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Locally produced wine, cheese focus of Chef to Farm Tour
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| Dominique Devito pours a glass of New York state-produced wine during the Bounty of the County farm tour stop at Hudson-Chatham Winery. (John Mason/Hudson-Catskill Newspapers) |
By John Mason
COLUMBIA COUNTY — Bounty of the County members were treated to their third annual Chef to Farm Tour Monday afternoon. This year’s tour was especially luxurious to the palette, moving from cheese to fruit to wine.
At Twin Maples Farm on Schnackenberg Road in Ghent, home of the cheese company the Pampered Cow, cheese maker Doug Ginn offered a tour of his work station. The creamery was finished in February, he said; at the end of that month he started his first batch.
His main cheese making vat, made in Holland, is strictly for raw milk cheese; no pasteurizing is allowed. A friend, however, is milking goats at HHH Farm outside of Hudson and has bought a pasteurizer that will go into the corner of the room for the goats milk.
There are not the same problems selling raw milk cheese as there are selling raw milk, he said: Once it’s more than 60 days old, it’s OK to sell it.
Cheese has about a 10 percent yield from the milk put into it, he said. A thousand pounds of milk yields about 100 pounds of cheese. The rest is whey, which is used to feed pigs or can be used to make ricotta cheese.
Ginn showed the cooler in which the cheese wheels were ripening; some had formed a mold on the outside, which is fine, he said, since the rind is so tough the mold doesn’t penetrate it, unless the mold is cracked, which is often encouraged in the case of bleu cheese.
Outside, Matthew Scott, director of sales and marketing for the Pampered Cow, was offering a cheese tasting. The raw milk for the farm’s raw milk cheese comes from Hawthorne Valley horned cows, which are temporarily lodged at Twin Maples and could be seen behind Scott, grazing on an opposite hill.
“Healthy cows give healthy milk,” Scott said.
Twin Maples has 56 acres, and the cows also graze on a neighbor’s farm, with another 270 luscious acres.
Among the cheeses tasted was Kunik, Nettle Meadow Farm’s triple cream goat milk cheese. Nettle Meadow, in Warrensburg, Warren County, also supplied “Three Sisters” cheese, one of the few cheeses in this country made from a mix of sheep, cow and goat cheeses. Scott described it accurately as “a gooey, oozy, lovely thing.”
Another was a sharp cheese made by Ginn, called “Experiment Number One” Scott said, since they’ve only been making cheese for nine weeks. The Brevettos’ Harperfield Farm supplied Tilsit with lavender.
The tour’s next stop was Threshold Farm on Roxbury Road in Philmont.
The farm has 130 acres, 45 of which are cleared for farming. The most important, though, are the five acres on which sit 600 fruit trees.
Farmer Hugh Williams is one of the Northeast’s pioneers in biodynamic, organic fruit growing. He started for 15 years on Long Island, then moved here 15 years ago.
He and his wife, Hanna Bail supported themselves through the farm’s early, difficult years with the intense work of a community-supported agriculture farm. Now they’ve scaled that back to 30 families and, with the help of farmer Jonathan Ronsani, are concentrating on their main focus, the orchard.
Williams talked about what it takes to grow an organic orchard in this region, something once considered impossible. One of his secrets is a clay spray called Surround. Another is never allowing any rotten apples in the orchard, which just serve as breeding grounds for pests.
“We keep the orchard hygiene at a high level,” he said. He spoke about the dangers of the National Animal Identification System, “a monstrosity dreamed up in the Bush Administration ... you, the consumer, are the real target. Your food choices are at stake here.”
The NAIS and similar regulations seek to come between the farmer and the consumer, he said.
He also talked about what it means to have biodynamic, grass-fed cattle in the larger scope of things.
“We’ve developed our own herd of cattle,” he said. “That gives a fundamental fertility. When you manage your property, you find out if you’re doing it properly. The grass will grow or decline. Grassland has the greatest potential for increasing carbon sequestration. It’s all of a piece: Our mentality has to shift. People need houses, shelter, community: not $50,000 a year. We have some shifting still to do as a culture.”
And consumers, Bail said, “have to back off from ‘everything glossy.’” Threshold’s apples, she said, have superficial blotches.
“We need those blotches,” Williams said. “You need a fungal component to your diet.”
Threshold has 11 varieties of apples: The newest is the Coxon orange pippin, the most popular apple in England. Their Jonagolds, Williams said, are matchless, and their macouns are excellent for their two-week lifespan in early October.
Their apples, pears and peaches are available at various retail outlets, or through their fruit shares, which supply five pounds of fruit every week from Aug. 10 through November.
The final stop was the Hudson-Chatham Winery, on Route 66 in Ghent.
Dominique Devito said she and her husband, Carlos, just planted 400 new vines of baco noir, a blending grape popular in the Hudson Valley.
Grow tubes are used around the young seedlings to channel the sun and rain, keep the vines warm and moist, and encourage the vines to grow upwards, she said.
For two years, the grow tubes protected the vines from the deer, but in the third year the deer began nibbling the tops, so they put in as much deer fence as they could afford.
She demonstrated “suckering,” pulling the lower leaves off the vines, but was hard put to find imitators among the tour goers.
After three years on the farm, they’re having their first harvest this year, and so they plan to have their first estate wine, a wine made from grapes grown at the winery, in 2010. Meanwhile, they have been using New York state grapes and juice, such as Rieslings and Merlots, to produce their wines.
“We hand cork every bottle,” Devito said. Their children put the plastic caps on, and the family also designs and affixes the labels.
Wine and cheese were enjoyed by all as a fitting end to the pleasant, sunny and eye opening tour.
To reach reporter John Mason, call 518-828-1616, ext. 2272, or e-mail jmason@registerstar.com.
At Twin Maples Farm on Schnackenberg Road in Ghent, home of the cheese company the Pampered Cow, cheese maker Doug Ginn offered a tour of his work station. The creamery was finished in February, he said; at the end of that month he started his first batch.
His main cheese making vat, made in Holland, is strictly for raw milk cheese; no pasteurizing is allowed. A friend, however, is milking goats at HHH Farm outside of Hudson and has bought a pasteurizer that will go into the corner of the room for the goats milk.
There are not the same problems selling raw milk cheese as there are selling raw milk, he said: Once it’s more than 60 days old, it’s OK to sell it.
Cheese has about a 10 percent yield from the milk put into it, he said. A thousand pounds of milk yields about 100 pounds of cheese. The rest is whey, which is used to feed pigs or can be used to make ricotta cheese.
Ginn showed the cooler in which the cheese wheels were ripening; some had formed a mold on the outside, which is fine, he said, since the rind is so tough the mold doesn’t penetrate it, unless the mold is cracked, which is often encouraged in the case of bleu cheese.
Outside, Matthew Scott, director of sales and marketing for the Pampered Cow, was offering a cheese tasting. The raw milk for the farm’s raw milk cheese comes from Hawthorne Valley horned cows, which are temporarily lodged at Twin Maples and could be seen behind Scott, grazing on an opposite hill.
“Healthy cows give healthy milk,” Scott said.
Twin Maples has 56 acres, and the cows also graze on a neighbor’s farm, with another 270 luscious acres.
Among the cheeses tasted was Kunik, Nettle Meadow Farm’s triple cream goat milk cheese. Nettle Meadow, in Warrensburg, Warren County, also supplied “Three Sisters” cheese, one of the few cheeses in this country made from a mix of sheep, cow and goat cheeses. Scott described it accurately as “a gooey, oozy, lovely thing.”
Another was a sharp cheese made by Ginn, called “Experiment Number One” Scott said, since they’ve only been making cheese for nine weeks. The Brevettos’ Harperfield Farm supplied Tilsit with lavender.
The tour’s next stop was Threshold Farm on Roxbury Road in Philmont.
The farm has 130 acres, 45 of which are cleared for farming. The most important, though, are the five acres on which sit 600 fruit trees.
Farmer Hugh Williams is one of the Northeast’s pioneers in biodynamic, organic fruit growing. He started for 15 years on Long Island, then moved here 15 years ago.
He and his wife, Hanna Bail supported themselves through the farm’s early, difficult years with the intense work of a community-supported agriculture farm. Now they’ve scaled that back to 30 families and, with the help of farmer Jonathan Ronsani, are concentrating on their main focus, the orchard.
Williams talked about what it takes to grow an organic orchard in this region, something once considered impossible. One of his secrets is a clay spray called Surround. Another is never allowing any rotten apples in the orchard, which just serve as breeding grounds for pests.
“We keep the orchard hygiene at a high level,” he said. He spoke about the dangers of the National Animal Identification System, “a monstrosity dreamed up in the Bush Administration ... you, the consumer, are the real target. Your food choices are at stake here.”
The NAIS and similar regulations seek to come between the farmer and the consumer, he said.
He also talked about what it means to have biodynamic, grass-fed cattle in the larger scope of things.
“We’ve developed our own herd of cattle,” he said. “That gives a fundamental fertility. When you manage your property, you find out if you’re doing it properly. The grass will grow or decline. Grassland has the greatest potential for increasing carbon sequestration. It’s all of a piece: Our mentality has to shift. People need houses, shelter, community: not $50,000 a year. We have some shifting still to do as a culture.”
And consumers, Bail said, “have to back off from ‘everything glossy.’” Threshold’s apples, she said, have superficial blotches.
“We need those blotches,” Williams said. “You need a fungal component to your diet.”
Threshold has 11 varieties of apples: The newest is the Coxon orange pippin, the most popular apple in England. Their Jonagolds, Williams said, are matchless, and their macouns are excellent for their two-week lifespan in early October.
Their apples, pears and peaches are available at various retail outlets, or through their fruit shares, which supply five pounds of fruit every week from Aug. 10 through November.
The final stop was the Hudson-Chatham Winery, on Route 66 in Ghent.
Dominique Devito said she and her husband, Carlos, just planted 400 new vines of baco noir, a blending grape popular in the Hudson Valley.
Grow tubes are used around the young seedlings to channel the sun and rain, keep the vines warm and moist, and encourage the vines to grow upwards, she said.
For two years, the grow tubes protected the vines from the deer, but in the third year the deer began nibbling the tops, so they put in as much deer fence as they could afford.
She demonstrated “suckering,” pulling the lower leaves off the vines, but was hard put to find imitators among the tour goers.
After three years on the farm, they’re having their first harvest this year, and so they plan to have their first estate wine, a wine made from grapes grown at the winery, in 2010. Meanwhile, they have been using New York state grapes and juice, such as Rieslings and Merlots, to produce their wines.
“We hand cork every bottle,” Devito said. Their children put the plastic caps on, and the family also designs and affixes the labels.
Wine and cheese were enjoyed by all as a fitting end to the pleasant, sunny and eye opening tour.
To reach reporter John Mason, call 518-828-1616, ext. 2272, or e-mail jmason@registerstar.com.
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