The countryside is taking on that internal look, drier, harder, plants ripening, getting stalky, animals fattening, birds growing, strengthening for the long flight to Africa for many.  To us, it feels like we are still in the height of summer.  To the natural world, the hatches are starting to get battened down for the rigours of winter.   The young rabbits are getting fat on the rich vegetation, and the buzzards and fox cubs are getting fat on the young rabbits.
 

This blog post was written by Adriann Negreros, an undergraduate researcher in the Dutton lab at Harvard. 

We work in a cheese lab, so it’s no surprise to learn that we all love to eat—and to have fun.  Yes, we do have our 9-5’s, but the daily grind in the Dutton lab just isn’t all that troublesome (clearly, we need to work more).  Jokes aside, when we’re not dissecting a fresh rind of Bayley Hazen Blue into 1 mm x 1 mm squares (to discover just “who” is living there), or slowly uncovering a new species via our cheeses—we’re playing with mites.  Yes, mites; those seemingly scary eight-legged little critters capable of growing on cheese.

Purity and prayer

All afternoon there were six glasses and a pitcher full of perfectly pure and cold spring water standing on the sturdy wood table. When the pitcher was empty one of us would stand up and refill it at the fountain. A very simple scene? Well it made for the most inspiring and fulfilling al fresco afternoon I ever have experienced.

Cheese maker Willi Schmid had taken us to visit his friend and one of only two of his Jersey milk purveyors, Hansruedi Giger. The drive up from the dairy in Lichtensteig was curvy, steep and led us through forests for most of the ride. The moment we got out of this green awning we found ourselves on a soft looking high plateau. Bright grass, flowers, a tree here and there. And far up the narrow road two houses.

Hot on the heels of culture’s Made in Japan article about the burgeoning Japanese cheesemaking industry, I recently had the pleasure of meeting Mr Ryota Nakao, a Japanese cheesemaker who has been spending two months in Wisconsin.

Mr Nakao, who is employed by Yotsuba Milk Product Company in Hokkaido, is taking part in a training exchange program facilitated by the Babcock Institute of Wisconsin.

A non-profit organization that is part of the University of Wisconsin, the Babcock Institute was established in 1991 specifically to promote collaborative international exchange of information, research and practices within the dairy industry. As well as providing opportunities for Wisconsin cheesemakers to intern overseas, many of Babcock’s outreach programs focus on countries with newly emerging dairy businesses, helping to foster market development.