Goat’s Cheese farm work
My experience in Mirabel-et-Blacons
In 2022, the year that I decided to quit full-time teaching and become a part-time cheesemonger, I had the luxury of a 3 month summer. I wanted to learn to make cheese in France. I subscribed to WWOOFING (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farm) and set up my profile, sent a request to a few farms to ask if I could work with them, and Julie from Ferme le Petit Nid accepted and off I went to France in August.
Here is a bit about the farm…
Ferme le Petit Nid is a 4th generation farm located in the South of France close to Valence near to the river Drôme. The farm owners called Mathieu and Julie live there with their two children (2+4 years old at the time), along with 55 goats, 20 pigs, 2 gorgeous border collies, 2 ponies, 1 horse, 3 cats, and a VERY large toad that kept me up at night when I slept in the caravan on the land. The farm is completely organic and the family live very sustainably. The farmers sell their cheeses and saucisson (made only in winter) to local farm shops and organic supermarkets, you can also buy direct from the farm. They also make fig jam as they have lots of fig trees on the farm. As well as the farm where the goats graze, they have a campsite that is busy during the summer months with mainly French, Dutch, and Belgian families who holiday there. Mathieu milks the goats at 4am every single morning, Julie starts to make the cheese once the rennet has been added to the “bassin”. I found my notebook that I took on this trip and wrote some steps in French which was a nice reminder about the process.
Milk the goats, no need to heat the milk as the goat’s body temperature is about 39°C, so the freshly milked milk will be warm enough for cheesemaking
Add culture & rennet
Stir in a cheese starter culture until it forms a soft curd.The next day we cut the curd with a dust pan (there are many versatile tools we use in cheesemaking!)
Drain the curds, we scoop the curds into a colander to help to drain the whey, the rest of the whey goes into a big bucket and gets fed to the pigs
We leave the cheeses for a few hours in their moulds and then remove their moulds and put them onto grills
We salt the cheese with a salt shaker
Leave for 2 days so that the geotrichum (a yeast-like fungus that plays a vital role in ripening cheeses especially Brie and Camembert) grows to form the rind
I have been listening to voice notes sent to my family group to jog my memory about this trip, and I also found a diary entry that I had sent about my last night on the farm which made my heart warm.
Diary entry 13.08.22
I went on a hike with around 16 people last night (Dutch, Belgian and French!) with Mathieu and his mum who owns the farm, the people were her friends that stay on the campsite that they run opposite the farm. We went to watch the sunset, we sat and drank some bubbly watching the the moon rise in between the mountains. It was so amazing and there were so many stars. Mathieu’s mum gave us a mini history of the surrounding area, showing us where she went to school, pointing out different landmarks from up high. She would walk through the fields to get to school and her mum was a teacher at her school and her dad ran the farm.
I chatted to a woman in English from Belgium, she lives between Brussels and Liège and comes here every year with her 4 children. She used to come here when she was 16 to work at this summer camp near to the campsite and now she comes back as an adult because she loves the river Drôme so much.
It’s so lovely, everytime a camper leaves the campsite to make their way home, they beep their horn from down below on the road and the family I’m staying with run outside to the terrace to wave them off from above. Some of the campers come back year after year and they stay for 1-3 months!
The farm experience was one of the most treasured experiences, I will never forget how free and content I felt on this farm. I loved learning the art of making goat’s cheese, swimming in the River Drôme, eating locally produced food, playing with the children, chatting in French, running in the heatwave through the mountains, sleeping in a caravan listening to the crickets at night, and feeling happy and alive. I thank Julie and Mathieu and their beautiful family for these precious memories, an unforgettable experience.
