The weather had turned cold in the last few days. Bundled up on a chair in my kitchen, I eagerly dialed a number into my phone.
Kate Schat, from the popular blog and Instagram account, Venison for Dinner, had been an idol of mine for many years. The mozzarella recipe, I religiously use, and that had changed my string cheese recipe, from a only on special occasion, to a frequent go to; had come from Kates blog. Now, here I was, sitting in my cold kitchen, about to have a non-challan talk with Kate, about milk cows and cheesemaking.
Kate answered the phone as she was busy skimming cream off the morning milk. Despite, multitasking, she spoke to me about her history with milk cows and cheesemaking, with an air of experienced certainty. After 12 years of owning milk cows, and just as long processing milk, talking about this subject is just another day on the job for Kate.
12 years ago, when Kate and her husband, Marius, were first dating they were given a milk cow by a friend. She laughed as she said “we were dating, and we owned a milk cow together”. I joked that some people own a cat together while dating, Marius and Kate owned a milk cow. Marius had grown up on farm milk, and was eager to have access to fresh milk again.
Kate describes this first cow as being the “best first milk cow ever”, and they kept her for many years until she was pregnant with her second son, Hamish.
Shortly after Hamish was born, they purchased two milk cows back-to-back. They kept one for a year, and the other for two years. She reminisced about milking with Hamish, still a baby, screaming in the bumbo seat, but with no other choice, she just had to get the milking done. Kate talked about how when people with young children ask her about getting a milk cow, she immediately asks what climate they live in? How easy is it to take a little kid outside for an hour in -30? Words that can only be spoken from a mother who has been there.
The next milk cow to enter the family was a jersey, dexter cross. She was very difficult to milk, and broke Marius’s hand. Kate was pregnant at the time with her third baby, Freja, and was not aloud anywhere near her. At this point, they took a break from owning milk cows for a few years.
It wasn’t until Kate had her fourth baby, Rowan, and she couldn’t nurse her, that another milk cow was brought into the family
Kate, unable to nurse, feeds her babies a homemade raw milk formula. Well researched, and widely used in other parts of the world. You can take to Kates YouTube channel, to learn more about it.
Needing a milk cow badly, they purchased Annabel, a jersey Simental cross. Kate describes her as being “ok, but not amazing”. Kate talked about how her and Annabel had many disagreements. It wasn’t until they found their current milk cow, a jersey named Mossy, that Kate remembered how beautiful milking a cow could be. They sold Anabelle and have had Mossy for over a year now. They are also milking their Jersey heifer, Jessa. Their hope is by owning two milk cows, they can continue milk supply, throughout the year.
I quickly tallied up on my fingers, 7 milk cows in 12 years; milk cow knowledge, built heavily on experience, and trial and error. I was excited to learn if cheesemaking had been a part of all of these years.
For the first few years of milking, it had actually been Kates mother who was the cheesemaker. Kate did the milking, and processed other dairy products, but busy with young children, she was happy that her mom liked making the cheese.
It wasn’t until about Seven and a half years ago, that she first started making cheese. She had seen a advertisement for a cheesemaking workshop at a local farm, with a guest cheesemaker. The cost of the class was more than Kate could justify paying, but very interested, she decided to email the teacher, and ask if he would teach a workshop at her farm. The Cheesemaker was David Asher.
An idol of mine, and renowned home cheesemaker, David Asher, is the author of the popular book, “The art of Natural cheesemaking”. At the time, Kate hosted him, he was writing the book, and soon became a family friend. Not only did he teach Kate to make cheese, but he became a relief milker for the family, and often milked a few times a week. Kate describes this relationship as being a huge blessing for her family.
This had all taken place while the Schat family lived on Salt Spring Island. Soon after, they moved to Northern BC, where they purchased the farm/homestead, they live on now.
Over the last few years, Kate has become well known in the homesteading community, as a valuable cheesemaking resource. Her do it the simple way style, has been the fuel many homesteaders have needed to take the jump into home cheesemaking. I described to her, that since starting my blog, I had been receiving a lot of messages from beginner home cheesemakers, and I would say 98% of them had referenced Kate, in their learning.
When I asked her what a cheesemaking day, would look like for her. Kate didn’t skip a beat as she described three different scenarios:
1. The cow is milked, the milk is strained into the bucket, and then put into the cheese pot still warm.
2. The cow is milked, the milk is strained into the bucket, and put in the root cellar until later in the day, when it will be skimmed for cream. The root cellar bucket is affectionately named “a redneck cream separator”, for its ease of cream skimming.
3. There is no more room in the fridge for any more milk, so cheese must be made.
Kate, a mom to four, soon to be five, homeschooler, business woman and homesteader, is no stranger to working cheesemaking into a busy lifestyle. She produces all of the family’s own dairy, and has developed time management hacks that allow her to get everything done in her day. Her day-to-day changes with the seasons, evident as she describes time management in the summer, “I can start a batch of cheese, add culture, run outside for an hour to work, come inside have a drink of water, add rennet, run back outside, and work for another hour before I need to be in the kitchen”.
Kate plans her day around doing kitchen tasks, while the kids are working on schoolwork. She says that “with a lot of the homeschooling stuff, I don’t need to be sitting with them, but I need to be present”, “I will stir cheese while coaching them on math or use that time to answer messages for work”. She describes how she tries to use her time wisely when making cheese. For example, if she is making a wheel of gouda, that needs to be stirred five minutes and rest five minutes, she tries to use the rest time, to do a load of laundry or load the dishwasher. She states that “It is a time when I can plan to get a lot done”.
Kates cheesemaking technique is taught in a way that is simple and achievable. She uses both natural and freeze-dried cultures in her cheesemaking, and encourages her followers to look at cultures in a more versatile way. Instead of purchasing a specific culture for each recipe, she teaches that mesophilic simply means lower temperature cheese, and thermophilic means higher temperature cheese.
As far as aging, she considers it to be the most intimidating part of learning, for new cheesemakers. She takes the intimidation out of it, by instructing her audients, to vacuum seal it, “throw it in the back of the fridge, flip it over every once in a while, and you are done for 6 weeks”.
She also teaches about learning the feel of the curd’s verses relying specifically on time. She states;
A lot of cheeses are going to be done after 10 minutes, some are going to be done after 30, there is just so many factors to do with milk, to do with proteins and butterfat’s, and where the cow is at in their lactation. There are so many factors, that just following a time isn’t the best, it also means that when you mess up, you don’t know how to keep going forward to save it. Whereas, if you know, this is what parmesan curds feel like, this is what gouda curds feel like, this is what a medium soft cheese feels like; you can kind of wing it and go forward from that point, so if you mess something up, you didn’t ruin the milk, you just made a different type of cheese.
She describes how it really helps to be able to make it your own, and she tries to teach her followers, that if you mess up “you didn’t lose it, that, this is just how new cheese is made. You just made a different cheese than you were intending”.
Kate, knowledgeable from the cheese pot to the cow, ended the interview with some sound advice built on experience, trial and error, and many, many hours at the cheese pot.
Just go for it, you are going to mess up. I have half a wheel of cheese sitting on the counter to go to the pigs. It’s going to happen, you can’t overthink it, and you are going to mess up batches sometimes, but if you don’t try, you will never get there. Now I look in our fridge, and we have thousands of dollars’ worth of cheese, it is so satisfying and grocery budget saving, that it is worth it, it is worth the odd messed up wheel, most of the time when you mess up, its not pig food, it’s just different than you intended.
You can follow along with Kates Homesteading Journey on her blog, at Venison For Dinner , on Instagram , and YouTube .
Thank you to Kate for allowing me to share your story, and for submitting all of the pictures in this post.
Happy Cheesemaking!
Robyn