Ah this was fun.I had always wanted to visit an Irish Cheese Farm, so I got some names from the local Cheesemonger in Kinsale, sent out a few emails, and setup a time to visit Fermoy Farms in . . . Fermoy, a small town about an hour north of Kinsale.
Fermoy is run by Frank and Gudrun Shinnick. Frank's family has farmed the land for generations, but now they have mostly cows that they milk for their raw cheeses - apparently there is no money in sheep (probably not in cheese either).
Tons of information, I was there for pretty much the whole day - so I basically saw how they made cheese from beginning to end. They actually do a Swiss type cheese - so that's a pressed, cooked cheese similar to Gruyeres. And since the milk is raw, they have to be super careful on hygiene and controls.
I could go on and on about raw milk, which I'm sure freaks some people out that someone who actually risks eating it. But I have this theory that raw milk products - cheese or otherwise - are safer than pasturized products. The reason is that raw milk producers KNOW they have to be careful, and if they screw up, it's pretty obvious that something is wrong. Whereas with pasturization you get this attitude that I've seen at other farms or factories that says, "Eh, we pasturized, so we don't have to worry about keeping everything clean."
I'll give you an example . . . to cut down on the risk of infection, Fermoy will actually wash the cows before milking so that any dirt or crap (literally) doesn't get into the milk. It takes an extra 10-15 minutes to their twice daily milking routine each time, but it shows up when the milk is tested by the milk truck that comes to pick up the milk every other day. I think they were allowed on one particular test for bacteria 100,000 parts per some unit of measure with the average from most milk producers being 40K-60K - Fermoy consistently scores 100.
You figure pasturization ain't gonna kill everything anyway (you would have to boil the milk under pressure for an extended period of time to do that) - so I'd rather start at 100, than the alternative of 50,000 and hope to get the number down to 10,000.
Anyway, like I said, tons of information - the storage of the cheese itself was cool. We tried tons of cheeses from the area and talked non-stop about all things cheese - including the US market and how it has changed.
