I came out on Wednesday night.
It happened about 7:30 pm, in the cozy upstairs room of The Cheese School of San Francisco. I was sitting next to Tana Butler, both of us giddy as schoolgirls over the beautiful cheeses arranged on the plates in front of us.
We were sipping wines chosen by Alex Fox and listening as Will Edwards regaled us with tales about his eight years with Harley Goat Farms Dairy, the farmstead cheesemakers in Pescadero. We laughed as he recalled the Dumb Questions People Ask.
Like: How do you milk the male goats? And: Do you have to kill the goats for their milk? Guffaw.
Mid-thought, Will paused. “Did anyone here grow up on a farm?”
I hesitated. Then, ever so slowly, I raised my hand.
There. I’m out.
For some absurd reason, I’ve always had a hard time ‘fessing up to it, but yes: I grew up with chickens scurrying about my ankles. I’ve milked a goat (or two). I know the difference between alfalfa and vetch, and I can strip the sweet, juicy kernels off of a ripe oat stalk in three seconds flat. I’ve had my hands in more animal orifices than I can count, not that I would want to.
When I was ten years old, my family moved into a ramshackle house on 13 acres in rural Oregon. Ours was not a working farm, in the sense that it was not a business, but we put every single one of those acres to use for one purpose: to feed the family.
I should have known then that I would be a fussy eater ever afterwards. How, when you’ve grown up harvesting your dinner from the enormous garden just beyond the kitchen, can you find satisfaction in salad greens from a plastic bag? How, when you regularly plucked tomatoes fresh off the vine, can a tomato from Safeway ever measure up? How, when you drank milk from a cow milked the same morning, cold as ice with a layer of cream on top, can Clover ever be good enough?
As Will talked about the hard work and dedication (he may have used the word “hell”) that farmers go
through to produce food, my mind flew back over the years to the hellish joyful moments my family spent raising chickens, turkeys, goats, sheep and cows, and growing everything from blueberries to kale.
Yes, dear reader: now is the time to take off those rose-colored glasses and grind them firmly beneath your stiletto heel. Farming is not for the faint of heart, nor for the queasy of stomach, nor for anyone who fancies sleeping in. Ever. Even on one morning.
Especially if your house is heated solely by wood, as ours was, or if you happen to have goats, as we did. The first three cheeses we sampled on Wednesday night were goat cheeses, and if you had told me, fifteen years ago, that I would be eating goat cheese and liking it, I would have been mortified.
When we first brought goats to our farm, we did so for the sake of my two youngest sisters, who couldn’t digest any other form of milk. In other words, we got milk goats, females who had recently given birth. A milk goat will produce for up to nine months, but to do so, she must be milked twice a day, with vigor. I will never forget those mornings and evenings when one of my brothers walked up from the barn with a pail of vanilla-colored milk in hand, still warm and foamy, stippled with stiff black hairs.
All of us, with the exception of my father and the aforementioned sisters, hated goat milk. We hated the smell. We hated the texture. We hated everything about it. For years afterwards, the slightest whiff of “goat” made my stomach turn.
I don’t know exactly when the change occurred, but eau de chèvre doesn’t affect me the same way anymore. While I still shy away from goat milk, I now love goat cheese, albeit the ones on the mild end of the spectrum. The stronger ones still take me back to the days when we tried to convince Cindy to stand still and Not! To kick! The pail!
The Van Goat we tasted on Wednesday evening was simply divine; a triangle of soft white cheese wrapped in mint leaves and edible flowers, with basil and sunflower seeds nestled at its center.
Sometimes, the unthinkable becomes delicious.
And now you know.
** for a complete write-up of Wednesday, see Tana’s lovely post.
*** Kudos to Lisa at tuttiefoodie, Marcia at tablehopper, and Sara from The Cheese School, for such a lovely event.
**** Many thanks to Penny, whose photo of Van Goat (above) is making me hungry again.
