From Cow to Cheese
Think of a warm cheese sandwich, or a soft slice of cheese on a cracker. Can you smell that? But how is cheese made? It begins as milk.
A dairy cow makes milk inside her udder, because that is how she feeds her calf. On the farm, the farmer milks her with a gentle milking machine that hugs her softly and collects the milk while she stands and munches her hay.
The fresh milk flows into a big cold tank so it stays cool and tasty. Then a driver fills a shiny tanker truck and drives the milk to the dairy. A dairy is the place where people turn milk into cheese and other milk foods.
At the dairy, the cheesemaker pours the milk into an enormous steel vat and warms it slowly. Not hot, just cosy warm, about as warm as bathwater. Warm milk is ready to change.
Now the cheesemaker stirs in a tiny drop of a special helper called rennet. Only a few drops for a whole vat of milk. Can you guess what the milk does next?
It grows thick and wobbly, like soft jelly. The milk splits into two parts. The soft white lumps are called curds, and the thin watery part left over is called whey.
The cheesemaker cuts the curds into little cubes with long blades, and more whey trickles out of them. Then comes the draining. The whey pours away, and the curds huddle closer and closer together.
Next the cheesemaker scoops the curds into a round mould and squeezes them in a cheese press. Pressing pushes out the last drops and turns loose curds into one solid round. A sprinkle of salt makes the cheese tasty and helps it keep well.
Then the cheesemaker carries the round wheels of cheese to rest on wooden shelves in a cool, quiet room. They wait there for weeks, sometimes for months. That waiting is called ripening, and it is what makes cheese firm and full of flavour.
When a wheel is ready, a driver carries it to the shop, and the shopkeeper cuts a slice for you. Milk from the same farm can also become butter or yogurt, if people treat it a different way.
Let's say the whole journey together. Cow, milk, tanker, dairy, curds, cheese. Cheese is made when a cheesemaker warms milk at the dairy until it turns into curds, drains the whey away, presses the curds into a round, and lets it rest until it is ready to eat.
Next time you hold a slice of cheese, you will know the long, quiet journey it made to reach your plate. What a lovely thing to know.
