I arrived at Stony Pond Farm (SPF) on the afternoon of Tuesday, July 5. Melanie and Tyler Webb, the owners of Stony Pond Farm. Melanie was there to greet me but quickly had to get to the task of afternoon milking so we didn’t talk long. That evening, I got settled in at the Mountain Cabin, the comfortable and adequate little house where I will be living during the month-long apprenticeship. Melanie and I agreed that I would start at 6 am the following morning, so I spent the evening settling in, organizing and looking forward to the following day.

Stony Pond Farm is idyllic. It is a working dairy farm, with 61 Jersey cows for milking, 25-30 calves, a herd of heifers (young female cows that have yet to have a calf), two Jersey bulls for breeding, some beef cattle somewhere on the farm, seven pigs and a home garden. The Webbs also share their farm with a younger farming couple who work part-time for them while setting up their own chicken farm.

Melanie is the cheesemaker at Stony Pond Farm and she will be my main work partner and mentor over the course of the month I will be on the farm. She could not be more warm, welcoming and enthusiastic about her craft. Melanie has been making cheese for only three years and has had an impressive amount of success during that time. Her cheeses are sold at a wide variety of excellent cheese shops and markets throughout Vermont and beyond, including a cheese shop in Boston and at Saxelby Cheesemongers in the Chelsea Market. She also is working to set up a distribution deal that may take her cheese to the American South. In the short time I have been working with Melanie, I have come to truly appreciate her commitment to her business, her work ethic (12-14 hour days, 7 days/week!!), her total lack of pretense and posturing, her willingness to let me jump right into her cheesemaking, and her amazing cheeses, of course! While she has had some cheesemaking training and has been working with a cheesemaking consultant of late, she is largely self-taught and falls in the camp of “learning while doing,” which is so impressive. When I ask questions, she regularly says things like “I’m not sure, that’s just how X person told me to do that” and “I’m not sure what the scientific reason is for doing Y.” She is thorough, rigorous, detail-oriented and utterly committed to improving her knowledge and skills. She is also friendly, funny and interesting and is just so pleasant and fun to be around!

Promptly at 6:00 am on Wednesday, July 6, I started work. I thought the first day would be a lot of explaining without doing, but I was wrong! From the moment I walked into the creamery, which is housed in an old barn on the farm between her house and the current milking parlor, it was all action. That first day, we started the process of making two different cheeses: a camembert-style cheese called “Tom Tom,” and a spreadable fresh cheese called “Dream Cheese.” I started by observing and asking questions, as Melanie filled the vat with 480 liters of the milk being collected from her cows a few feet away in the parlor. But as she started the process, I was able to help with some small tasks. After the vat was full with fresh milk, Melanie started the pasteurization process before adding the cultures, salt and rennet. After that, 25 liters were removed in buckets to make the Dream Cheese the following day. Both the cheeses were allowed to rest while the rennet kicked in. Then we cut the curds and filled the molds or forms in a process called hooping. After that, we started turning the cheeses at regular intervals. It was amazing to see how quickly the curd came together to start forming, slowly but surely, a cheese that started to resemble camembert. During part of this process, Melanie was assisted by Dani, one of the chicken farmers, and I lent a hand as much as I could. That first day lasted from 6 am until about 5 pm, with a couple of breaks in between tasks. It was so amazing to see all that action on my first day and was so gratifying. I was hooked.

After work, Melanie gave me a Tom Tom from a previous batch and I was able to enjoy it with dinner along with a lovely green salad and some locally made bread. Delicious!! Creamy, a bit tangy, and nutty. The rind had a nice toothsome quality and its taste was not overpowering. A really lovely cheese. And it was so cool to think that I had just helped her make her next batch! Her Tom Tom camembert takes approximately 8-9 days to mature and for the mold to bloom fully on the outside. We will wrap it for sale probably on July 14.

In the subsequent days, we have made two batches of Melanie’s Swallowtail Tomme, an alpine style cave aged cheese. The process was different to that of the camembert in that the cheese is not pasteurized. Instead, it is cave aged for 60 days before it can be consumed. I will discuss the process for making her tomme in a future journal entry. But I can attest that it is delicious! Yesterday we cut into a tomme that Melanie made in May. I was lucky to be able to taste the finished product, since the tommes I will help make this month will not be ready for consumption until September or October at the earliest.

A few of my other responsibilities in the six days since I started working at Stony Pond Farm include dishwashing, sanitizing, cleaning, affinage (cave aging), and animal care (namely feeding pigs and milking cows). I will discuss each of these tasks further in future posts.

Part of the expectations of this apprenticeship class is the creation of two Apprenticeship Objectives. I have identified the following:
1. Learn, explain and assist with the basic steps of how to make Melanie’s Swallowtail Tomme cheese. We will be making this cheese approximately seven or eight times in the month I will be at SPF.
2. Learn the basics of affinage (cave aging) and cave management. Turn the cheese daily in the cave.

In terms of my own personal growth, achievements and challenges this first week, I would say:
1. I have approached the work with Melanie this week with a growth mindset. I have asked a million questions, done research during the evening, asked about things to read to learn more and have generally been curious, open minded and willing to do any tasks that Melanie needs help with. I have not said no to any tasks and have tried my best to be thorough and hardworking from day one.
2. I have put into practice many of the skills I have learned in my Safety and Sanitation, Culinary Arts I, and Baking and Pastry I classes at City Tech, including teamwork, kitchen math, sanitation practices and knife skills. My classes at City Tech definitely have contributed to my success the first week.
3. My challenges have been mostly physical up to this point. Working on a farm is hard work! I am exhausted by the time the work day ends. There is a lot of stooping, bending, lifting, twisting, carrying, and repetitive motions. My wrists hurt a bit from all of the dishwashing and cheese turning, so I am trying to be more mindful of being more ambidextrous and stretching before and after work. I am grateful that most days, I have had a long lunch break that I can use to rest or take a nap. Also, as the name of the farm indicates, there is a gorgeous pond on the property that I have been able to take a relaxing and restorative swim in on an almost daily basis.

All in all, this has been an amazing first week. If the apprenticeship ended tomorrow, I would already feel like I have been able to experience, learn and accomplish a lot. Much of that is because of how Melanie has welcomed me and trusted me to jump right in.

I am really looking forward to the remaining three weeks!