Locust Grove Farm

Field Trips



Remember field trips? I understand that museums and arboretums are a big deal, but in Knoxville, Tennessee in the mid-60s? Not so much. We had one museum and no arboretum. But we did have a symphony orchestra that put on concerts for school children at the "coliseum" and we had Children's Theater.

The plays were presented at the University of Tennessee, produced by the Drama Department three times a year, and featured children in all the parts. The actors were chosen at a cattle call and I managed to appear in several of them (apparently I portrayed a fairly convincing old man for a 12-year-old, — when you and your audience are that age the trick is pretending you don’t have teeth and trembling slightly.)

Two weeks ago in an article in Fine Cooking I learned that Knoxville has a creamery, Locust Grove Farm, that makes raw, sheep's milk cheeses. There's something sad about learning about a local resource from a national magazine, nevertheless, this clearly called for a field trip so I contacted the cheese-maker and three days later I was on the farm, petting the sheep, inspecting the creamery, and chatting with Tim Clark. Perfect field trip.

You can read more about the back-story of the farm and Tim Clark in my column at Spot-On. But for those interested in the technical details and the cheese itself...

Locust Grove leases its 23 acres of pasture from some "nice folks" with a big fancy house and runs around 60 head of East Friesian along with a few Lacaune. Although not certified organic, the sheep are grass fed in the spring and summer and fed organic hay and a special organic food mixture Clark has made during the fall and winter. They don't use antibiotics and sheep spend the entire year in the pastures.

I didn't get to actually watch the cheese-making process because the sheep are no longer lactating and they won't be milking them again until January. But I did get a tour of the facility.

The building is concrete-block and metal divided into three sections. One section contains the two refrigerators (a 150 gallon and a 75 gallon) used to keep the milk cold between cheese-making sessions. Milking is done in an adjacent section, where they can milk a dozen sheep at a time. According to Clark things are pretty chaotic when the milking season begins as the sheep relearn what they're supposed to do, but smooth out as the season wears on.

The last room is where the cheese is actually made. That's Tim Clark in the photo pointing to the tank where the milk is mixed with rennet (Clark uses a microbial rennet) and cooked. Once the curds (milk solids) and whey (liquid) have separated they cut up the curds and press them in molds. They perform the entire process by hand because Clark likes doing it by hand. The door you see behind Clark is the "cave" where the cheese is stored and aged.

Locust Grove makes four cheeses. All are currently aged 60 days. The first one they started making is named Galloway and is made the same way Clark's Scottish mentor, Allen Brown, makes his cheese in Galloway in Scotland. This is a hard cheese, similar in texture and flavor to Spanish Manchego. Salt is added during the cooking process (the other three cheeses are brined). The salting is light and the cheese has a clean milk flavor with woody notes. It has what I would call a bold flavor and would be delicious anywhere you might use Parmigiano but, because it's a young cheese, it's much less assertive. They plan to start aging some Galloway for six months.

Their second cheese is named Appalachian Spring and is "Brenda's cheese." (Brenda is Tim's wife.) This is a semi-hard cheese riddled with tiny bubbles made using the washed curd method. It has a distinct dairy flavor and is more piquant than the other cheeses. My immediate reaction to it was that it would be delicious on a sandwich with Black Forest ham. It would also be great with fruit.

At the encouragement of Margaret Morris, the cheese-makers started making an actual Manchego, La Mancha. It too is a hard cheese but not as robust as the Galloway.

The final cheese is named Cumberland. It's based on the La Mancha but they add green peppercorns, sweet red chilis, onion, garlic, and ginger. It's a surprising cheese and at first I was unimpressed, but as I continued to sample it I changed my mind. It's an excellent nibbling cheese.

I plan to visit again when they start production back up, but in the meantime I'm going to be working with Clark to develop a lamb sausage. I'll let you know how that turns out.

Technorati: Food | essay | kevin weeks | seriously good | spot-on | cheese | cheese-making