Thanks, one more reason I had such a running batch the last time. I will have to start treating my cheeses like little immobile pets and being more kind to them.
I am not a good example of good cheese parenting.
I regularly forget to take care of mine. Maybe because I have noisier things to take care of; goats, sheep, chickens, cats. I have gotten better at cheese care...... The things I try to do are:
on bloomy cheeses I flip (or rotate if there's something on top and I can't flip them) so that they don't stick to the matting as the PC starts to grow. I pat them down as much as I can on the every three day rotation of getting around to remembering I have cheese responsibilities.
on natural rind hard cheeses I use a bamboo scrub brush or surgeon's brush to brush the mold off the rinds when I remember and I prop open box lids according to how much moisture is collecting on the inside of the box and how moist I want it to be. I also wipe out moisture on the boxes when I'm checking. If a cheese gets too dry I wipe it down with salt brine (sometimes with a bit of wine added) or oil it. Even if it's dried out to the point of the rind cracking I have had good success at rescuing by using a brine wipe down and of course, keeping the box lid a bit more closed for a while.
on hard cheeses that I'm trying to keep pristine I've been getting into coconut oil after using olive oil for the first few months of my cheesemaking adventure. The coconut oil is easy to put on and can be whatever liquidity that you want for ease of use just by choosing what temp you store it at. I massage the cheese with coconut oil to put on a layer and then check it every few days and when/if any mold starts to grow I add some more coconut oil. It seems like I only need to do it 2-3 times and then nothing grows on it. If just a little something grows on it I massage it without adding any oil.
Hope this helps......