Cheese making season

We made butter with our extra milk for about 5 or 6 weeks and now I am making cheese. I have been making a simple farmhouse Cheddar every other day for the last 3 weeks, the milk supply is starting to drop slightly so it maybe 2 or 3 times a week for the next few weeks and then the cheese making season will be finished until after the next calving. Each cheese is very slightly different depending on the day it is made.
Here follows photos of the process....

Straining the milk straight after milking. The pot holds 16 litres (3 milkings). After a starter culture is added and the milk left for an hour the milk is brought to 32C and rennet is added to set the curd.

Testing the firmness of the curds .

Cutting the curds.

The temperature is slowly raised with frequent gentle stirring and then left to pitch (curds settling in whey).

The stirring is the one step in the process that takes time, usually 20-25 minutes.

After pitching the whey is drained off.

View of curds after pitching.

Curds are cheddared (cut and stacked) a few times over the afternoon and each time the whey is drained off.

The curds are cut or broken before mixing in salt and putting in the cheese mold.

Curds in the mold .

This is my 5th cheese making season. I have come a long way and no doubt have a long way to go yet.

Angus made the cheese press. there are two 10kg and one 5kg weights on this cheese. The pyrex dish is propped up slightly at one end so the whey runs down to the near end.

Cheese just out of the press.

I started with a recipe for farmhouse cheddar when our cow Mead first calved here. Every new lactation I follow the variations that made the best cheese from the previous batch. Zoe jokes that my "accident" cheeses are the best! They usually happen on the days when I am so busy that I don't keep precise notes. This does put a dent in the theory that cheese making is a science not an art!

The cheese on the left is just out of the press and the one on the right has dried for 2 days.

After drying out, the cheese is smothered in home rendered Lard and left in a cool place to ripen. The lard in this picture is spread over the whole cheese and then the cheese is covered with the same cheese cloth that was used to line the mold.

It is a lengthy process but most of the steps take just a few minutes each ...

.....and now we wait for the cheeses to ripen!

I have omitted pictures of all the washing-up required in cheese making! Luckily I am happy to wash dishes, It just doesn't make pretty photos!

Here are 2 pictures taken this February of a cheese from last year .