It was 10 am, I had settled down on my couch, banana and crackers hidden behind me just incase I had to offer them as a bribe to the tiny one year old scooting around the house.
Kat Goldin logged onto our zoom meeting at 5pm, the local time of where her and her family reside on their farm/homestead in Scotland. The weather was warm on Kats side, 17degrees Celsius; almost a summer climate. Kat told me that it is not uncommon for the local temperature in the summer to be no higher than 20degrees C. A climate that has really influenced how Kat has developed and honed her cheesemaking technique over the years.
Kat and her husband, Kevin, have lived in Scotland for the last 17 years. Before this, they briefly lived in England, but Kat is originally from Iowa, USA. Kat and Kevin, met when they worked together at a summer camp in America. Kevin, originally from South Africa, moved to England as a teenager.
The couple married shortly after September 11, 2001, and Kat describes the visa situation as being difficult during this time. The easiest option was to stay in the UK, a decision that has worked out well for the family over the years.
It was 7 years ago that they moved to the farm/homestead that they care for now as tenants. When I asked if they had been milking animals the whole time? Kat replied, “like most homesteaders, chickens were the gateway, then we got goats, and we have been milking our goats for about 6 years”. The family soon added pigs, a milk cow and for a time, bred a rare breed of sheep. Raising sheep was the focus on the farm for a few years, something that they have now moved away from, as the original low stone fences of their historic farm, lacked the ability to prevent wandering sheep.
We talked for a few minutes about Kats farm. Since I had started following Kat on instagram, I had hurried to her stories everyday to see her barnyard and I had been meaning to show it to my 7 year old daughter. Her courtyard style barnyard seemed to me, to have a sort of magical fairytale feel. A barnyard filled with friendly animals, whimsical scenery; a barnyard that made me wish I could pack my bags and head to Scotland for morning milking with Kat.
Kat grew up around agriculture, raising ducks and geese commercially for hunting. Kevin on the other hand; Kat describes him as being raised, “a proper city boy, so it’s all new for him”.
The learning curve of milking a cow was more than Kat had expected it to be. She had milked goats for some time before bringing a cow into the family, and the friend they had bought their cow from, had assured them that it was going to be so easy compared to goats!
Kat says, “Out first milk cow was horrible! She was such a Cow! She would never stand and in two and half years of milking her, I don’t think she properly let down for me once.”. The family still owns this first cow, but she is off being bred at another farm.
They now have a little Jersey that was previously a nurse cow from a local dairy. Milking is going much better with this sweet cow, and Kat says that though she still has some of that Jersey sass, “she is not actively trying to kill us”.
Kat has been making cheese for about 17 or 18 years. She started making cheese using store bought milk before they had milking animals. Kat describes her beginnings into cheesemaking;
I made cheese as sort of an obsession for a few years. It was really unheard of here, it was really before sourdough became popular. Nobody really made cheese at home. None of my friends would eat it, they were all grossed out by it. It just wasn’t very popular, we were really considered weirdos!
Kat put her cheesemaking on hold, while she had babies and while her children were young. Now ages 14, 11, and 10; Kat and Kevins three children have seen their mom make many cheeses. When I asked if her children are interested in cheesemaking, Kat laughed as she said, “We have been in lockdown pretty much for the last year. Prior to being stuck in lockdown with a mother that is obsessed with cheesemaking, they liked it, but now, they are pretty sick of it!”.
As my own baby, Gus, crawled up onto my lap to be nursed, Kat and I talked about how often times we have a desire to do something different from our parents, but how we usually revert back eventually. Kat reminisced back to her youth, “I remember, we used to have a huge asparagus field, and I remember being dragged out to cut the asparagus. I was so mad! I would stomp out there! Now, I just planted 300 asparagus plants, I swore I never would!”.
Never the less, Kat and Kevins children have been exposed to dairy animals and cheesemaking a good part of their lives. When the family first moved to their farm 7 years ago, one of the first things that Kat wanted to do was make cheese again. She says, “ I didn’t think we would get a cow, because I thought we would just be happy with the goats, but you know with the cream, and everything, we eventually wanted the expansion of a cow.”
It was actually Kevin that made the first cheeses on the farm. Kat laughed as she recounted her artistic husbands, endeavour into cheesemaking;
Kevin decided he was going to experiment. He is a very forgetful person, very absent minded and he doesn’t always follow directions well.
He made the cheeses, and I think he did ok. He put the cheeses in a closet of our stone farmhouse. Basically this closet is like an above ground cheese cave. Every once in awhile I would walk past, and I would be like “honey did you check your cheeses?”.
He would say, “Yes! I checked them! They are doing Great!”.
But the smell! It just kept wafting up. I didn’t want to be like something has gone desperately wrong here! Eventually though, I was like, “You have to look at the cheeses. I want to see you look at the cheeses”.
I don’t particularly like the smell of blue cheeses and such, so it was possible that everything was fine and it just wasn’t to my taste.
Well, we opened up those cheeses, I think their were 6, some of them had liquified. I mean there was so many maggots! There were some cheeses that I think had properly been infected with some toxic bacteria.
Kevin was like, “I think we should throw these out.”
I am like, “definitely!”
So, he thinks the chickens should eat them, and he throws them out into the garden. The chickens ate the maggots and left the rest. So the cheeses just mummified in the garden until like 3 weeks later when I finally caved and picked them up.
This story, of trial, was a big motivator for Kat. It stands out in her mind as the moment when she really said to herself, “ I am going to figure this out! I want to know how to get cheese onto the table that we are actually going to eat. It can’t be that hard to make cheese. People made it with the most basic resources, surely I can make it with all of the resources available online!”
And she did! Over the last few years, Kat has been putting all sorts of cheeses onto her family’s table. Cheddar, Feta, and Chèvre are her go to cheeses. She has found methods of combating the contamination risk in their climate, and she now ages her cheeses in a refrigerator, and vacuum packs her pressed cheeses. Kat makes cheese using both goats milk and cows milk and occasionally does mixed milk cheeses. She says, “I will do all of the cheeses with a mix if I am short, but the goats milk is kind of delicate. It needs more pampering, and lower temperatures, so I don’t do as much”.
Kats biggest advice for new cheesemakers;
Start with something you want to eat. I think the mistake that we made particularly with the cow, was that we would try to make fancy things, you know like brie, or gouda. Which I do like, but we don’t eat a lot of it, so there was never the same sort of motivation to follow through and figure out your mistakes, because you know, I wasn’t that wedded to actually eating it in the end.
Kat recommends sticking to cheeses that you really are going to want to eat, and says that this method really helped her to follow through and get good at making them. She says, “Also be prepared to throw some stuff away. There are going to be mistakes and it takes awhile to figure out how to correct them. You will get there, it just takes some time to figure it out!”.
You can follow along with Kat’s homestead journey @katgoldin on instagram and at her website www.garturstitchfarm.com
Thank you to Kat for allowing me to share your story and for submitting all of the pictures in this post.
Happy Cheesemaking!
Robyn