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.
Wednesday, April 9, 2008
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.
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.
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
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.
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.
Sunday, April 6, 2008
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.
Friday, April 4, 2008
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.
Thursday, April 3, 2008
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
