Tasha Greer in Lowgap, North Carolina

Tasha has a popular website (Simplestead.com) where she chronicles her life as a homesteader in the Blue Ridge Mountains on the border with Virginia.

She and her partner (Matt Miles) use about 1 1/2 acres of their 10 acre wooded property to raise dairy goats, ducks, chickens, a pet turkey, worms (for composting), 2 dogs, 4 cats and occasionally pigs.

In 2017, Tim Miles (who Tasha calls her bon père), wrote a fascinating article for Small Farmers Journal about how and why Tasha and her partner became homesteaders (Back to the Land).

She has a large vegetable garden, vineyard and spice garden and she teaches classes in edible landscaping and organic gardening.

As if that isn’t enough: Tasha is an expert of growing spices and she has written a fabulous book on the subject – Grow Your Own Spices. It’s a “must-have” reference book for anyone (anywhere) interested in growing their own spices.

If you’re interested in watching a video, she did a free webinar for the Master Gardeners of North Carolina (click here).

What else? (!)

Yes, she is a cheese maker. She raises goats to make raw milk cheeses for daily eating – mostly chevre, mozzarella, haloumi, feta, semi-soft-ripened cheese, and sometimes blue cheese and cheddar.

When we first contacted her about doing this interview, she was reluctant:

I’d love to be profiled, but I’m really just a “homestead cheesemaker.” I take the still warm from the udder and use rennet, citric acid, vinegar, or lemon juice to make cheese. Once in a while, I dabble with cultures. I periodically make simple semi-soft ripened goat loaves with MM100 and Candidum. But I never even use a thermometer. Mostly, I focus on cheeses I can make with a flour sack towel, pot, and no more than 5-10 minutes of work, including doing dishes.

I think I’m the the antithesis of the amazing cheese makers you normally profile and the incredible knowledge you are sharing with cheesemakers every where. But I might be making some more serious cheeses later this year. So if I do that, then I can get back in touch.

Needless to say, we’re not all making award-winning cheese! We adapt the process to our own unique lifestyles. We’re thrilled that Tasha decided to share her process with us.

Tasha’s Story

I grew up on Tillamook – my mom’s favorite. But in college I had a lot of international friends with broader food interests who exposed me to things like raclette, buffalo mozzarella, feta, and Manchego. Not long after that I began a relationship with the French culture and spent lots of vacations in France devouring fromage of every sort.

But it wasn’t until I read Brad Kessler’s beautiful book Goat Song that I realized I could make my own cheese. At that time, my partner Matt and I were making plans to buy a homestead somewhere and produce most of our own food. So, I started researching goats.

Of course, that search led me to Deborah Neimann’s book Raising Goats Naturally – which convinced me further that goat cheese was my future. Then, I read Barbara Kingsolver’s life-altering book – Animal, Vegetable, Miracle – including the bit about her taking a course with “The Queen of Cheese” Ricki Carroll.

That led to Matt buying me a cheese kit from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company for Christmas. Then, together we made our first farmhouse cheddar.

Not too long after the making of our first cheese — we moved to our homestead, started a dairy herd, and built cheese-making into part of the daily routine. So, I blame Brad, Deborah, Barbara, Ricki (who don’t even know me), and my partner Matt for my present state of not being able to live without goat milk products!

I started my herd with two Nigerians does who had already kidded so I didn’t have to wait years to get to good milk production. I picked up one of them the day her kids were weaned and got to milk her immediately. The other, I bred a month later.

I discovered that Nigerians have amazingly rich milk, but not much of it. So, I worked my way up to 8 Nigerian does in a hurry. Since Nigerians come into heat year-round, I normally stagger their milk outages and births to try target collecting a gallon of milk a day. That’s about what we need to make cheese, yogurt, drink, and for cooking for personal use and sharing some with local friends and family.

I also try to breed them only once every 1.5 to 2.5 years so I don’t have to raise and find homes for kids annually. My first milker Phoebe — who is now officially “out to pasture” — gave me 6 cups a day for over 3.5 years before I dried her off for the last time. She definitely earned her retirement!

Last fall, though, I got busy writing Grow Your Own Spices. To save time, I dried out all of my Nigerians and got myself an Alpine in milk from friend who had a dairy herd.

Abby the Alpine gave me about a gallon a day until just recently. She’d been in heavy milk for 2 years at that point and was ready for a break! Her milk isn’t good for soft-ripened cheeses, but it is amazing for mozzarella.

At the moment, I’m surviving on frozen milk. But my 7 non-retired Nigerians are pregnant. With any luck, by March, I’ll be able to drink fresh milk and start making lots of cheese again! I also want to try a Nubian goat in the not too distant future.

Are you making cheese with your frozen milk?

I usually have fresh milk year round so this is the first time I have ever used frozen milk for drinking and I don’t have enough to use for cheese. However, I accidentally discovered that when you unfreeze goats milk by soaking your container in a bowl of hot water, the cream separates naturally.

Apparently, this has been commonly known since at least 1935, based on a paper I found about it. But it was a revelation for me!

With fresh cows milk, the fatty cream naturally rises to the top in no time. But with goats, milk only a fraction of the cream separates out and it tastes terrible by the time it does. So, now that I have learned this freezing/thawing trick, once I am back in regular milk I want to use it to skim off the cream and make some true triple cream type cheeses.

What kind of cheese are you making most often?

I have to start by saying that I am incapable of following a recipe. I read them for inspiration and then do my own thing. None of my cheeses are traditional.

I also break a ton of food safety rules in my approach. I eat vegetables unwashed from the garden, drink raw milk daily, make mayonnaise with unpasteurized egg yolks and use it for weeks, eat sashimi whenever I can, and thoroughly enjoy steak tartare. So, I am just a food dare devil or rebel.

Now back to the question on what cheeses I make most. When my does are in milk, I make cheese almost daily. So, I have a large repertoire that I work through regularly.

We have a cob pizza oven, and except for this year, due to COVID, we normally have regular pizza nights with friends and family. So I make a ton of mozzarella-style cheese for our pizzas.

I make a raw milk, rennet only cheese that I shape into logs. It’s creamy and rich. Mix it with a stick of butter and some homemade Herbs de Provence type mix, and it will give Boursin a run for it’s money as a cracker spread. If I want to crumble it over salad like feta, I just dry it longer.

I make something that tastes a whole lot like a muenster-meets-havarti using citric acid and rennet. I do it by leaving the curds in the whey until they start to feel a bit springy. After that I strain them into a loaf shape and dry them until it feels like a moist sponge. I age it for a month or so until it smells very muenster-like.

With Nigerian milk, since the fat is close to 6%, I make two soft-ripened rounds each week that I age for about 2 months. They look like a brie loaf, but taste like an aged crottin. The edges get liquidy (at room temperature) but the center stays solid. If I bake it en croute, the whole thing will ooze when cut, just like a brie.

I also make ricotta to use for gnudi dumplings and desserts.

I make a paneer type cheese that I acidify with homemade whey vinegar rather than lemon juice.

Haloumi is also summer favorite for the grill.

Then there’s yogurt and yogurt-based cheese and no rennet mason jar cheese on the counter.

At peak milk, I make some goat cheddar and a nutty dry cheese that is a good substitute for parmesan.

Not all of my longer aged cheeses turn out because I can’t fully control the drying times. So, that’s why I focus more on short turn-around cheese.

I target a gallon a day because I make 1 gallon batches. Once in a while, I save up and do big batches. But for the most part, I spend about as much time making cheese each day as I do brushing my teeth!

My other secret to how I manage to make cheese daily is that I write from home and barely ever go anywhere. So, I’ve got more time than people who have to commute and shower … (showering is optional when you mainly see goats at work).

What are your goals for your cheese making?

There’s an incredible creamy just a few miles up the road from me called Meadow Creek in Galax, Virginia. They make this cow’s milk cheese called Mountaineer that has a profound, caramelly, nutty taste and a richness that lingers on your tongue forever. Eating it is an absolutely divine experience.

I would love to make something on a par with that, using goat milk someday. I’m probably still a few years away from being able to make cheese at that level. But I’ll keep experimenting, learning, and hopefully improving until I become the kind of cheesemaker who can pull that off.

I especially have to work on my affinage area. I don’t think you can make a cheese like that in a wine fridge. Thankfully, we have plans to put in a root cellar/cheese cave on our homestead in the future.

Websites:
Simplestead with Tasha
reLuxe renderings

Facebook:
Simplestead

Instagram:
@Exploresimplestead