Photos Promised from Gubbeen

I told several weeks ago about turning cheeses for an entire morning, and one reader wanted to know just how much cheese was I talking about? I did get some photos and have included a few above. Just to give you some perspective, in these curing rooms and in the smoker, a ton of Gubbeen cheese is produced each week, all of it handled by hand. The washed rind cheeses as opposed to the smoked cheeses are handled individually every day.

Testing a New Feature

Apparently I can email my blog entries in to my blog, so I'm trying this out. If you're reading this, it worked.

Avid readers take note: I can enter up to 10 email addresses that will automatically get my blog entries when they're published. Let me know if you want to be one of the select few!

Chateau Chalon

View from Voiteur up to Chateau Chalon
Budding out vineyards on way to Chateau Chalon
Street in Chateau Chalon
Lobelia in Chateau Chalon
Views from Chateau Chalon

I've made some feeble attempts to deflect jealousy by hinting at the hard work we do, complaining about cleaning out stables, hand-feeding giant schnauzers, mowing acres of lawn, turning cheese for hours on end, etc. but I can't keep up the charade - life is good on sabbatical. (Although we DO think constantly of Walt's brother Dave and his wife Linda in the hospital. I really miss her emails and hope her therapy goes well so she can write me again.) Our hosts here in the Jura stocked the cupboards and freezers well so we're dining on osso buco, sirloin steak, potatoes, leeks, and homemade spaetzle, brioche, Lindt chocolates, comte' cheese, and various kinds of homemade jams, homemade creme de cassis with champagne, etc. etc. Yesterday at a small grocery store we bought a charentais melon, a little round one, the kind I'd heard about in France but never had. We sliced it open for dessert at lunch today and I almost got knocked over by the aroma. Then I leaned over to lick the juice off the cutting board that had leaked out when I cut it open. That melon alone is enough of a reason to move to France, it was that good.

Weather dawned gorgeously sunny on Saturday, so after we dealt with veterinary/equine related issues with colt Alesha (I talked on the phone to the neighbor AND the vet's receptionist, in French! sort of...), ate lunch, showered, and dressed, we headed out in the car towards the SE, where I'd read something about some nice places called Chateau Chalon and Baume-les-Messieurs. We started on the motorway and as soon as possible turned off into a village to find the country road alternative. We got turned around in the village and as we headed back the other way an older gentleman flagged us down and asked where we wanted to go. We told him the name of the place and he started to point towards the motorway and I said, "Petite chemins!" (small roads) and he grinned broadly and pointed up the hill, showing off some English for us as he told us how many left and rights we needed to take. I tell you, I have yet to meet an unhelpful French person. We headed off into the hills and were rewarded immediately with long distance views and the discovery of a little village called Brery where I could happily live, at least on sunny days, and then we got closer to Chateau Chalon.

Well. You know you're in a nice place when other French people are visiting for the weekend. I've posted some photos of our afternoon above. Chateau Chalon was one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. We didn't have any money so we didn't stop for any Cote de Jura wine tastings while we were there, but in a few places as we strolled by we could smell it, and that was enough.

Cuckoos and Owls and Lizards Oh My

We're having fun discovering the new kinds of wildlife sharing our world here in the rural Jura region of France. Yesterday the sun came out and burned off the fog after several days of gray and we shed our long sleeves for the afternoon and evening, at the same time that the little lizards who live in between rocks and in the walls of the house came out to sunbathe. The sun lit up the trees at the bottom of the pastures, the fresh leaf buds the color of chartreuse.

In the mornings when we wake up and again in the evenings we hear cuckoos out in the woods, sounding for all the world like the clock in my grandparents house when I was a kid. I didn't realize until now that there are real birds that actually make that sound. We learned the insidious origin of the term "cuckold" as well - when Walt learned that cuckoos lay their eggs in a reed warbler's nest, and pushes one of the warbler's own eggs out, in a matter of about 10 seconds. The cuckoo chicks are so big they steal all the food that the poor warbler brings to it, not realizing that her own warbler offspring have been crowded out by these cuckoo imposters. Yikes. Nature isn't always benign, is it?

Something is living above the rafters above the office where I'm on the computer, scratching and squeaking. We are seeing little tufts of insulation floating down outside above this spot, and today when Walt tried to see what was happening he thinks he spotted a little bird face, perhaps an owl face. We'll keep an eye out on this.

The long evening sunlight induced us out on a long country walk last night down the road before a late dinner, where the only sound of civilization was the occasional fighter jet, obviously on training runs while the visibility was good. There were some cows who thought, both times they saw us, that we were coming to fetch them inside for the night. There were also a couple of muddy little ponds into which dozens of frogs jumped, bloop bloop bloop, as we walked by. Some hunting dogs in an outdoor pen bayed and barked, doing their job, and the river rushed under the road down at the bottom of the hill, all muddy and swollen from the spring rain. "Chasse gardee" the sign said, amidst a swampland of standing water in the wooded, shrubby river flats. Hunting preserve. You wouldn't want to hunt down there now.

Life sounds idyllic here and indeed it is, but there is always something more trying happening outside the pages of this blog: trying to get tenants to keep our rental house full at home, worrying about sister in law Linda in the hospital in Tacoma, paying the plumber to fix the sewer line on our house in Moscow, trying to make my career as a freelance writer pay a living wage, keeping the guy whose chickens our dog killed in her temporary home from suing us, trying to make sure Reed isn't the only 2nd grader next year who doesn't know how to sit still and listen to the teacher... the list goes on. These are the things that don't always get written about, but still they're there. We haven't escaped from real life, we're just living it in a different way, perhaps.

Bletterans and Bellevesvre

After our morning chores we ventured out in the little diesel car to the nearby town of Bletterans and quite quickly located the market by driving down the main street, and following the crowds of people with empty baskets over their arms headed down the alley, only slightly put off by the American music blaring from some speakers mounted on the Cafe de Paris. I wondered if Americans are associated with shopping, so therefore, American music on market day?? The market winds its way through several streets and alleys and some of it is in a covered building, with no rhyme or reason to the placement of the various wares that I could see. We found local lettuce and spinach, and some farm-made organic goat cheese - buying the freshest ones, just out of the mold with the little mold marks still on it - and some fish. We also bought a slab of gingerbread, what I'm assuming is pain d'epices, or spice bread, moist and heavy and dark, filled with flecks of orange and chocolate; they also had plain, and fig, and nut varieties as well. I bought Reed a crepe filled with delicious regionally made strawberry jam (confiture); he enjoyed it but got cranky when he spilled a big glob of jam on the knee of his jeans. There is a fete paysanne in a week and a half at a farm not too far away from here that we'll go to - nothing like a bunch of local farmers throwing a party for a fun day. The post office was right next to the market so I was also able to mail some postcards that I wrote last week, too.

After our successful market trip - made so much easier by being able to speak just a little French instead of none - we headed down the road to Bellevesvre, where the mill is that makes the horses' munchies, and got a couple bags of the one we're almost out of. We tore the label off the bag this morning to make buying a new one easy, and indeed it was a piece of cake, everyone very helpful and nice.

The weather here is rather gray this week, with no end in sight. I wonder if it's because we're just to the west of the Alps.

The animals are settling down and we're getting used to our chores here. I got Hamish the dog that must be hand-fed to eat out of his bowl at lunchtime today. And the chicken who hadn't been pulling her weight laid us a tiny offering this morning, obviously doing her best to thank us for the raisins she's been getting from Reed's leftover breakfast muesli, and the spinach stems we've been tossing out there from our salads. Nice to know such treats are noticed by the small brained but big hearted chickens.

Bois de Gand, France

We've spent our week up to our ankles in straw and horsesh*t as we've learned the fine points of caring for and cleaning up after horses at the housesit where we'll be situated for the next month, in the Jura region of France. We arrived on Tuesday afternoon after two long days of bus/train/air travel from West Cork to Dublin to Grenoble to this tiny village situated in the countryside in the foothills of the mountains southeast of Dijon. We've been too busy taking notes about which horse gets which munchies and which giant schnauzer gets which pills to have begun appreciating being back in France but now we're getting the hang of it, and although today started out miserably drizzly, by lunchtime the sky had cleared and the afternoon was gloriously warm and sunny, lasting through the long evening. Within a few days we'll be settled, the dogs and horses will have relaxed too, and we can start enjoying field trips and going to the market in Bletterans on Tuesdays for our fresh salad greens and if we're lucky some farm produced cheeses.

Our generous hosts stocked the cupboards well so we shall eat like kings and queens, and tonight Walt did himself proud with the large carp that Alex and Tomas, the neighbor boys, caught in this house's pond the other day. They took home a creel full and brought us a large one, nicely cleaned. It was surprisingly delicious, fresh and tasty, baked with garlic and dill and lots of butter, the chef's secret weapon. The carp was accompanied by a delicately sweet pinot gris, and we thought Hugh Fearnsley-Whittingstall would have been proud, having been known to eat a carp or two himself. The bones were a pain but they helped us pace ourselves, otherwise we might have gobbled everything up much too quickly.

From this large house we mostly see pastures and woods, with one pasture leading down to a large pond. The nearby villages are undiscovered and a little rough around the edges, testimony to this region's slightly struggling economy. This isn't a place overun by Brits, which has its advantages and disadvantages both, apparently, depending on who you're talking to.

More Happy Cows!

Yet another photo of the contented Friesians at Gubbeen. What can I say? The sun was shining, the cows were chewing their cuds, I was walking in the sunshine into town to visit Gwen's Chocolates...

The yellow blossoms are gorse in the hedges.

Gwen's Chocolates, Schull

In a tiny little shop on Schull's main street, Frenchwoman Gwen sells delicious handmade chocolates. We stopped there on our first trip to town last week and I went again today on my own to pick out another little bag of delectable goodies. I wonder if next time I do a food apprenticeship I could do it in a chocolaterie??

Bon Appetit and Gubbeen

So the new issue of Bon Appetit magazine has a feature on West Cork, with a photo of Giana and one of her roosters looking as cool as it is possible to look! Also quoted is Fingal, on the subject of an experimental Blood Mary sausage that he and his friends tried making last year.

My first reaction was bitter envy, that someone else wrote an article that could have been mine...(didn't I query them about this place over a year ago??) but then upon further reflection, I think, which is better - to have flown over to Ireland for a couple of days and visited Gubbeen for an hour or two, and tried to pack in all of the extensive West Cork food scene in just a few days - or to have lived at Gubbeen for almost two weeks, actually helped make some of the cheese, and sold it at the Skibbereen market too? I'm the one with the good deal, and how lucky we are to share in the life here for even just a short time.

This morning Reed sat and watched the entire time while a baby chick broke its way out of the shell in the incubator, a process that takes about half an hour or more, so this particular little ball of fluff has been christened Reed in his honor. When I came in to lunch today after spending the morning in the dairy, Reed announced "this is the best lunch I've ever had" and I had to agree, it was pretty great: Clovisse's carrot-apple-coriander-lime soup, Fingal's ham, Gubbeen cheese, Ballymaloe country relish, Fingal's sausage rolls, lots of fresh bread, and a winter greens salad that Clovisse made as well, with a lovely smoky vinaigrette dressing. Reed also polished off the duck liver pate but managed to leave a little of the Explorateur cheese for Giana. This is a French triple creme fresh cheese - clean and snowy white and unctuous on the palate.

I'll take a moment to note here that this has got to be one of the healthiest places for eating I've ever seen. In the dairy at breaktime, standard fare is plain crackers, apples and bananas, cheese, butter, and jam. To drink: tea and fresh milk. No chips, no candy, no soda pop, no crap. I don't know what the rest of Schull eats, but at Gubbeen, it's all good.

Zen Cows

Tuesday, April 8, 2008
Gubbeen

Today the cows are in “our” pasture. Every once in a while one of them will wander close to the caravan and then look startled and stare when she sees us inside. We had a funny moment when we were polishing off the carton of Ben and Jerry’s ice cream that Rosie gave to us the other night, when a cow outside that looked just like the picture on the carton was looking at us. Walt said don’t let her see the ice cream – it was Chocolate Therapy flavor - or she’ll be shocked at what humans have done with perfectly good milk.

Reed’s been guzzling the raw cow’s milk all week because it’s so delicious, until Sunday night he was complaining about his itchy ears and I discovered hive-like blisters forming on them. Our first thought was poison ivy, but there isn’t anything here at the moment that would cause that reaction. My second thought was sunburn, but if he’d had that much sun the rest of his face would’ve been burnt too. Then yesterday when the bumpy redness was spreading to his face I realized: the cow’s milk sensitivity that we’d only suspected a few years ago must be real, and it’s been possibly exacerbated by the unpasteurized milk, delicious though it is. Sadly ironic for Reed, to be at a dairy farm and not be able to drink the milk. I did make a batch of yogurt from it the other day, though, and yogurt has never been a problem for him.

Cows are very peaceful, aren’t they? It’s pouring down rain and they just keep doing whatever they’re doing, minding their own business, not fussing at each other or hurrying.

So a herd of 120 milkers here at Gubbeen requires a cheesemaking staff of about 6 people working fulltime to make the cheese from all that milk and do all the things necessary to cure it and pack it for shipping. That doesn’t include taking care of the cows or milking them, or the person who comes in on the weekends to turn the cheeses, or market the cheese, for that matter. And that’s with a huge commercial washing machine that washes and sterilizes all the molds and trays and everything every day. My job today, aside from helping put the curds into the molds, was turning all the curing cheeses, and that took most of the morning just doing that, all by myself.

This Little Piggy Went to Market

I spent half of Saturday with Fingal and Tom at the Skibbereen market, offering bits of cheese to entice the easily persuaded customers to buy. It wasn't even my own stuff and I still can feel how rewarding it is to sell your farm products directly to people and talk to them about it face to face. The star of the stand this day, however, was a French import, a huge wheel of Morbier cheese, with its layer of ash in the middle. But Fingal sold loads of sausages and bacon and chops and salami and pate, along with a healthy amount of Gubbeen cheese and eggs. My old customer service skills were put to good use and my brain had to start working in Euros. Hopefully I didn't count too much change incorrectly.

The Country Life for Me

Some of the very contented cows at Gubbeen.

Friday, April 4, 2008
Gubbeen

Walt has been given some handyman and gardening projects (he’s refinishing a lovely wrought iron gate and also is in charge of watering the greenhouses while Clovisse is in London over the weekend) and I’m working in the dairy from breakfast until lunchtime. In a place that makes 67 tonnes of cheese in a year, the work isn’t for the fainthearted. Lots of lifting and bending, scooping and reaching, to get the curds or turn the cheese or lift full racks of curing cheeses. I love the smell of it, which is different in different rooms depending on what’s happening. Smoky, or winey, or mushroomy. Yesterday was a full morning of taking care of all the new cheeses, smearing the curing ones with whatever bath they needed (brine and culture, brine, or wine), turning every single cheese, and then, packing the new curds into the molds for the next batch. Eileen, Diane, Joanna, Monica, Rose, Sean, and Darius are all so nice, nobody even complains when I’m getting in the way more than I’m helping.

Reed’s job is to not chase or frighten any of the chickens, and to do his math, writing, and violin practice when we tell him.

We’ve been lucky with the weather this week, dry and warm during the day. We’ve been able to go for walks down the road in the late afternoons and early evenings before bed. Bedtime comes fairly early since we don’t want to sit inside the caravan with the lights on attracting midges, and also we’re tired from working; we’re still in our lazy winter condition and are slowly getting adjusted to farm life again. Being in the country again is so wonderful; now there is no doubt in my mind whether I want to live the rural or urban/suburban life and no doubt either what is best for Reed. He’s happy as a pig in sh*t, as some folks say. Here you can say happy as a pig in Gubbeen.

From the caravan window I can see the herd of Friesian cows grazing on the hillside just above us; the farm has 120 milkers at any given time.

Gubbeen House, Schull

Wednesday, April 2, 2008
Gubbeen House, Schull, Co. Cork, Ireland

April Fools’ Day passed while we spent the day on trains, trams, the bus (the driver showed no mercy on these winding and bumpy roads down here in Cork), and a car on our journey from Bangor down to Schull. We arrived in Schull at 8 pm and were met immediately by Giana Ferguson, smiling a warm welcome for us. She drove us back to the farm and led us to the little trailer house at the edge of one of the cow pastures where we will be staying while we’re here, and then took us back to the warm kitchen in the big house for roast chicken and potatoes with peas, and some wine. Reed was amazingly still awake enough to eat some too, and we splashed some wine in his water to try to help him get settled down enough to sleep.

The countryside is ablossom with gorse, which they call by a different name down here. It was dark when we arrived at the farm, so the first impressions had to wait until morning.

The birds woke me shortly before Reed came in to wake me up for good, and it wasn’t long afterwards, as I was standing at the sink helping get Reed his breakfast, that the black and white cows started going by on their way up to the pasture. They went by in twos and threes for a long time while Reed counted them: 114! They had been milked and were on their way up to graze for the day. We had our cereal with their milk from the day before, fresh out of the huge stainless steel tank outside the dairy where the cheese is made.

Giana gave us a quick tour of the whole place – the scale of the cheesemaking here is on a much more commercial level than at Les Fromentaux. There are 5 or 6 employees in the dairy and huge vats for the curd, hundreds of cheese molds, and humongous sterilizer for the molds, which is the most awful of backbreaking work if you have to do it by hand. Afterwards she showed us the chicken set-up, Clovis’ herb gardens, greenhouses, and orchard, and Fingal’s charcuterie operation, where he makes sausages, chorizo, salamis, ham, bacon, pates, and other pork delights, with recipes he’s developed with his chef friends, and encouraged by Darina Allen of Ballymaloe, who gave him his first pig and said, here, won’t you try making me some salami? Fingal, too, has several employees, all friendly and handsome young Irish lads.

Lunch was a lemony chicken rice soup that Giana made, like avgolemono (delicious!), fresh bread, with Giana and Tom’s son Fingal’s ham, Gubbeen cheese, hard boiled eggs, cherry tomatoes, salad, Ballymaloe relish (“Grown up ketchup” Tom called it), leftover roast chicken, and apple juice. We sat at the big wooden kitchen table with Giana, Tom, Fingal, Clovis (the daughter), Rosie (practically a daughter), Missy the jack russell terrier, eating this wholesome delicious and simple meal off assorted mismatched and chipped crockery.

Reed spent the day chasing around in the woods and gardens and by the creek with Missy: seven year old boy bliss.