Greetings from Northern Arizona!!!

[Farmer Gab]

We are newby homesteaders - only been at it a little over two years.  We have goats and layer chickens year round.  And, we have pigs and meat chickens seasonally.  We tried turkeys, but couldn't stand the smell!

Anyway, I make yogurt and moz and now I want to start getting serious about other cheeses.  My family eats way too much cheese for me to continue to buy it.  I have noticed that our altitude and arid climate affect my cheese making even though I haven't even really gotten around to the serious stuff yet.  Would love to hear from others with similar altitudes (7,000 ft) and climates (high dessert). 

Can't wait to get cheesy!

[Cheese Head]

Hello Farmer Gab and welcome to the forum!

I see from your other post that you've found Frank who is also at ~7,000 ft, the only other person who I know was a member called RobJP who was raising goats and having problems making chevre on slopes of a ski mountain in Japan, but I haven't seen him? around for a while..

From the posts in this forum you can see that everyone has different experiences making cheese due primarily to the huge range of conditions, milk sources, culture strengths etc. I find unless I follow my records very closely it turns out different, even just making curd with rennet! I expect your milk source, raw goat's milk will give you more range of output than elevation but maybe I'm wrong. Your very low humidity will be tough, just like my very high humidity in Houston in summer. Easiest cheese to start with are of course soft ones!

Have fun and would love to here your experiences!

Hope Tea chimes in as she makes lots of goat's milk based cheese . . . again welcome.

[Tea]

Hi Farmer Gab and welcome to the board.  Interesting that two people now have noted a difference in rennet at high altitudes, I wonder why. 

What was it about the turkeys that smelt?  It anything I find the meat a bit tougher, but the smell doesn't turn me off.  I wonder if it was something that they were eating that contributed to the smell.

We're about to put down some more turkeys soon, and I am hoping to turn them into sausages.  Have been wanting to try that for a while now, so hopefully it will be successful.

Anyway, hope you can join in.  Would love to hear more of your successes with goat milk cheese.

[reg]

morning Farmer Gab. unfortunately we have to buy our milk but i can imagine how cool it would be to be using your own milk produced by your own animals and fed on your own pastures.

looking forward to hearing about your cheese making experiences

BTW Tea, turkey sausage is very very good and easy to do.

reg

[Tea]

Are they Reg, I can't get them here so I am winging this one.  What flavours would work well?

[Farmer Gab]

I guess I wasn't very clear...the turkey meat didn't stink.    In fact, it was great!  The droppings when wet are worse than our pigs.  We fed them Purina turkey grower & finisher so I don't know if that had anything to do with it....  Anway, NEVER again!  We can't seem to get rid of the smell from their pen!

[reg]

Tea you can use pretty well any flavour that you like much the same as regular sausages. the difference is that turkey has very little fat and can easily become crumbly. sometimes its good to add some ground pork shoulder to the mix. we are going away for a few days but when we get back i can send you a few recipes if you like

reg

[Tea]

Reg that would be wonderful.  We don't eat pork, but I'm sure that I can substitute it with something else.
Have a safe trip.

[Tea]

Farmer Gab I forgot to add that our turkeys don't smell, so it could be either the type of breed that you had, or the feed that you were giving them.  Sorry, can't be of any more help.