Hi from New Zealand

[Shadeydaze]

Kia Ora...hello everyone.

I have been a regular reader of this great forum and thought it was about time I stopped lurking and joined in.

My name is Manda  and I live on the South Island of New Zealand just under an hour outside of Christchurch. Myself and my family moved out here in 2004 from the UK as we wanted to do our version of the "Good Life".

We have a few acres which we use to the max (I have a friend who has a sheep station with thousands of hectares and he reckons we are busier than he is!
We keep a couple of cows - usually for the freezer but we are thinking about getting a house cow to add to the mix (although we do have access to raw milk), pigs , lots of chickens (I have no idea how many) and some sheep - a mix of Gotlands and we have just acquired a young East Friesian ram lamb.

We are interested in learning new crafts all the time on our journey towards being as self sufficient as possible... we have already kind of got our head round small butchery (we kill and process our own pigs and sheep and make our own sausages).

So the next step seemed to be cheese....how hard could it be.......and then I started reading about making cheese    ...Oh my goodness!!!!!! So I started reading and all roads kept bringing me back to here one way or another...so here I am 

The sheep are part of a long term project...for some (Gotlands don't do too badly on milk production)...hence we got Gordon (short for Gordonzola  ) who we are going to trial crossing him with them to produce some ewes with an increased (hopefully) milk yield.....and then........ Feta 

I have made Mozzarella (not bad but I won't say I don't need more practise!!) but I want to diversify so want to try and make the best use the raw milk ...it's just for ourselves but we love cheese and like a really tasty cheese  - over here they do exist but are expensive and we are trying to do things for ourselves.
I would really like to make a cheddar type cheese as that is what I think we would use most of but if anyone has got any different advice I am open to it.

Look forward to getting as much advice / info / anything else I can from here and your good selves...have to say I am feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment.

[Cheese Head]

Welcome Manda/Shadeydaze!

Well that sounds like a big and successful life style change, congrats!

So all cheese making roads lead here .

Cheddar and Moz are some of the hardest to make, there's a Wiki article on Recommendations For New Cheese Makers, along with many other equipment, ingredients and methods articles. Also there are several "where should I start" type threads in the bottom Discussions Board. Also reading a few of the How To FAQs is useful, ie how to Search, attach files/pictures etc.

Cheers . . . me I live in a subdivision, no farm for miles.

[Shadeydaze]

Thanks for the link John..more reading me thinks

[zenith1]

Happy to have you as part of the forum Manda-jump right in,we are waiting for your questions.

[ellenspn]

Welcome!

[Shadeydaze]

Thank you for the welcomes and I'm sure there will be lots of questions