August, 29th, 2013
When we buy packaged produce, we often imagine that it was filled or sealed by machines. Not necessarily! For produce processed on small farms, the majority of household tasks are often still carried out by hand. Now when you do the same thing again and again for hours on end, you come to envy those big automatized factories! On a farm, whether it’s the milking, the feeding, the weeding or the processing of produce, some gestures become a bit repetitive. Hence the appeal of owning a small, diversified farm in order to avoid doing the same thing all day, every day. Each of us spent one day at the dairy, enough for us to realize that most tasks have to be carried out several times a week.
Last Tuesday it was my turn to go to the Dairy, where the milk and cheese are processed. Unlike Clémentine, I didn’t get the chance to work with music at full blast because Jason, who usually manages the dairy, was at the hospital for his daughter’s birth. So I worked in a quieter atmosphere with Peter and his son Johannes, making yogurt and putting it in pots, sterilizing milk, and participating in the manufacturing of goat feta.
After having put on a shirt, gloves, hairnet and clogs, I was finally allowed to enter the dairy where the first thing to do is to sterilize your hands and gloves in a chlorine bath. After all, cheese is nothing more than a culture of fungus and bacteria, so better not to cultivate any that has come from goats, hens or anywhere else! Each instrument must be carefully sterilized before use and us as well.
The WWOOFers’ work can vary from day to day, depending on the amount of milk available in the tanks and on demand. Sterilizing milk, packing and decorating goat’s cheese, participating in the production of yogurt or cheese, washing dishes, putting produce in pots or vacuum packing, or preparing produce for orders and for the market… Even if we can do several things in one day, we can sometimes spend the whole day repeating the same movements. For example, Clémentine spent the morning at the dairy with Johannes and Ana, packing and decorating cheese with ashes, sage and pepper. As for me, although I had more varied activities, I still had to seal about three hundred yogurt pots!
In spite of this, Jason seems to have fun with all his creations. He is always seeking new tastes or textures. A pure autodidact, he likes to share his passion and ideas, which is really nice. It’s a shame we didn’t stay long enough to watch the cheeses maturing. All in all, even if we have to wash dishes all day long, we often argue over who is going to the dairy — because before you go, it’s off to the shower!
Valérian
To find out more:
Read the articles “How to make yogurt out of goat’s milk?” published on the 30th of August 2013, or “From the goat onto the plate” on Doubletree farm, published on the 25th of June 2013.
Translated by students from Rennes 2 University, MTLC2M Master’s Programme
CAP a l'Ouest - english version 