To Pasteurize Or Not To Pasteurize...

fiorello, pecorino, cheese, italy, pasteurization, raw milk cheeseFiorello Checking The Temp - Porta Dei ParchiUntil recently, Scrapple and I had been focused on the idea of producing aged raw milk cheeses. It made sense to make the most of the delicious and nutrient rich milk our pastured cows would produce and it fit with our ideals and vision for Little Seed.

I say "until recently" because, well, we've started to consider the option of pasteurization for a small percentage of our cheesemaking milk supply. Why? 

Originally we had planned on working with cow's milk exclusively. Now that we've found our farm and come to know the land our animals will be grazing, we've realized that it would be best to have goats as well as cows. There's a lot of acreage on our farm that, while currently not grazeable by cows, would be browsing paradise for goats. We love the idea of working with goats to improve the land and now we'll have the chance.  

We hadn't really thought about goat's milk until about 2 months ago. I really love the idea of developing some mixed milk cheeses. A tomme, a blue, or even a cheddar could be really interesting, and for the first few weeks I mostly thought about creating those cheeses. That was before I started my internship a month ago in the subterranean caves of a cheese shop (joy!).

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Seeing Signs

our lucky tractorI'm a little superstitious...just enough.

Enough to have felt chills when the vintage jag I had dreamed of driving since I was 10 (I would look so badass!) sat abandoned in the driveway of the farm on our first visit.

Enough that the discovery of a toy John Deere on the ground next to our car seconds before walking into the lawyers office to close on the farm made me think "It's a sign!" and not "Some poor kid must have lost his tractor!".

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Buying Points vs. Higher Down Payment

During the course of buying the farm an interesting question came up about “buying points”. This was our first mortgage so I was pretty curious about everything going on with the banks and inspectors and such. Our lender casually mentioned the option of buying points and then quickly dismissed it as something that no one ever does. In fact, she had only seen it done once. When she said that I got even more interested.

I know not all beginning (or existing) farmers will be able to buy land, but for those who do I thought this topic would be helpful. There's not much good info about the trade-offs between buying points and putting down a larger down payment online, so this is just my own analysis, I'm very welcome to other opinions.

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