Greetings from Waterford Virginia, USA

[rwthompson1982]

Hello All, thank you for having me and I am looking forward to a lot of time sharing my cheesemaking with you all.

I live in Waterford, Va., which is an 18th century village in the suburbs of the Washington DC metro area. I am an engineer with a space-oriented company in the area, and enjoy cooking and cheese making because it is a technical and hands-on hobby. When I'm not doing that I'm working on fixing up my 1918 house and raising my son and daughter with my wife.

We are members of a whole-diet CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) that provides us meat, grains, vegetables, fruits, and of course, dairy. We get about 3 gallons of whole, unpasteurized, and unhomogenized milk a week, about half of which we use for yogurt and cheese making. Since we aren't always able to make cheese every week, we do freeze some of our milk until we are able to make our next cheese.

We are currently using a borrowed dutch style press to make Goudas - I will make Gouda # 4 this weekend and hope to post about it. Looking forward to talking with you all!

-Bob

[qdog1955]

Welcome to the forum----your fortunate to get the raw milk, it seems to make a better cheese. Out of curiosity is CSA what we used to call a food co-op?
Qdog

[ArnaudForestier]

Qdog, a CSA is usually set up as a kind of subscription service, at least in my experience.  You buy into membership at a fixed rate, and get a proportional allotment of whatever the farm provides on a regular basis.  We belong to a spinach CSA, for example, and every other week we pick up the best spinach we've ever had.  Bob's CSA sounds outta site!

Bob, welcome to the community.  Your life sounds really interesting and will look forward to your cheese travels.  Lots of folks with a collected tremendous amount of experience here.  Happy cheesemaking!

[Danbo]

A warm welcome from Denmark.

[rwthompson1982]

Hi Qdog, I don't think the CSA concept is quite like a co-op as I understand it, where the members make decisions on purchasing and distribution. Typically a CSA is associated with a specific farmer, and your membership in the CSAt helps to support that farmer throughout the year, providing the farmer less uncertainty about the market for goods. We have belonged to subscription type CSAs before where we purchased a share, and got a set amount of food each week.  Our whole diet CSA works a little bit differently, as almost everything is unlimited within reason; essentially on the honor system. I think it works out pretty well for them.

This is their website if you'd like to know more: http://www.moutouxorchard.com/

-Bob

[qdog1955]

Bob, that's a great concept-----would have been better 30 or 40 years ago---it might have prevented all our family farms from becoming developments ---at least around here.
Qdog