Hard Labor
Labor Day has just passed, of course, but we should bear in mind the difficult, ceaseless work that goes into making cheese. It requires intense amounts of backbreaking, sometimes tedious effort, from herding the animals to milking them twice a day, from cutting and stirring the curd to flipping the wheels during aging. Cheesemaking also represents an ongoing sanitation challenge; since milk is a veritable feast for bacteria of all kinds, every piece of cheesemaking equipment that comes into contact with it must be diligently washed. Mateo Kehler of Jasper Hill Farm in Vermont has even gone so far as to call cheesemaking "glorified dishwashing."
