A few weeks had gone past since my interview with Ruth Zimmerman, before I had finally gotten the chance to sit down and write it all out.
A lot had happened since I sat down to a zoom meeting with fellow milk cow owner, homesteader, mother, and cheesemaker, Ruth Zimmerman. Since our interview, I had finally brought a new milk cow home, I had started making cheese again after a 3-month break, and I had been working hard to increase my social media presence. Throughout those few weeks, I had thought often of my interview with Ruth. Words she had spoken that had resonated with me; sound advice that I held with me as we acclimated our new cow, Sukey, to our home.
Ruth has been milking a cow since she was 10 years old. Raised a Horse and Buggy Mennonite on a pig farm, it was customary in her family, for a child to take over milking after their 10th birthday. She would switch off with her siblings. She says, “my childhood memories really involved the family milk cow, it gave your day routine; get out of bed, go milk the cow before school”.
A big family of 10, Ruth’s mother did not actually make cheese, they hand churned their own butter and the family drank a lot of milk. It was Ruth’s grandma who was the cheesemaker. Ruth reminisced of getting on her bike as a child, she would ride to her grandmas with a pail of milk. Her grandma would make a soft cheese called Schmeirkase, a cheese that Ruth still makes to this day.
After leaving home, both Ruth and her husband, were eager to start their own homestead. Ruth’s husband, also raised in a Mennonite community, grew up on a dairy farm. After 6 months of marriage, they bought a 20-acre property and started their homesteading journey. Ruth described to me how their homestead has been years in the making. At first with little infrastructure on the property, they would buy animals in the spring, fatten them up through the summer, and harvest in the fall. Cold Iowa winters made it impossible to overwinter animals without proper shelter. They slowly started working towards their goals of self-sufficiency. Ruth described to me the introduction of dairy animals onto their homestead;
We had milk goats. Having the milk goat’s kind of started pulling me towards, “oh this is kind of nice, having chores morning and evening”, it makes you one with the land and the animals. I started thinking about the cream of a cow, so we started with a dexter. We bought her in 2014, and she was wild! I don’t ever recommend buying a yearling heifer for your milk cow. Anyway, the reason we chose a dexter was because I was overwhelmed with the thought of how to use all the milk. The only thing I knew how to do was make butter with the cream and drink it. I started with a dexter because I didn’t know what to do with all of the milk, now I don’t have enough milk for all of my creativity with the dairy.
The families dexter milk cow, gives about 2 gallons a day. The large family of 9, quickly drinks and eats through this quantity of milk. Ruth describes how she wishes for more milk, “by the time I have made yogurt, some kefir, skimmed all of the cream for butter, made a couple gallons of chocolate milk for everybody, I don’t have 8 gallons of excess a week, so that is where I am at”. We both laughed as she describes wishing for a second milk cow, which after her fear of not being able to use all of the milk, she says,
Its mind-blowing to me! How did I go from being like, “I don’t know if I can have a family milk cow, and milk twice a day, and I don’t even know what I am going to do with all of this milk, I’m going to have to share it with friends!”. How did I go from that a short two years ago, to now being like, “How can I talk my husband into a second milk cow?’.
She says, “it’s the cheese that does it for me!”. Ruth would love to have the opportunity to make more cheese! Currently she makes mozzarella, and schmeirkase when they have extra milk. Schmeirkase holds a special place in Ruth’s heart, and she says, “When I make it, I feel a connection to my grandma”.
Ruth marvels over the fact that her grandma made this cheese with really nothing, but milk. She would let the milk sit out, until is soured to culture it. Ruth wishes dearly that her grandmother was still here to pass on her knowledge, and skills. She has been looking into how her grandma made hard cheeses; a task that has proven difficult to find information. Ruth asks her mom, and she may remember, yet the knowledge and information is being lost. Her mother did not make cheese and Ruth says growing up her mothers’ attitude towards cheesemaking was more, “we don’t have to make cheese, we can buy it”. This has made Ruth realize, “it only takes one generation for something to get lost”.
As Ruth talked about her grandmother, it brought back fond memories for me of my grandma, a woman who held her Carrier traditions close, and who I fondly remember standing at the kitchen stove preparing traditional foods, standing alongside the River, Dip Net in hand, fishing for Salmon during the Run.
Ruth and I reminisced of our grandmothers for a while. Ruth talked about how her grandma would use the whole animal, even going as far as preparing the chicken feet. Ruth remembers as a child thinking, “grandmas so weird”, but now these are memories and traditions she holds dear to her heart.
Traditional skills are something that Ruth is very passionate about.
The next thing that Ruth said, has stuck with me since our interview, a comment so genuine and on point, that I doubt it will ever leave my mind;
There is something about passing on skills and knowledge. Each generation is going to buy more from the grocery store, but I don’t want to be the generation that is like, I don’t even know where cheese comes from. I don’t want someone to look back and say, “she knew how to make cheese, but she never taught us”. I won’t disown my offspring if they do not pass on those skills, I just want to make sure they have the opportunity if they so choose.
I asked if Ruth’s children were interested now in learning these skills. Ruth’s oldest is 19, and newly married. Ruth describes how her oldest daughter, “really was on the ground floor”, of the homestead. How she saw her parents learning and the hard work of developing the land, whereas the younger children have seen the easier side of it. Ruth says, “at this point, she is just loving experimenting. Like did you know you can buy pie crust that is already made?”. Ruth says, “it doesn’t matter how you are raised; you have a desire to do somethings differently for a good part of your formative years, but it comes full circle”. Her son in law is from a small town, and has seen how Ruth and her family live their lives, he would love to buy land and live a homesteading lifestyle. Ruth knows that they would be a good team, her daughter with the knowledge from her childhood, and her son in law with his desire to live the lifestyle.
As for the younger children, age ranging between 18 to 4, its too soon to tell. They see their mother milking a cow and making cheese. The dexter that they have now is a bit too wild for the children to milk by themselves. Ruth says that one of her daughters will sometimes take interest in cheesemaking, but that the boys mostly would just like to eat the cheese.
Ruth ended our interview with some advice for new milk cow owners. She says;
Get a couple of pigs, even if they are just weanling pigs that you are going to fatten up in the summer and harvest in the fall. Nothing puts a damper on going to the barn to milk the cow, as already having too much milk in the fridge. Its not fun to go milk if the milk is just piling up! So, get a couple of pigs so you don’t feel guilty about dumping milk. Life is going to get busy and the pigs are always just so happy to have the milk, that you don’t feel guilty.
Ruth also says;
In our case, if it hadn’t been for my husband growing up on a dairy farm and knowing his way around cows, I wouldn’t have survived! I wouldn’t have been able to push through all of those rocky days, of getting her used to being milked. As much as we love our dexter, even my husband at this point says that her personality is pretty feisty to be a milk cow.
I am a jump in with both feet type of personality, but, if it hadn’t been for his experience, I probably wouldn’t have survived. I wouldn’t have been able to push through.
Make sure that you are both on the same page. Make sure you have support, because there are going to be times when one of you wants to throw in the towel, and the other is like, no we can do this!
You can follow along with Ruth’s homesteading journey on Instagram @ruthannzimm
Thank you to Ruth for allowing me to share your story and for submitting all of the photos in this interview.
Happy Cheesemaking!
Robyn