became available.

Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt

We were figuring out what it took to survive as a species. Banding together in larger and larger groups led to the early civilizations of Mesopotamia and Egypt. These two civilizations shared some food habits and traditions. Although beef, lamb, pork, deer, fowl (excluding chicken), fish, turtles, vegetables, and fruits were all part of their diet, grains were a staple food.

Besides cooking cereals in water as a porridge and using ground grains to make bread, the Mesopotamian's favored beer as a beverage for festive occasions. Inscriptions on Egyptian tombs -- "give me bread when I am hungry. Give me beer when I am thirsty" – bear witness to the heavy use of grain in the ancient Egyptian diet.

Both the Mesopotamians and the Egyptians developed a system of writing early on and thus had the means to record recipes. The first known recipes come from Mesopotamia and date to the second millennium BC. Excavated tombs have yielded remnants of foods such as figs and bread, which were typical funerary offerings.

Ancient Egyptian food preparation methods such as open hearth baking of unleavened bread and salt preservation of meats and fish are still common today. The Egyptians also dried and smoked foods and stored fruits in honey and fish in oil to preserve them.

Greek and Roman Cooking

As I mentioned in the History of Cheese FarmCast, the Greeks made cheeses. They also baked bread and produced wine. They became skilled in the use of seasoning and spices, made sauces using oil and cheese, and cultivated olives. Meat, such as rabbit, was added to the diet and gained popularity.

Influenced in large part by the ideas of the great physician and teacher Hippocrates (ca. 460-377 BC), the Greeks, and later the Romans, focused on eating a healthful diet. Consuming food items for both medicinal and nutritional purposes, they viewed cooking methods, combinations of foods, drink, and seasonings as contributions to overall well-being. The Greeks introduced a tradition of lavish dinner parties or banquets, which were often followed by a symposium, the ritual consumption of wine.

In the typical Roman kitchen, the master cook supervised food preparation from a platform at the rear of the room. Square hearth fires stood in the middle. Kitchen equipment featured pots made of bronze, brass, clay, or silver, as well as wood-fired ovens.

Formal dining traditions were further developed during the Roman Empire.

The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Roman traditions continued to dominate cooking and dining practices through the Middle Ages. During the Renaissance, advances in the culinary arts helped set the stage for the development of modern cookery.

Medieval Ways

Medieval kitchens typically stood apart from the main house to reduce the risk of fire. The traditional kitchen was crowded, noisy, hot, and smoky. Vents in the ceiling allowed the release of smoke and heat from the roasting spit and simmering iron kettles. Cooks kept food cold in cellars.

Kitchen equipment included iron pots as well as various hooks, spoons, and knives. The Iron Age produced the cauldron. An iron vessel hanging from a metal arm over hot coals, was the main cooking pot. The typical chimney hearth could accommodate three cauldrons. The cauldron on the left side of the hearth was used for roasting, and the others were used for boiling. Breads and pies were baked in an oven on the side of the chimney.

Renaissance developments

The late 1300s marked the beginning of the Renaissance, an era of revival in the arts and sciences that spread across Europe from south to north. Italy dominated the culinary scene in the 1400s. By the end of the century, it had shifted to Spain, whose explorations and conquests in the Americas introduce new foods and methods of food preparation into Europe. Christopher Columbus and Hernán Cortéz as well as other explorers and conquistadors returned to Europe with tomatoes, chili peppers, potatoes, avocados, corn, vanilla beans, and cacao, the main ingredient of chocolate. These food items had a lasting impact on European cuisine.

By the late 1500s, France rose as Europe's culinary center. Let's move on to America.

American cookery

While grand cuisine was taking shape in France, American cuisine was only in its infancy. There were no cities. European settlers in the Americas brought familiar cooking methods and some staple foods from the old world with them and combined these with culinary techniques and ingredients they found in the New World. From the start, American cookery has been a mosaic of ingredients and techniques from a variety of cultures.

Native American food patterns

When Columbus arrived in the Americas in the late 1400s, most Native Americans followed traditional practices. Their main crops were maize (corn), beans, and squash, but other valuable crops included potatoes and sweet potatoes. Domesticated animals were not a large source of food. However, in addition to cultivating crops, Native Americans fished, hunted, and collected other foods. Remember they were still in the Stone Age as far as their tools and equipment were concerned. They devised storage pits for grains, nuts, and other foods, used a variety of cooking techniques, including roasting and boiling in pots, and preserved some foods by drying and smoking. Again, refer back to the information on Stone Age cooking and tools.

Colonial Food Habits

European settlers learned a great deal from indigenous peoples about growing and preparing foods native to the New World. Native Americans taught newcomers from Europe the most efficient ways to cook outdoors and how to prepare beans and corn. Corn breads, succotash, and various soups and stews became part of the colonial cooking repertoire. For their part, Europeans changed the food supply in the Americas, introducing livestock such as pigs, cattle, and sheep, and plant food such as rice, wheat, barley, and broadbeans from Europe.

Soon colonists were comfortable preparing a variety of foods using a blend of Native American and European techniques.

Regional Cuisine in America Today

During the vast land expansion in the 19th century, the American diet began to show variety from one geographic region to the next. Each part of the country developed its own regional cuisine – foods, ingredients, and cooking methods characteristic of that particular geographic region. Several factors contributed to the development of regional cuisines, including availability of local ingredients and the influence of cultural groups.

Immigration the 19th century changed America as cities began to flourish. Nearly 5 million immigrants arrived in the United States in the period between 1830 and 1860. That's just 30 years. Most were from Germany, Great Britain, and Ireland. Two waves of immigration after 1860 brought people from Scandinavian countries and from Italy, Austria, Hungary, Russia, Greece, Poland, Portugal, and Spain. Asian immigrants also began to make a home in America's big cities. The various regional cuisines began to take shape.

The Northeast was influenced by Native Americans, Englishmen, French-Canadians, Italians, and the Portuguese. Some of the regional foods they developed include meat pies, fish stews and soups, clam chowder, salt cod, chorizo and peppers, baked beans, succotash, Indian pudding, brown bread, maple syrup, cider, fruit pies and desserts, and cream dishes. Later cheese would become a valuable product for this region.

In the Mid-Atlantic schnitzel, scrapple, sausages, apple butter, sauerkraut, slaw, pretzels, bagels, waffles, pork, and dairy products came out of the Dutch and German influences.

Moving to the Midwest we find jerky, country hams, sausages, gravies, beef stews and pot pies, meatloaf, corn roasts, freshwater fish, cheese, potatoes, root vegetables, rye and pumpernickel bread, wild rice, pancakes, strudel, applesauce, apple juice, sauerkraut, nut candies, poppy seed cake, and lager beer. Influences there include Native American, Polish, Hungarian, Czech, German, and Scandinavian.

The southern region is large and varied. Brunswick stew, country hams, red eye gravy, corn breads, biscuits, barbecue pork and beef, chicken wings, jambalaya, fried chicken, crab cakes, crab and crawfish boils, catfish, butter bean custard, peanut soup, peach pie, key lime pie, greens with fatback or salt pork, fried okra and okra stews, hominy, grits, gumbo's, sweet potato pie, nut cakes, and rice. This wide variety is due to Scots Irish, English, Welsh, French, Creole, Cajun, and African influences.

The west is even larger and more varied in its immigrant influences introducing cuisine from the Far East. What a variety. Native American, Spanish, Mexican, Chinese, Japanese, and Pacific Islands all contributed. Today you have barbecue, corn dishes, Tex-Mex food, chili con carne, citrus fruits, guacamole, olives, tuna, sourdough bread, steaks, game, grilled lamb, teriyaki, luau pork, salmon chowder, sashimi, fry bread, Asian noodle dishes, stirfry dishes, tortillas, tacos, quesadillas, chimichangas, pineapple, sugarcane, and chilies prepared and used in all sorts of ways.

Changes in Food Production

New ideas and technology in the 1800s had a great impact on agriculture and industry. Established cities were growing rapidly. Today it's the trucking industry but back then it was the trains that were paramount to people in the city having access to food. Improved tools; new farming methods; and the development of various farm machines, including tractors, combines, and cultivators, increased the supply of food while decreasing the need for small farmers.

The 19th and 20th centuries were a time of great change in the United States. The Industrial Revolution introduced machines that transformed farming and manufacturing. Large numbers of people continued to move to the city. The move from rural areas to the city accelerated and fewer and fewer farmers grew our food. The supply of food increased exponentially but more and more people became separated from the source of their nourishment.

Electricity, gas, and the creation of modern appliances were the icing on the cake. Harvesting, storing and preparing food is a breeze today compared to days past.

Hearth Side Cooking

I took you through quite a journey very quickly. We went from primitive stone implements right up to modern cooking and preservation equipment. I want to step back a little and fill in a blank or two regarding cooking in early colonial America. Specifically regarding baking bread on the hearth. It will tie in with today's recipe.

Bread Making in Colonial Virginia

Hot breads were presented as part of the elaborate meals served at Virginia plantations in the 18th and 19th Century. Guests often left descriptions of the foods they had enjoyed. Excellent wheat breads were highly praised but cornmeal breads predominated. White cornmeal was most often used in the South

As part of the ritual of good food provided in plenty by wealthy Virginians, an array of well-made breads was essential. They were brought to the table to be slathered with fresh butter and eaten still warm from the oven.

Let's consider how formidable it was to make bread. There were no handy grocery stores to pick up a loaf on the way home, no packets of dried yeast. Preparing and baking bread was a time-consuming, arduous process, from making yeast to knowing when the oven was ready. Commercial yeast was not available until 1868, and recipes for yeast occupy a large part of the breadmaking sections in early cookbooks. Cook's kept a starter on hand, made with ingredients that included hops, potatoes, sugar, flour, and water. Combined with more flour to make a "sponge," the dough would be set to rise hours ahead of when it was to be eaten.

Kneading was (and still is) a major part of the process, and its importance was emphasized. A Mrs. Smith, writes that "the best bread makers who I know knead for at least an hour, with all their might…" Eliza Leslie noted that "the goodness of bread depends much on the kneading." While Miss Leslie's statement holds true today, those lengthy times required for kneading are no longer necessary. The commercial yeast now available has shortened the process considerably.

The actual baking was done in Dutch ovens or brick ovens built into the huge kitchen fireplace. A thorough knowledge of the process was vital.

A fire was started in the brick ovens about two hours prior to putting in the loaves. Instructions were specific including the size and type of wood needed to get the proper oven temperature necessary to bake. "If you can hold your hand within the mouth of the oven as long as you can distinctly count 20, the heat is about right."

Alternatively, with Dutch oven baking it was necessary to preheat the iron kettle before putting in the prepared bread dough. Once filled and covered, the Dutch oven could be suspended from a crane and hung over the fire. Another method was to set the Dutch oven on coals to bake in a corner of the hearth. Additional hot coals were piled on top of the lid.

Whatever the baking method, providing delectable breads was essential

Let's take a look at a colonial bread recipe and talk about how it would be prepared in a Dutch oven on a hearth.

Mary Randolph's Cornmeal Bread Recipe

"Rub a piece of butter the size of an egg into a pint of cornmeal, make a batter with two eggs and some new milk, add a spoonful of yeast, set it by the fire an hour to rise, butter little pans and bake it." Mary Randolph.

This is typical of recipes of this era. Simple measurements of weight or volume, vague measurements such as a spoonful or "some" milk and so on, or no measurements at all. Which spoon? And what constitutes a "little pan"? You really had to know what you were doing.

I just happen to have this recipe complete with a modern list of ingredients. You'll be able to give it a try with confidence. The instructions for baking this bread on the hearth will be there for you as well – just in case you want a really big adventure in baking.

What You Need

2 tablespoons butter, melted 2 cups milk 2 cups white cornmeal 2 teaspoons dried yeast 1 teaspoon salt 2 eggs

On the Hearth:

1. Heat butter and milk until milk is warm and butter begins to melt. Set aside to cool to lukewarm.
2. Combine cornmeal, yeast, and salt in bowl. Stir in cooled milk and butter.
3. Beat eggs lightly and stir into rest of ingredients. Blend well but do not overmix.
4. Pour into well-greased baking pan and set aside to rise one hour.
5. Carefully place filled pan in preheated Dutch oven on trivet, crane or hearth stone ashes. Bake, following general instructions for Dutch oven baking, for about 25 minutes, or until knife inserted in center comes out clean and bread is a rich golden brown.

NOTE: I'm not including the "general Instructions for Dutch oven baking". Email me if you want those instructions.

Modern Method:

1. Follow hearth directions one through four, using 8" x 8" square pan.
2. Preheat oven to 450°F. Bake cornbread 20 to 30 minutes or until done.

Final Thoughts

I hope you enjoyed today's FarmCast. We will keep plugging away at that creamery and living the life that fills us with wonder and awe. We love our cheese and can't wait to share it with you. Every one of the recipes you hear on the FarmCast is on our website as well as many others. Sign up on our mailing list so you can receive our monthly newsletter filled with more cooking tips and tricks. From the basics of how to boil an egg – in an Instant Pot – to creating really fantastic and fun dishes like that cheese fondue recipe. I'm going to shamelessly plug that. We had it just last week. It was a lovely romantic evening.

While our creamery is modern, the methods we use are not. Striking that balance between using the traditions of yesteryear while taking advantage of modern technology is the best of both worlds. Life in ancient times or even just a couple hundred years ago was filled with all sorts of dangers and pitfalls. Food was scarce. It required lots of time and effort to prepare it. Tradition was extremely important. Tending your hearth properly meant the difference between living and dying – or at the very least losing everything you owned in a fire. Without modern food preservation, effectively using traditional techniques of preserving food were also the difference between life and death. The art of having safely prepared nutritious food year round meant you and your children might live to a ripe old age. Cheese making was a big part of food preservation. As were drying, pickling, smoking and salting. These ancient food preservation techniques made living through harsh winters possible.

It's so easy to take for granted what we have today and what we have endured to get here. I will speak on behalf of Scott and myself. Gratefulness fills our hearts as we reflect on the old ways. We look forward to continuing to share our passion for preserving life with you.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for listening and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

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In today's show, we are going to talk about the milk cows that we have chosen for our central enterprise of cheesemaking – Normande Cows

Today's Show Topics

• Homestead Life Updates
• The Normande Cow Breed
• Crème Fraîche Recipe

Homestead Life Updates

Scott has been out pruning trees for a couple of days, but taking a nap now. It's raining. AGAIN. Yesterday and the day before were filled with getting the trees in shape. There are 80 plus trees in our small orchard.

Apples, peaches, cherries, plums, pears, mulberries, kiwis and elderberries are the fruit trees/bushes. Hazelnut, pecans, almonds are the nut trees. He got about 40% complete on the blueberries and blackberries before the rain hit. There are a few raspberry and grape plants around as well. I probably missed one or two in that list. The orchard is a favorite project for him. It's a lot of work, but he loves it. We have a beehive back there also for pollination.

Farmer's Market

We were at the Wytheville Farmer's market this past Saturday. Got to meet lots of new people. A shout out and thanks for your patronage. March 9th is the next market date. We will have ground lamb and goat as well as some awesome soup bones. You get a free recipe card with each purchase. If you buy a whole or half lamb you get the All Lamb Cookbook. It contains recipes for every cut of lamb in your package.

We want to make is easy for you to get the most out of your lamb. I will admit that the Indian Lamb Curry is my favorite. It's made from the boneless shoulder roast cut into bite-sized pieces.

March 23rd market we will have ground beef as well.

Need More Freezer Space

Tomorrow we are going to pick up a freezer we loaned out last year. We need it for the beef we are going to have soon. I'm a little bummed about the need that drove the event. Sometimes it's hard to maintain peace when you have a homestead farm business. Here's the story.

We have a small herd of Normande cows. As I mentioned, I'll be talking in great detail about that breed today. The purpose of the cows is to provide wonderfully nutritious milk so we can make wonderfully nutritious cheese. In order to make that happen, the cows need to have a calf every year. We milk them for about 9 months and the other 3 months we do not. With the birth of a calf in the spring, the milking process starts again. It's a continuous life cycle.

In order to tell this story properly I need to make a distinction between the cows, the goats, the sheep. Goats and sheep are cute, especially the kids and lambs, and we watch them play and enjoy their beauty. But they are not pets. We have very little hands-on daily interaction with them. The goats get their hooves trimmed regularly and, in the spring, we comb out the cashmere. Otherwise, the goats and sheep pretty much take care of themselves.

As far as the cattle, we have the milk cows in one herd. Then there is another herd comprised of steers that resulted from the annual birthing of calves. We grow them out for beef. The bull hangs out there as well until we need him. The steers pretty much take care of themselves as well. We often watch them grazing peacefully but are not physically interacting with them so much.

The Milk Cows

The milk cows are unique. We interact with the milk cows – just about on a daily basis. These cows are not pets, but there is a special relationship or bond that develops with them. We pet them and hug them and talk to them. Cows are very peaceful animals. It is a pleasure to simply watch them graze. One of the reasons I wanted a milk cow was the experience of peace while sitting beside this beautiful creature and performing the action of milking.

We bond with all of our animals. However, the bond with the milk cows is deeper. The difference is that the other animals are raised specifically for meat as food. The milk cows are raised for the luscious milk they make. They get extra-special attention.

Today, for the first time in my experience on the farm, we had to cull one of our milk cows. She was gentle and calm as they all are. She had intelligent eyes and a beautiful coat. I'll talk more about the Normande coloring in a bit. We put a halter on her and led her onto the trailer. She was only slightly adverse and it didn't take long to get her on the trailer. When we arrived at the processing facility, she was lying on the floor of the trailer not seemingly traumatized at all. Once the door was opened, she got up and Scott led her off the trailer. She got a little antsy at that point when we wanted her to go to an unknown place, but she shortly cooperated.

Upon beginning the return journey home, we were both quiet and introspective. It was hard. I think it is the hardest thing I have ever done so far. I've seen the aftermath of a coyote attack on our lambs. I found dead lambs and goat kids that perished for reasons unknown. Last year we lost our oldest breeding ewe and her lambs, likely triplets. This past fall we culled an older ewe that twice had issues birthing her triplets.

Lilly

So, what happened. Lilly was 7 years old. She had a calf in 2014 and she had a calf in 2015. She hasn't had one since. After more than seven months with the bull this year, she was still cycling. We had to let her go. She was consuming massive amounts of grass and hay and not doing her part to ensure our small enterprise would continue. Perhaps there were extra steps we could have taken to get her to stand for the bull. Or perhaps she had ovarian cysts and could have been treated by the vet but that comes with the possibility of recurrence. I'm sure I will continue to doubt my decision to cull her from the herd. But I stand firm in that it was a decision that had to be made. I had no idea it would be so hard.

I was in tears and indeed am tearing up now at the loss of this animal. We hold in our mind the purpose of every animal on our homestead. Each contributes to the whole process of sustainability and diversity on our farm. They must contribute or they must go. At this point I'm pretty sure I'm never going to get used to losing my milk cows. I can't help but bond with them. And I will cry each time their life with us is over whatever the reason.

I hope this isn't too much of a downer but I feel it is important to honor her life and to share our feelings as we move forward on the homestead. It's not always roses and butterflies. Thank you for your patience with me as I grieve a little.

One way I want to honor her is to share the wonderfulness of her breed and why we chose these cows.

The Normande Cow Breed

It all started because I like to drink milk but did not want pasteurized milk. And cheesemaking has always been a passion of mine since I first learned how to make it back in 1993. The original plan was for one or two cows. So, we researched and researched. We wanted the milk but also knew to make that happen there would be a calf every year. That means we needed good beef as well. Because our values revolve around living close to and in harmony with nature, we wanted a breed that would do well on pasture without supplemental feed.

Finally, we purchased our first cows in the fall of 2011. We bought two for milking and one for beef. I was already enamored with their unique coloring. And as we worked with them, I fell even more in love. Almost all cows have a deeply peaceful quality about them. This breed takes that quality to the next level. It was a defining moment for us in the evolution of our business aspirations. These cows were to become the centerpiece of our homestead.

History

As the name implies, the breed comes from Normandy, a North–Western region of France. Since Normandy is famous for its Viking influence, many people believe that the breed descended from the cattle the Vikings imported. For over 1,000 years these cattle evolved into a dual-purpose breed to meet the milk and meat needs of the residents of Northwestern France.

During the Allied Invasion of Normandy beginning on June 6, 1944 through July 1944, the breed was nearly wiped out. But today they are alive and well. As of 5 years ago there were about 3 million Normande cattle grazing on French pastures, with large numbers in the regions of Normandy, Brittany, and Maine, as well as in the Ardennes and the Pyrenees. Although popular for their beef, they are primarily milk producers.

The Colors

Have I mentioned that these are gorgeous cows? They have distinctive eye patches. There are three characteristic coat colors sometimes referred to as the three Bs: Blanc (white), Blond (fawn or red) and Brindled (dark brown). It's kind of hard to describe so I'll put pictures in the post on the website. Please check them out. I believe I mentioned, they are gorgeous.

The arrangements of colors are really varied: Blanc is mostly white, sometimes called quail. The coat is scattered with very small patches of color; The Blond coat has one big fawn or red patch covering almost the entire cow's body. The belly and head are white and there are those circles around the eyes with all of these coats I'm describing. The brindle is similar to the blond but the large patch is dark brown to black.

Normande Around the World

The breed has been exported to many different countries, and has thrived in all of them. They adapt well to a wide range of climates. In South America, central Europe, Western Europe, Asia and North America the breed has shown its versatility.

While having been exported worldwide, they received their greatest acceptance in South America where they were introduced in the 1890s. Total numbers there now exceed 4 million purebred plus countless Normandy cross breeds. Columbia alone has 1.6 million purebreds with the rest mainly in Brazil, Ecuador, Paraguay and Uruguay. They are also growing in countries such as the US, Mexico, Madagascar, Belgium, Switzerland, Great Britain and Ireland.

Milk and Cheese

Their milk has about 3.5% protein and 4.4% fat, with a 4.2% butterfat content. The reason their milk is so suitable for cheesemaking is because of high levels of Beta Casein and Kappa Casein. We'll get into that more at a later date.

In France, the Normande is associated with the production of famous cheeses such as Camembert de Normandie, Livarot and Pont Leveque (pone liveck). These are all moist, soft, creamy, surface-ripened cheeses. In France, to legally carry the official name the cheese must meet certain requirements for manufacturing location, type of cow, raw and/or pasteurized milk, and specific processes. The official Camembert de Normande is made entirely from raw milk from the Normande breed grazed in the Normandy region of Northwestern France. There are lots and lots of other cheeses from the Normandy region of France, but the three I mentioned require the use of milk from the Normande breed of cow.

A Sustainable Breed for a Sustainable Agriculture.

Since Normandy cattle have been raised on grass only for many centuries, their grazing ability is highly commended.

Long, damp cold muddy French winters and simple forged diets have prepared Normandes for the worst. As I mentioned, today Normandes have spread from the Andes to the tropical coastlines of South America to Ireland and Canada. Because the Normande has not been selected solely on one character, it has retained exceptional qualities often lost by specialized breeding. Highly desirable qualities such as fertility, calving ease, excellent feet and legs and overall heartiness are prominent. Their thick, curly winter hair ensures good protection against the cold. The eye rings are effective against the sun in the summer. The breed also shows remarkable docility which makes the handling of bulls very easy, though you always watch your back. Finally, raised on grass for centuries, the Normandy shows outstanding grazing ability and that works for us.

That's it for your overview of this excellent breed of cow. I hope you enjoyed that little trip through French history. Learning new information is always a joy for me and I hope you were entertained as well.

Crème Fraîche Recipe

Crème fraîche is similar to sour cream. While sour cream and crème fraîche are both used to add richness and tangy flavor, they are not the same thing. And is it worth taking the extra time to make your own crème fraîche? I'm going to say absolutely, yes, depending on the use.

How They're Made

Sour cream is made by adding lactic acid culture to heavy cream and sometimes milk to thicken and sour it. In France, crème fraîche was traditionally made from unpasteurized cream that naturally contained the right bacteria to thicken it. Since our cream is pasteurized here in the US, crème fraîche is now made by adding a fermenting agent with bacteria to heavy cream. So, today's recipe will be the Americanized version of crème fraîche.

The Differences Between Sour Cream & Crème Fraîche

Sour cream has a fat content of about 20% and may include ingredients like gelatin, rennin, and vegetable enzymes to stabilize it and make it thicker.

Crème fraîche has a fat content of about 30% and does not contain any added thickeners. Crème fraîche is thicker, has a richer flavor, and is less tangy than sour cream.

When to Use Crème Fraîche?

Use it anywhere you would use sour cream. Because sour cream has less fat but more protein, simmering or boiling it will result in curdling. Crème fraîche is a better choice for sauces or soups.

If using in a salad or as a topping, they're pretty much interchangeable and the choice is yours — some people like the tanginess of sour cream, while others like the richness of crème fraîche.

What You Need

• 2 cups heavy cream
• 3 tablespoons cultured buttermilk

What to Do

1. In a glass jar, combine the buttermilk with the heavy cream.
2. Cover the jar tightly with cheesecloth or other breathable material. Let sit at room temperature (70 to 75 degrees) for 24 hours.
3. Remove cloth, stir. It will be thick but will get thicker. Screw on a lid, and refrigerate for another 24 hours before using.

Enjoy!

Get the recipe here!!

Final Thoughts

That's it for another episode of the Peaceful Heart FarmCast. Work continues on all sorts of farm projects. There is still more to do in the orchard. The garden will be picking up soon. That always adds a bit of hurried activity in the spring. We are looking forward to it.

I hope you enjoyed the trip down memory lane and through Normandy, France. We plan to visit one winter when we are not milking our beautiful and gentle cows.

Visit us at http://peacefulheartfarm.com/recipes and download that creme fraîche recipe. It's so fun and satisfying to make things with your own two hands. And in this case, so easy.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for listening and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

To share your thoughts:

• Leave a comment on our Facebook Page
• Share this show on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

To help the show:

• PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW for Peaceful Heart FarmCast on iTunes.
• Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music, TuneIn or Spotify
• Donate on Patreon

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The topic for today is how cheese makes you happy! That's right. There is evidence that the nutrition in cheese can actually affect your mood among other things. I'm pleased to bring you this great news today!

Today's Show

• Homestead Life Updates
• Cheese and Nutrition
  • Nutritional content
  • Cheese tastes good
  • Facts about fat content
  • Lactose intolerance
  • Why cheese makes people happy
• Cheese Fondue Recipe

Homestead Life Updates

Scott is working hard on getting the creamery built. Every day that does not bring adverse weather sees him out there building the walls. There are also lots of other odds and ends and details he adds in there that breaks up the monotony. I'm am so blessed to have such a wonderful life here with him. Our life has purpose and meaning as we both work hard to bring you the benefits of traditional hand-made artisan cheese.

The winter drags on. Seems like a long one this year doesn't it? Every year winter is the same 13 weeks on the calendar but the weather conditions during that period of time alters our perception of time, I think.

There is a common winter ailment called seasonal affective disorder. I'm sure some of you know of what I speak. It's a type of depression that's related to changes in the seasons. Symptoms can begin as early as the fall and continue into the winter months. Occasionally, SAD causes depression into the spring or early summer, but that is rarer. Spring usually brings a rush of relief.

I experience SAD every year. This year is different. I've significantly changed my diet and it shows. While I can still feel the effects of this winter season, it is muted compared to previous years. I feel kind of heavy sometimes; slightly weighted down by life in general.

As an aside, I generally just suffer through it. However, there are things you can do. Light therapy or phototherapy is the most common treatment. Some schools of thought attribute the issue to reduced vitamin D from the sun as there is less light due to the length of the day. More severe cases may require medication or psychotherapy.

The symptoms may start as a minor issue such as having trouble sleeping or a general loss of interest in doing anything. Low energy, feeling sluggish or maybe agitated for no reason. As the season progresses, the symptoms get worse and worse. In the past it has seemed overwhelming to me. And then, poof, spring arrives and it all evaporates like mist.

Let's talk about how cheese might help with that. Did you know that cheese has nutritional properties that stimulate our happy hormones? First, let's cover the basic nutrition in cheese.

Cheese and Nutrition

Cheese is a delicious and tremendously efficient source of nutrition. It supplies many valuable nutrients, including proteins, sugars, vitamins, minerals, and trace elements. A 4-ounce piece of solid farmhouse cheese, for example, supplies more than half the adult nutritional requirements for protein, fat, calcium, and phosphorus as well as significant portions of vitamins A, B2, and B12. If you compare the nutritional content of a 3.5-ounce chunk of a hard, aged cheese such as Cheddar or Emmental to an equivalent amount of chicken eggs (two eggs are about 3.5 ounces), the cheese contains about twice as much protein and one quarter the cholesterol.

The miracle of evolution has ensured that milk is an extremely nutritious food. After all, without it how would mothers, down through the eons, have guaranteed the survival of their babies? Cheese concentrates the nutrients in milk. It's a highly efficient method of getting vital nutrients for our bodies.

Another advantage to cheese is that its nutrients are "predigested" by bacteria and enzymes during cheesemaking and aging. That means the process of breaking down the proteins, fats, and sugars began before it was savored on our palette and began the journey to our tummy.

Plants in the pasture have absorbed nutrients from the soil; the dairy animals have extracted those nutrients, packaging them in the form of milk. That's another place that a lot of gathering nutrients has already been done for you. Your body has to devote less effort to processing cheese than it does with many other comparably nutritious foods.

Cheese Tastes Good

Cheese tastes good and satisfies us. A big reason for that is the fat. There are beneficial fats available in milk. Many of them work as antioxidants and also provide fat-soluble vitamins good for our skin and other organs. In cheese, milk fats undergo lipolysis, which breaks them down into more easily absorbed and beneficial fatty acids, some of which in turn enable us to metabolize the fats from other foods.

CLA

Cheeses, especially those made from the milk of grass-fed animals, are a good source of conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA, a highly beneficial nutrient. In small studies involving animals, CLA has been shown to prevent heart disease and several types of cancer. It also appears to enhance the immune system. CLA is considered a fat-reducing fat. You heard that right. There are studies on this. Let me give you some info from one study. I'll put a link in the show notes.

Jean-Michel Gaullier, PhD with the Scandinavian Clinical Research Group did the study. It was a relatively small number of participants. 180 men and women were followed for a year. A third got a typical off-the-shelf pill of 80% CLA. Another third got a 76% CLA syrup formula, disguised in a capsule. The last third took a placebo capsule of olive oil.

No one had to change their diet or exercise habits. All reduced their calorie intake a little bit during the study. Likely that was due to tracking with a food diary. That can really wake you up to what you are actually consuming. As far as exercise, all got about the same amount.

The results were:

• Both CLA groups lost weight – about 4 pounds; the placebo group stayed the same.
• The CLA syrup group had a 9% body fat loss; the CLA pill group had 7% body fat loss; the placebo group had no body fat loss.
• Both CLA groups had similar improvements in muscle mass.

Good news ay? Losing weight was good, but I found the conversion of fat to muscle mass to be the most interesting to me.

CLA is found naturally in beef, lamb, goat and dairy products.

Facts About Fat Content

Because cheese contains fat, naturally, it raises concerns. There are some valid concerns there. Not for the fat, but for the calories. A little bit of cheese goes a long way. Real cheese delivers a lot of nutritional bang for your buck and a lot of caloric bang for your buck. The fat is the culprit there. The key is to eat moderate amounts along with your other dietary choices. Let's talk about the fat content of various cheeses.

Contrary to appearances, hard, grainy cheeses such as Parmesan may actually contain more fat than creamy, luxurious ones such as any triple cream cheese. The rich triple cream types are labeled "75% butterfat" while a Parmigiana–Reggiano claims around 35% butterfat. The trick is that cheeses are labeled by percentage of fat in their solid materials, not in their total weight.

Cheeses retain water, even after much of it is extracted during cheesemaking. The less water a cheese retains, the harder or denser it will be. A dense cheese with, say, 50% butterfat, could actually deliver more fat per serving than a soft, gooey one with 70% butterfat.

Lactose Intolerance

Let's talk about lactose intolerance. Well–made, aged cheeses are actually one of the few dairy products that will not cause problems for many people with this difficulty. The first and most important step of cheesemaking, alongside protein coagulation, is the conversion of lactose into lactic acid – the souring or fermentation action of lactic acid bacteria on milk. The small amount of lactose left over after active cheesemaking ends is further broken down by glycolysis during aging.

What this means is that for people who have trouble digesting lactose, it's not a problem because the digestion has already been done for them by the cheesemaking and aging process. Give it a try. You, too, can be a happy cheese eater. Speaking of cheese making your happy. Why is that?

Why cheese makes people happy

A wonderful piece of info I ran across wherein a neurologist talks about how cheese literally makes you happy. Dr. Thomas C Morell is the neurologist. Link to the article will be in the show notes. The title of the piece is Nutritional Neuroscience. The central core of the article is using nutrition to help heal TBI or traumatic brain injury.

There is some really good information about how the brain functions along with how and why nutrition is important to maximize brain function. Later in the article he gets specifically to cheese as "the first food that will help your brain." He cites cheese as an extraordinarily rich source of proteins and amino acids. One of those amino acids is Tyrosine. Dr. Morell's comments on the relation of tyrosine to neurotransmitters in the brain are noted in the article.

Some quotes from the article: (again, reference in the show notes) "The body does not produce Tyrosine so it must be obtained from outside sources, of which cheese contains very high concentrations. We quickly began to realize that cheese is one of nature's perfect foods for the body and for brain functioning! Furthermore, the pleasure of eating cheese in its multitude of varieties is not just for the sensuous pleasure of taste and smell, but actually has nutritional importance that will help the neurotransmitters in your brain. Cheese not only supplies calories for metabolism as well as being an excellent source of Calcium, but contains proteins and amino acids that are intricately associated with manufacturing many important brain chemicals."

Then he talks about how cheese makes people happy.

"Cheese can make people happy. Why? It starts with Tyrosine which is a building block for many of the neurotransmitter chemicals in the brain. It can improve mood and well-being particularly during times of stress. Tyrosine is a substrate of many well-known neurotransmitters including adrenaline, norepinephrine, and dopamine. Cheese may be one of the basic primordial foods that improved the performance of our brain, with deep connections from the olfactory bulb to the parts of our brain responsible for memory and emotions. Cheese may just be the perfect food to capture the nutritional-emotional duality that our bodies and brains need!"

I find it so refreshing that our medical profession is starting to look at food as nutrition for building, maintaining, and healing the body.

"Cheese contains high levels of casein which is the primary protein found in milk. As casein is broken down and digested it is converted into Tyrosine. Casein is also broken down into the chemical casomorphin, an opioid molecule in the same family as morphine. This may explain some of cheese's addicting qualities!"

I can relate to the addicting quality of cheese. As my diet has improved, my urge for eating too much food is strongly diminished. However, once I start eating cheese, I may overeat if I don't pay attention.

"There are many receptors for the Tyrosine molecule in the olfactory bulb where our sense of smell courses through the Central Nervous System. The Tyrosine in cheese is broken down into several chemicals. One of them is epinephrine (adrenaline) which has many positive physical and mental effects to make us more alert. Epinephrine also increases the flow of oxygen and glucose to the brain and muscles which elicits the "Fight or Flight" response to stressful or dangerous situations. Norepinephrine helps fight off depression and can improve our attention and concentration skills. Dopamine is a powerful neurotransmitter involved in mood stability and accounts for pleasurable feelings and activation of the brain's reward systems. Tyrosine is also a precursor to levodopa which is used to replace deficiency of Dopamine in Parkinson's disease. Finally, Tyrosine is also a precursor to Melatonin, the skin pigment that protects us from ultraviolet sunlight damage but is also associated with insulin production which regulates blood sugar levels."

How perfect is cheese? It makes you feel good with the neurotransmitter action and supplies energy and protein. All are critical for brain performance and memory retention.

As a final note on the topic, have you ever wondered what those little crunchy pockets that develop in the paste of well-made aged cheeses are? Those are crystals of tyrosine embedded in the long chains of amino acids of the casein molecules. When they make your mouth water, they are not only providing cheese eating pleasure but they're also setting into motion a series of very real and tangible benefits to your body and brain.

Let's move on to today's cheese fondue recipe.

Cheese Fondue Recipe

Cheese fondue can be fancy or it can be a quaint and close tradition in any family or group of friends. As an added bonus, it's easy to make. The only skill needed is the ability to stand at a stove and stir.

Cheese fondue is a Swiss invention which became popular in the US in the 1960's. I'm looking to revive that tradition. As its core fondue is melted cheese served in a pot over a portable heating device and enjoyed communally. It can be made with or without the official fondue set. A double boiler set up will work just fine. Using a crock pot is also an option. The key is low, slow heat. Add some wooden skewers and your homemade fondue set is complete.

How to Make the Perfect Cheese Fondue at Home

The perfect cheese fondue is rich and smooth. First, I want to go over a few tips to make it easy for that to happen for you. Stick to them and your family and guests will be transported to the Alps from their first bite.

• Use Good-Quality Cheese. It will be more expensive but worth it. Even if you ignore all of the other tips, keep this one. Fondue truly is all about the cheese, and the quality and types of cheeses you use will have an enormous impact on the final product.
  • For classic Swiss cheese fondue (meaning one like what you would find in Switzerland), a mix of traditional, firm alpine mountain-style cheeses is best. Gruyere and Emmental come to mind.
  • We make a cheese called Pinnacle that will serve you well. There are lots of other cheeses that will also work. No need to be bound by the "Swiss" label.
  • You want a buttery, creamy cheese that melts smoothly. Cheddar cheese would work. Even though the flavor would be less traditional, it would still taste fantastic. I've used our Clau d' ville Cheddar mixed with alpine-style Pinnacle and the blend warms the heart.

• Grate – do not chop – the Cheese. Grated cheese will melt much quicker.

• Toss the Cheese with Cornstarch Thoroughly. Cornstarch helps thicken the fondue and prevents the cheese from clumping. You don't want lumpy cheese!

• Classic cheese fondue does call for white wine. Use a good wine. Choose something dry and high acid, such as Sauvignon Blanc.
  • The taste of the wine directly impacts the taste of the fondue. The acid in the wine helps keep the cheese smooth and gives it an even texture. Again, we don't want lumpy fondue.
  • You can substitute unsalted chicken or vegetable stock if you do not want to use wine.
  • For beer cheese fondue, swap out the wine with your favorite beer. Beer works really well in a cheddar cheese fondue.

• Add the Cheese Slowly and Stir Constantly. This is SO important to make sure the cheese fondue is buttery smooth.
  • Grab a small handful and sprinkle it into the pot. Stir constantly and wait for each addition to melt before adding the next.
  • Don't try to rush it—you won't win. Just enjoy the moment at the stove at peace with yourself, the cheese, and the promise of a luscious fondue.

What Should You Dip?

• Bread. Always delicious. French or sourdough cut into 1-inch cubes so that it can be easily skewered.
• Apples. Tart apples like Granny Smith are fantastic dipped with cheese fondue. Cut the apples into cubes.
• Cherry Tomatoes. One of my absolute favorites!
• Roasted Baby Potatoes.
• Steamed Broccoli. Reminds me of broccoli cheese soup.
• Mushrooms
• Game Day Delights:
  • Potato or tortilla chips
  • Soft or hard pretzels
  • Ham, Turkey or Beef
  • Bacon. Even better than you think it's going to taste. Make sure the bacon isn't too crisp or it will break off in the pot.
  • Shrimp or mussels
  • Kielbasa or hot dogs
  • Pepperoni
  • Meatballs
  • Pickles.

The choices are up to you. There are no rules there. Anything that tastes good with cheese it going to be heaven. It takes about 25 minutes to make the fondue.

What You Need

• 1 pound (4 cups) of 2 or more cheeses of your choice – Gruyere, Emmental, Appenzeller and of course our Pinnacle
• 2 tablespoons cornstarch
• 1 cup dry white wine — such as Sauvignon Blanc
• 1 clove garlic — minced
• 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
• 1 tablespoon kirsch – Kirsch is a clear colorless fruit brandy. You may substitute a brandy of your choice
• 1/4 teaspoon nutmeg – ground
• 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard (optional)
• Assorted Fondue dippers

What to do

1. Grate all of the cheeses. In a medium bowl, combine the cheeses with the cornstarch, tossing thoroughly to coat all pieces.
2. In a stove-safe fondue pot or large heavy saucepan, bring the wine, garlic, and lemon juice to a simmer over medium-low heat. Add the cheeses to the simmering liquid a little at a time, stirring well between each addition to ensure a smooth fondue. Once smooth, stir in the brandy, nutmeg, and mustard.
3. Arrange an assortment of bite-size dipping foods on a platter. Carefully pour the fondue into a fondue pot. Serve with fondue forks or wooden skewers.
4. Dip and enjoy!

Recipe Notes:

If using a crock pot, no need to wait for the wine and lemon to simmer. Put it all in there and stir as needed until the desired consistency is achieved.

Final Thoughts

I've run out of words for today. I hope if you have the winter blues you are taking time out of the day to pamper yourself. And remember, this too shall pass. Enjoy some cheese to get that tyrosine going and get happy.

I hope you'll try the fondue. You can let me know what creative ideas you used and traditions you started by commenting on the Facebook post @peacefulheartfarm.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for listening and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

Recipe Link

Cheese Fondue

References

• CLA: The New Miracle Weight Loss Pill?
• Nutritional Neuroscience – Dr. Thomas C. Morell

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The history of cheese. Exactly how did cheese get started? What's the tradition there?

Overview

-- Farm Updates -- History of Cheese -- Lemon Cheese Recipe

Farm Updates

I don't have a lot to report today about the farm. A bit about hay, the creamery and a story about the goats and their antics.

Hay and Creamery

Scott laid the first row of blocks for the walls of the creamery. Yay!!! He is off getting more hay today. He will be back at it tomorrow and every day as long as the weather holds. We work long hours around here. They are shorter during the winter due to the amount of daylight. As the days get longer, we will get more and more done on any given day.

Why is he getting more hay? As I have talked about, our cows are 100% grassfed and raised on pasture. They get stored grass in the winter – that's the hay. Cows need a lot of energy to stay warm when it is cold. They handle the cold very well. But they eat more – sometimes a lot more – when it is really cold. We came up short on the amount of hay we needed due to the excessive cold this winter. The are eating a lot more to keep warm.

That brings up another quick point that I want to make. We endeavor to have 2 years of hay stored for just this reason. You never know when you are going to run short. Perhaps this year we will get that hay storage back up to snuff. It was there a couple of years ago. Sometimes these things just slip when other priorities demand our attention. It's a daily juggling act. I think we are passable jugglers at this point. Still need improvement though.

Goat Antics

We had yet another case of unauthorized breeding on the farm a little over 5 months ago. Here's the story.

After manifest evidence of unauthorized breeding, Scott looked to his calendar of events for more information. He found the facts of the incident on his calendar. I didn't even know it happened. It was a small blip and he corrected it immediately. Let me back up a little.

We essentially maintain two herds / flocks of animals. One we call the "the boys" and the other is referred to as "the girls" even though there are a couple of "the boys" in there right now. That's our authorized breeding in progress. Unauthorized breeding happens when "the boys" meet "the girls" on their own schedule outside of our desired parameters. As I said, we had an incident a little over 5 months ago.

Every morning during milking season we bring up "the girls" usually just the bovine species. We only milk the cows, not the sheep or goats. However, sometimes the other animals come up just for kicks. According to Scott's calendar/diary, on September 30th last year when he was returning the cows to the pasture, he noticed that a couple of the girl goats had joined the boys. With goats you never know how they get through a fence. But believe me, if there is a way, a goat will find it.

Goat Kids

So, Scott got the goat girls back with the rest of "the girls" herd. The renegade girls were in there for no more than a half hour – maybe 45 minutes. It just doesn't take long does it? Fast forward to about 2 weeks ago, Scott was checking the herd and putting out hay. He noticed several goat babies running around out there. Of course, this had to be a day just before freezing cold was to come again. There you have it. Only 30 to 45 minutes and 5 months later – goat kids. Scott came and got me and we began goat kid rescue operations. Get them to shelter.

Immediately I found a set of badger marked twins from one gray badger colored doe. But Scott had mentioned that on first arriving with the hay he had seen a tiny black kid trailing after one of the black does. We searched and we searched and we searched but we could not find this kid. Goat kids are exceptional with hiding and camouflage. Scott finally decided he must have been mistaken. We both had trouble accepting that because it is really hard to mistake one of those tiny newborns for the grown ones, even it if was one of the smaller does from last year. But after a couple of hours and looking in every nook and cranny we could find, we gave up the search.

The next morning Scott came and got me again. This time he was holding a tiny black goat kid. God only knows where that kid was hiding. We reunited him with his mom and he seemed pretty happy about that. He was larger than the twins. We believe he could have been a day or even two older. Also, a single birth as opposed to a twin makes for a bigger kid. We estimated the weights of the twins at 3.5 and 3 pounds. The single was a bit over 4 pounds.

Joy and Loss

The story has a bit of a sad ending. The black one was running around fine for two days and then we found him dead one morning. I don't know what happened. Perhaps he was stressed from a night away from his mom and was immunocompromised. Maybe he got too cold that one night. We just don't know. Goat kids are extremely vulnerable in their first week. On a happier note, the twins are doing spectacularly.

Those are the only two kids we will have this year, knock on wood. There is also a nagging thought in the back of my mind that in another week or so we could have a few more. I'm not sure that we separated the baby boys from the herd before the oldest buckling was sexually active. I'll let you know if anything changes there.

While I'm on the topic of births, I'll mention a couple of other things. Like I said, no more goat kids this year. We paused on breeding the goats this year because we are evaluating whether we want to switch from cashmere goats for fiber to meat goats. We are looking at kiko goats which are a meat breed. We are not growing more goats until we make a decision about pressing forward with our original fiber plan or deviating slightly to the meat plan.

Sheep and Cows

As far as the sheep go, the ewes were bred on schedule and are due to deliver sometime after March 20th. We will move them to the pasture outside my living room window as their time gets closer. They are strong in pasture birthing but keeping our eye on them is important. Taking excellent care of our animals is high on our list of priorities. We will supplement their hay just a little with mineral-fortified feed two weeks ahead of their expected delivery. Losses, heartbreak and experience have led us to that added step.

We expect our first calf on March 30th. The good Lord willing and the creek don't rise, we will have 5 healthy calves this year with no veterinary bills.

Alright, switching topics.

The history of Cheese

I don't know if you think about how things that we have and do today evolved over time. From time to time, I ponder it. Throughout my life I've had a penchant for history and tradition. Just how did we come to the place where we are today? How did "this" or "that" method or tradition come to be? Why is it always done that way now? Here's a deep one. How did humans figure out that traditional committed pair-bonding between two individuals led to a stable family and continuation of the species? Who figured out why that worked? And what were the traditions passed down through generation after generation to ensure that it happened? What about soap making. It's a chemist's endeavor. What brain came up with the method?

Today I want to talk about the path of our ancestors that led to preserving milk and making cheese – also significantly contributing to the survival of the species. I'll share and pass on some tales about how it MIGHT have happened. And a bit about where we are today as some traditions fall away and others evolve.

When did people first begin to make cheese? The most repeated story is that it was discovered by nomadic peoples. People who traveled by foot or beast of burden; horse, donkey or camel. The story goes that they found that the milk they transported in bags made of animal stomachs solidified during the long day of jostling along on the back of a horse or donkey. Young ruminant animal stomach is the key there. Calves, kids, lambs. And while that may be the most oft told story, it's not the only way cheese may have evolved.

We know that it doesn't take a camel trip to cause milk to curdle – The rennet in the stomach of the ruminant will do that for sure. But leaving a bowl of milk sitting outside any hut or tent for a couple of warm days will do the job. Separate the curds from the whey and voilà – cheese!

I'll provide greater detail on that process going forward, but that's the basics. Warm the milk, add rennet or let the natural aliveness of the milk do its thing on its own, drain the whey. Cheese!

The Monastic and Small-Town Cheese Traditions

Moving forward in time, the Greco-Roman era produced documentation of cheese making. Cheese was an important food for the people of Greece and Rome.

After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, the monasteries rose to prominence. They were responsible for the survival of education and culture after civilization deteriorated with the fall of Rome. The monasteries perpetuated and protected the documents. Additionally, early medicines were developed in rudimentary pharmacies. You saw important advances in art, music, and cooking.

The monks were generally the most educated in that period of history. They were the landowners and the country folk of the land were their responsibility. Monks tended to the spiritual needs of the people, as well as their health and the process of growing, preparing and storing food.

The monasteries became a prominent developer and keeper of cheese making tradition. It was during this time that regional and distinct types of cheeses first arose. Maintaining a thriving small industry using the milk produced on church-owned land was central to the survival of the community. Monasteries used local labor and ingredients.

Peasant farmers and herders also made cheese from the milk of their sheep, goats and cows to feed their families. Cheese was one answer to the question of what to eat in the season when no milk was available. Traditional methods were developed.

Isolated valleys existed throughout Europe and were home to local societies with traditions and foods that were unique to their small worlds. Many still exist and have influenced the wonderful variety of European cheese we know today. There are hundreds of these cheeses passed down from generation to generation that are still available today. Many still operate under a type of "patent". The cheese must be made in a specific region with milk obtained from a specific breed of cow, and processed using specific methods to be labeled with a specific name. Camembert d' Normandy and Parmesan are two examples.

Industrialization

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries as urban society grew and food for more and more people was needed, cheese making was gradually taken over by industrial concerns able to produce huge amounts of cheap cheese for distribution over larger and larger distances. Because industrial production was able to mass produce cheese for masses of people at lower cost, it almost wiped out the market for small producers and cheese makers.

Mass production led to centralized industry and regulatory bodies. Why? Because quality is often sacrificed for quantity. Large quantity operations open the door for unsanitary conditions and unsafe manufacturing processes in an effort to save time and money. More people are involved. More places where contamination can occur. The next logical step is enforced and costly regulation for sanitation and production standards. This made it less and less profitable for artisans to continue. Their small operations do not have the same sanitation and manufacturing issues though they are still required to pay the price.

One exception is France, which, because it started with a very large artisan community, was able to maintain a presence in the field. However, even now, the European Union is gradually instituting policies that are difficult for some farmstead producers to comply with, leading them to give up their craft. As we move forward with technology, hand-crafted products made with love and devotion and the accompanying tradition sometimes get left behind. The tradition becomes hidden away like a fine painting stored and nearly forgotten in a closet. As with most developments in society, there are positive and negative sides to industrialization.

Today there is a revival of people like us who are wondering if something valuable has been lost in the process. We are looking into the closet and retrieving the priceless art stored there. The desire for transparency in food production is becoming a public demand. The desire to know the composition of our food is probably the biggest reason we started on the path of making all of our own food. We wanted to know exactly what we were eating. Perhaps you do to.

And let's talk about the environmental impact. Long-distance transportation carries a high cost to the environment. Our Farmer's market and many more like it attract those who desire more and more to choose locally grown and artisan produced food over imported and industrial produced foods. A product lovingly crafted by hand costs more. But it's not about money is it? It's about the physical health of our families, the economic health of our communities, the humane treatment of living creatures and conservation of the planet we inhabit.

We are seeing growing interest in our craft. Every year sees an increase in artisan cheese consumption, though the number of small-scale cheese makers is still quite small. It ain't easy being cheesy, but we want you to be able to experience the taste of fresh handmade cheese and discover the joy of creating a wonderful food made from a simple ingredient: fresh milk.

Cheese Trivia

Number one: the terms "big wheel" and "big cheese" originally referred to those who were wealthy enough to purchase a whole wheel of cheese.

Number two: Cheese was once used as a currency in medieval Europe. Cheese and other agricultural products were regularly used to pay church taxes. Some "tithe barns" (ancient buildings where the portion owed to the state, land owner or church was collected) still exist.

Today's Recipe

The recipe for today's podcast is: lemon cheese

Lemon cheese is a very simple fresh cheese that you can easily make in your kitchen. It is a moist spreadable cheese with a hint of lemon taste. If you make it in the evening, this rich and delicious cheese will be ready to spread on bagels or hot croissants for breakfast in the morning!

The ingredients are simple and the steps are few. Let me first provide a list of equipment you might want to gather.

Equipment

• 5-quart pot, stainless steel, glass or ceramic
• Any food thermometer that measures 165 F.
• Large spoon
• Fine strainer or colander
• Butter muslin (a clean old t-shirt will do in a pinch)

The ingredients are simple:

• 1 gallon of milk (do not use ultra-pasteurized, it will not set up)
• 2 large lemons or ¼ cup of lemon juice
• salt

The steps are few:

• Warm the milk (to 165 F). Stir often so as to not scorch the milk.
• Add the lemon juice to the milk. Stir and set aside for 15 minutes.

NOTES: The warm milk will separate into a stringy curd and a greenish liquid whey. It should be clear, not milky. You can add more lemon juice if your milk did not "set" (coagulate).

• Line a colander or fine strainer with the butter muslin. Pour the curds and whey into the colander.
• Tie the four corners of the cheesecloth into a knot and hang the bag of curds to drain for an hour or so. Or until it reaches the desired consistency (think spreadable cream cheese).
• Remove the cheese from the cloth and place it in a bowl. Add salt to taste, usually about ¼ teaspoon. You can also add herbs if you like. Fresh dill comes to mind.
• Store in a covered container in the frig for up to a week.

That's it! Enjoy! Recipe link is here.

SUMMARY

Hope you enjoyed the farm updates. Follow us on Facebook @peacefulheartfarm for some cute pictures of those goat kids.

Did you learn some new things about cheese? The traditional methods we use to make our artisan cheese evolved from those roots.

Let me know how that lemon cheese went for you. Feel free to ask me questions and provide feedback on your results. Leave us a comment on our Facebook page. Again, @peacefulheartfarm.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for listening and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

To share your thoughts:

• Leave a comment on our Facebook Page
• Share this show on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

To help the show:

• PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW for Peaceful Heart FarmCast on iTunes.
• Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music, TuneIn or Spotify
• Donate on Patreon

Website

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Today's Peaceful Heart FarmCast is about how we came to live the homestead life and how we decided to create a small artisan cheese business.

TODAY'S TOPICS:

1. What happened last year, where did I go?
2. Peaceful Heart FarmCast
3. Updates on the farm and creamery
4. Preview of upcoming topics
5. Homestead Recipe

What Happened Last Year, Where Did I Go?

First, I want to address what happened last year and where I am at the present time. I was podcasting regularly, twice a month. And even though the recorded podcasts were 45 minutes to an hour, it took more than an entire day to make that happen. Once spring came on in full force, I was overwhelmed with caring for animals and the garden.

There was no time left for anything that did not contribute to furthering of the farm enterprise. That included my podcast hobby. So, I just stopped it and took care of what was in front of me.

I've spent the winter catching up and getting better organized. So here I am, back at it again, this time with a better plan for using my hobby as part of the farm business plan. I'll talk about the topics I plan to cover a little bit later. For my current subscribers, I hope you'll decide to stay with me, but if not, I appreciate our time together and wish you the best. You have an open invitation to revisit and rejoin anytime.

Peaceful Heart FarmCast

Now I'm pleased to launch the Peaceful Heart FarmCast. I'm excited about what I have lined up for you guys. If you are a regular subscriber, you may have noticed that the intro with the purpose of the podcast has changed.

While I enjoyed talking about the crazy stuff that is going on in the world, it added little to my life goals on the farm. In fact, it is quite removed from my life on the farm. As I mentioned, publishing a podcast takes quite a lot of time and effort and I need to optimize my time. The farm pushes on and waits for no one. You better be ready. I'll be sharing more stories about what that means as we go forward.

Perhaps you've thought of making the rural life happen for you and your family – or perhaps you're thinking about a homestead in suburban America. I hope to help you with ideas and encouragement. It truly is a fabulous lifestyle, filled with ups and downs, but well worth it.

Or perhaps you don't want to make that kind of commitment to gardens and animals yourself, but you want to partake of the benefits of what other land and animal caretakers produce. Perhaps you want to learn to cook from scratch or add variety to your current recipes using the great seasonal products you buy at your farmer's market. That's great too.

Much of what I will talk about can be done in even the smallest household, the smallest kitchen, no land and animals required. Just a desire to learn how to care for your family with your own two hands. Technology is great. I'm using it right now. But there is something deeply satisfying in creating safe and wholesome food for your family. There is an inner peace that comes from personally crafting the dishes with ingredients you can trust.

That's why I'm focusing on tradition and traditional techniques that will enhance our lives and bring a deeper fulfillment to everyday life. The way that happens is creating and/or passing on a tradition. That entails knowing the words to convey to bring wisdom or having skill with a particular technique or method of creating an end product, and passing it on. But more importantly, it means knowing why we do it that way and passing that along as well. A tradition can turn into dogma without passing along the reason why it is done that way.

Why did the tradition start? Is it still relevant for you today? If so, we learn it, do it, and pass it on. That is how tradition is built. There is a reason that things were done a certain way. And if circumstances change that require altering a tradition, it is important that changes are thought about deeply and then incorporated as necessary. These are difficult questions. Just because new technology comes along doesn't mean it will replace a tradition. These are individual choices that you will all make based on your own set of core values. I hope to provide thought provoking ideas to help you with making some of those decisions.

If you love trivia and history, this is going to be both educational and entertaining for you. If you are looking to live the homestead life or already are, I'll be sharing my day-to-day learning experiences and ideas to help you with working through the long list of tasks, problems and solutions that you will encounter. At the end of each podcast I'll give an overview and description of a recipe that may become part of your tradition. There will be corresponding download link to the recipe in the show notes.

Updates on the Farm and Creamery

Now I want to better introduce myself, my husband and a little bit about our history of how we came to be farm homesteaders after professional careers in medicine and information technology.

Present

Let's start with the present time. We have 62 acres in the Blue Ridge mountains. We are building a creamery to make artisan farmstead cheese. Our cheese is handmade using traditional methods. That requires cows. We also have sheep for meat, goats for fiber and donkeys for livestock protection.

We raise a traditional breed of cow. They are Normandes, bred and raised in the Normandy region of France. Normandes are a dual breed cow. That means they provide lots of milk but also make really, really good beef. I'm going to be talking much more about these cows as I talk about our cheese.

That's our homestead in a nutshell. But how did we get here? Scott spent 20 years as a chiropractor before entering into the electronic medical records IT field. I was an IT professional for just about my entire career. So again, how did we get here?

I know you're asking because you might want to get here someday as well. And why did we make that decision? I mean, isn't having a successful career the be-all, end-all of life? Nope. It's not. Or at least not for us. Our life experiences led us to a desire to get in touch with the land directly. It wasn't enough to look at the mountains from afar. We needed to connect to the roots of our spirit. We wanted to go outside at night and gaze in awe at the Milky Way.

After years of dreaming, planning, and saving we are here. We watch the birth of animals and are continually amazed at creation. Sure, there is loss and sadness when an animal dies. It happens often in nature, but there is also life and joy.

Past

We began our dream back in 1999 in Western North Carolina. That's 20 years ago as of this publication. We met, became friends, and started talking about our dream life. We spent hours reading and talking and pouring over articles and books by Joel Salatin. I think he is the gateway for a lot of people. We began to dream our dream out loud with each other and with our friends and family.

But like for most of you, I'm sure, life happens. It was a great dream, but we had to make money to live, right? It takes a lot to make a small farm profitable enough to support a family. So, the dreams were sidelined for a little while – but not forgotten. We kept talking about it. And we kept dreaming about it. We kept planning what we would do. And in 2003 we bought our first piece of land. In 2005 we married and moved onto that land. At this recording, that first purchase was 15 and a half years ago.

During 13 of those years we continued to work for others. We were making really good money. We were determined to make the journey debt-free. We persevered in pretty radical circumstances. Perhaps I'll talk about that at some point also.

Buying additional land in 2008 set us back in our timeline to be full time homestead farmers, but in January 2016 we made our last payment on the land and in December 2016, we left working for someone else in the rearview mirrors.

We Made It

From 2003 to 2016 is 13 years. I know a lot of you plan to just sell the house in the city and move to the country and make a living off the land. And maybe you will. Maybe you're one of those that risks it all and just dives in. You've got that entrepreneurial spirit strong and you go for it. Not for us. We took the longer road.

Our priority was to be able to enjoy the life. We wanted to live without the threat of adverse weather or disease derailing our business plan. When the loan comes due, the bank wants its money. We didn't want that hanging over our head every, lurking in the back of our minds every day.

The delay provided us the opportunity to learn how to become farmers and homesteaders as well as to develop the entrepreneurial spirit. Did you know that could be learned? Well, we are still learning. It doesn't come naturally. But if you have the dream and you want to make it work, you need to learn how to make money on your homestead. It's the slow, sure path for us. I want to give a shout out to Tim Young at Small Farm Nation. He is offering his vast experience in marketing as well as the needed technological tools to help you build a profitable farm. Link in the show notes.

Deciding to build the creamery also set us back in our time line goal to stop working for others. It is a great way to make the homestead profitable, but requires tremendous infrastructure and that means a lot of monetary investment. But like any dream you are committed to, you keep at it until it becomes your reality. All in all, as I mentioned, it was 13 years from first purchase to homestead living. And 17 years from conception of the idea. But we are here now. The last 2 years have been all that we imagined and more.

I can't convey in words how peaceful and contented we are now that we are fulltime homesteading. It's a lot of work, no doubt. And it is worth every drop of sweat, every sore muscle, every exhausted night of sleep. There are a lot of those days. And there are a lot of other days filled with awe and wonder at, not just looking at nature from afar or from your house on the side of the mountain, but days filled with awe and wonder at being IN that life.

That's all I'm going to say about that for right now. Let me know if you have questions about how you might make that journey and what your plans are. I talked about our path but yours will be different. It's unique for everyone.

Preview of Upcoming Topics

I'll provide you with more information about our specific journey and the current homestead enterprises we manage in future podcasts. Updates on the status of the creamery will be front and center.

There will be lots of information on cheese – and specifically the history and tradition around this artisan craft. I'll also include other historical traditions related to living the homestead life.

Some upcoming topics are:

• how did cheese get started in the first place?
• how a lot of the different cheeses were developed and where.
• What were the life conditions present that led to the development of that particular cheese in that area?

Other topics I'll touch on are:

• How was food cooked and preserved in the past?
• Today's modern preservation – Food preservation is important.
• How women cooked at the founding of our country. Let's talk about hearth cooking.
• Cooking with cheese on a wood stove. We have a wood stove that even has an oven.

These things bring appreciation for what we have today, do they not?

Podcast Recipe

With each episode I'll offer a new recipe. Either making cheese, cooking with cheese, or making some other homestead recipe from scratch. The link for the recipe is in the show notes.

The recipe for today's podcast is: how to make bone broth. We really need this winter to keep us warm.

Health Benefits

Let me first address some of the health benefits of bone broth. There are a lot of technical words out there like glycosaminoglycans, glucosamine and hyaluronic acid. What I want to talk about is the bottom line without big words. Bottom line, it's highly nutritious. Bone broth soup is rich in nutrients. One word I will throw in here is collagen. It's the basic building block of connective tissue. Bone broth is a source of collagen building gelatin. Think joint health.

• may protect the joints.
• may help fight osteoarthritis.
• may help reduce inflammation and heal the gut.
• may aid sleep.
• may support weight loss.

It has a whole lot of benefits. Additionally, it's really tasty and is easy to make.

How Much Do I Drink?

How much should you drink in a day. You might drink 8 ounces a day. But some people drink much more – 16 to 32 ounces daily. Usually that is for a short period of time, perhaps to halt the progression of inflammation. Typically, 8 to 12 ounces is a maintenance kind of program that you might try first. Or you may drink it only occasionally and use it mostly in soups and stews.

Where Does One Get Bones and What Kind?

Where can you find the bone ingredients? Your local farmers markets are the best resource assuming there are meat producers selling at your market. If you don't see it on their price boards, ask. They will have them.

What kind of bones should you use? I'll be talking about lamb today, but any meat bones will do to make the recipe I am sharing today. Beef, chicken, lamb, and goat are examples. Go with whatever you like and what is available at the market.

Bone Broth

Now on to the recipe. This particular recipe has herbs added to it which is a little bit different than some other recipes I have used. I'm going to give you the instructions on how to make the broth, but some of the ingredients are not required. You can experiment with those. You can even leave them all out.

You may drink it daily or only occasionally. You may use it in soups and stews. If you are drinking it heated right out of a jar or freezer container, you may want all the spices. I use mine a lot in soups and stews. Consequently, I season my stew rather than seasoning the broth.

What You Need

Let's look at the ingredients in this recipe. A pound of bones of your choice, a tablespoon of olive oil, a large chopped onion, three medium carrots cut into chunks, and three sticks of celery roughly chopped. Three cloves of minced garlic, 3 sprigs of fresh rosemary, and five sprigs of fresh thyme. You could use dried as well. In that case, I'd go with ½ tsp of the rosemary and a tsp of thyme. You'll also need water. Approximately 1 to 3 gallons. The amount will vary depending on the bones you use and the time you simmer the broth. Salt to taste is an optional ingredient.

Onion, garlic, carrots, and celery are a typical base for flavoring any soup or stew. Keep that in mind if you are just learning how to cook. There is so much about cooking that is not really complicated and is used over and over in various recipes.

There are two ways that you can prepare the bones. 1. Thaw them out and throw them into the pot or 2. you can roast them in the oven prior to putting them in the water. I'll give those instructions and feel free to leave off that second step as needed.

What To Do

Place the bones in a roasting pan and bake them for 30 to 40 minutes until they are browned.

With either method, in a large stock pot add the oil and heat on medium. Next add the onion, carrots, celery, garlic, thyme and rosemary and sauté them for about five minutes. Add the bones and scrape any fat and juices from the roasting pan (if you did the roasting method) and put that into the pot. Add a gallon of water or enough to cover the bones. Allow it to come to boil before reducing the heat to low. Simmer anywhere from 8 to 24 hours uncovered. The longer you simmer, the more nutrients are extracted from the bones. Add more water as the water level drops. The amount of water you use will depend on how long you choose to cook it and how many bones you have in the pot.

After the broth is cooked for your desired length of time, strain the broth through a fine mesh strainer. You can use a tea towel or an old T-shirt. You are looking for that clear liquid that can be enjoyed hot or cold.

Likely you will have more than you can use right away. It's easy to freeze it. Or, if you're skilled with pressure canning, that's an excellent method of keeping a larger amount on hand.

So, there you have it. That's the basics of making a very healthy bone broth. I hope you'll give that a try. Again, the recipe link is in the show notes. You can print it right from my website.

I hope I've simplified it for you. Not only is it easy to make, but there's a lot of variety and personal creativity you can incorporate as you gain confidence. Perhaps you will make a family tradition around bone broth. The entire family sitting around the fire in the living room on a cold winter evening, sharing what brought you peace on that day is a fine vision.

SUMMARY:

That's it for this podcast. It really is all about the journey, the dream. Dream the dream. Talk the dream. Take baby steps everyday toward the dream. Our baby steps, over 15 years, brought us to where we are today. And don't be afraid to try a new recipe or a new cooking method.

Next week I'm going to talk about how the fermented food called cheese came about.

If you've got a specific topic you'd like me to cover, please post on our Facebook page, @peacefulheartfarm.

As always, I'm here to help you "taste the traditional touch."

Thank you so much for listening and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.

Recipe Link:

Bone Broth with Herbs

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Podcast Reboot

Hello everybody. Melanie Hall here. Hope you are doing well. Are you ready for the podcast to get going again? I sure am. One change you'll notice is that going forward I've rebranded the podcast. The name changed from Village Wisdom Podcast to Peaceful Heart FarmCast.

If you're a subscriber, you don't need to do anything . . . I've updated all the links so you'll still get the podcast automatically in iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play Music or wherever you listen. But you will now find the podcast episodes and show notes on the Peaceful Heart Farm website.

Next, I'd like to tell you why I rebranded and what to expect going forward in the Peaceful Heart FarmCast.

You can expect traditional lifestyle education, entertaining anecdotes about history and traditional methods of cooking – and most importantly, Cheese, Cheese and more Cheese.

As my long-time followers know, I have quite a few passions. I've covered a lot of ground on the Village Wisdom Podcast. And Of course, I'm still passionate about philosophy, education, personal responsibility, living a graceful and productive life. It's what I've been podcasting and writing about via the Village Wisdom Podcast for quite a few years.

However, I'm also passionate about the homestead lifestyle and making cheese that reflects our local terroir. Hand-made Artisan cheese created using traditional methods and techniques.

How Did I Get Here?

At Peaceful Heart Farm, we've gone through several iterations on what our central business enterprise would be. First, we were going to raise vegetables, then chickens, then sheep, we raised a lots of sheep — and then the Normande cows came on the scene.

We got them because I wanted to make cheese for our family. I wanted raw milk and I wanted to make real butter that I knew came from pasture grass only. The Normande is a dual breed cow that provides both milk and meat. I immediately fell in love with their beautiful coats and gentle nature, and that is what sparked my interest in making cheese for more than just our family.

A fire lighted in me to make cheese for my local community. I want to share my love for the cows and the cheese with the world.

Pieces of the puzzle clicked into place and we knew that a farmstead creamery is what we wanted to build on the homestead. It's a huge time and financial investment. We ended up working for others for several years longer than originally planned in order to make this dream a reality. Even today, we continue to put one foot in front of the other, making slow progress by some business standards. We are full time on the homestead now and living the way we do makes it all worthwhile.

And while this lifestyle has all kinds of upsides, the business end of small-scale artisan cheesemaking is challenging. The business end takes time. It takes a lot of time.

As farmers we don't have employees, managers, investors or a board of directors. There is no marketing department. We have to do it all. And there are only so many hours in the day.

When we started, there was a lot to learn. We were on information overload learning how to grow our own food in this region, animal husbandry, breeding, pasture management, meat processing, and now, cheesemaking and building the creamery – and the list goes on and on. The tasks go on and on. As do the chores. And like most small-farm owners, our marketing efforts have been just about non-existent.

We Will Make our Small Farm Work

As I said, I'm passionate about making cheese and providing Artisan cheese to the local community. I'm passionate about the traditional methods. Hand-made in small batches.

So, I've been really busy over the past few months; making and testing various cheeses, developing our unique cheeses. I've been developing the farm website. I've been preparing to join the Farmer's Market community, getting marketing materials together. And on and on. It's never-ending.

Busy, busy, busy. No time for focus on anything outside of the homestead and making Peaceful Heart Farm and Creamery a viable small business. And I love it.

You may recall the number of times I mentioned the farm in the Village Wisdom Podcast. The homestead is my greatest passion project and it needed my full attention.

But this is more than just our farm and homestead. It's a place to produce fabulous, nutritious, traditional food. It's a place to offer our knowledge to others via classes and workshops. Did I mention the commercial kitchen that is part of the building project?

Oh yeah, not only making the cheese for you, but showing you how to make the cheese, and how to cook with cheese. Or heck, just showing you how to cook whatever you want with your own two hands.

Now it's time for me to relaunch my podcast. You'll hear from me weekly. The content will be focused on giving you the best information I have on cheese; various types of cheese, cheese around the world, how cheese is made, the history of cheese and cheesemaking, cooking with cheese – and as a bonus, I'll be offering additional wisdom on traditional cooking methods, cooking from scratch, and preserving your own food to use in your recipes – especially those cheese recipes.

Here's to helping you "taste the traditional touch."

To share your thoughts:

• Leave a comment on our Facebook Page
• Share this show on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram

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• PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW for Peaceful Heart FarmCast on iTunes.
• Subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, Google Play Music, TuneIn or Spotify
• Donate on Patreon

Thank you so much for listening and until next time, may God fill your life with grace and peace.