The Haymonds and Their Fabulous Cookhouse

Chris Haymond and his wife, Christl created their own food processing center on their farm in Washington state. They make cheese there and all kinds of other edibles. It’s a lovely space, rivaling that of many professional cheese makers. Chris sent us some pictures he took to share with you.

A Slice of Heaven

We have a 12-acre hobby farm in the Pacific Northwest.

We raise Cotswold sheep, primarily for wool, which my wife processes into rugs, or spins and knits into hand-made items that she sells at the local farmer’s market. Cotswold sheep are a rare, ancient, long-wool breed originating in central England. They are adapted particularly well to wet western Washington.

In addition to a large garden and orchard, we raise pigs, chickens, turkeys, an occasional steer, and honey bees for our own and our friends’ use.

A couple years ago I built an outbuilding that we call “The Cookhouse,” intended for the processing of all our farm produce and to keep me out of my wife’s kitchen!

It’s a 20 x 20’ structure with a commercial style sink and work table. It has a large porch for the smoker and plenty of storage. I also equipped it with a 7 x 12’ cold room to have a climate-controlled space for aging cheese and charcuterie. We use it for pressing apple cider, processing poultry, cutting and wrapping pork, canning vegetables and jams, making sausages and salamis, and of course, making cheese.

Inside:

I built a special climate controlled room at one end:

It stays 54F and 80%RH.

Cheese:

Starting out, I tried a variety of types, as described in Ricki Carroll’s book. Some attempts worked out surprisingly well, some were complete failures. And more often than not, ones that were successful one time flopped the next. And I didn’t know why. I decided I needed more information.

So, I bought a couple more books, and started perusing all of Jim’s helpful instructions and recipes online. As I proceeded from batch to batch over several months, I slowly increased my knowledge and seemed to hone my skills. I began to see that my biggest issues were lack of precision and poor consistency during the make and while aging. The humidity in my “cave” was all over the place, often too low. So, I upgraded my ability to control and maintain the proper climate for my cheeses.

My first press was very difficult to figure out how much pressure I was applying. I even tried to use my big cider press on a couple of batches! Both were just too unpredictable and unreliable. That’s when I bought the large Dutch-style press. I now have a much better read on how much weight I’m applying hour to hour, batch to batch.

I was also a bit careless on temperature changes of the milk during the various cheese making stages. I’ve dialed that in, too. The combination of these improvements has made a huge difference in my rate of success. I consistently make some very tasty cheese now, if I can say so myself!

I enjoy trying different types of cheeses. I like to study and glean from the recipes and procedures of various authors and experts. My best cheeses seem to be the semi-hard to hard varieties like gouda, manchego-style, caerphilly, cheddars, and blues. Try as I might, I have had no success with bloomy and washed-rind varieties – only messes.

In the end, my interest in cheese making is pretty simple. Since I have slices of cheese every day in my lunch, I tend to concentrate on the few straight-forward, reliable table cheese recipes that I’ve practiced. For the last couple years, I have been making 2 and 6-gallon batches every Sunday with raw 100% Jersey milk. And only rarely now do we buy cheese at the grocery store.

I asked Chris what his goals are, cheese-wise:

That’s an interesting question. I think my cheese making efforts are mainly directed towards the idea of providing my family with an exceptionally tasty and wholesome product, within a larger homesteading, do-it-myself lifestyle.

So, my goal would be something like: become efficient in the process enough to master a few go-to recipes to enjoy every day, and sufficiently knowledgeable to successfully experiment with more complex and interesting cheeses.