While preparing for the experimental cheese production in the summer we have to do more tastings of sheep cheese. Here are some samples from the neighbourhood shops in Cambridge.
Manchego from somewhere in Spain
Fleurs du Maquis from Corsica was very very good!
Roquefort from Pyrenees in France was divine!
Azeitao from Portugal was very interesting cheese, especialy the version with good mold.
Pecorino Ginepro from Regio-Emilia, Italy. Very good, mild Pecorino.
On Sunday April 3, we visited organic cheese market in Vilnius and met Audrius, former law student and member of the pro-test lab project that we were running in 2005. Nowadays Audrius immersed into secrets of cheese making. He rents a farm in Darguziai village and together with his girlfriend Jovita keeps 20 sheep. Audrius produces different kinds of milk products: spreads, hard cheeses, yogurts.
We made an appointment to visit Audrius and his sheep farm on Tuesday, April 5.
We got inspired my milking architecture. It is a specially constructed closed cage, lifted up from the ground that conveniently allows to milk 3-4 sheep at one time.
Audrius sheep are of East Friesian breed. They are milking sheep and give 1-1,5 l of milk every day. Audrius also contucted an experiment – he mixed East Friesian sheep with Lithuanian, so called, wild sheep. The result stands in the middle in the picture below:
Audrius keeps two male sheep.
Audrius and Jovita feeds baby-lambs that are just taken away from their mothers.
Audrius recently came back from the research trip in Ukraine, where he gave a workshop on cheese making in the farm of 10 000 sheep. He brought home dry sheep stomach, that is used for cheese fermenting process. 1 stomach is enough for cheese production for the whole year.
We left to Darguziai early in order to reach the farm at 6:30 and participate in the morning milking session. It was foggy and we could not see the road. Actually there is no road leading to Audrius farm. We had to cross a meadow. We nearly reached the destination…
