Grassfields Cheese

At the heart of West Michigan’s Dutch farming tradition, nestled along the Grand River just south of Coopersville, sits the small village Lamont. From downtown Grand Rapids, it’s a short but slow paced thirty minute drive west on Leonard. Upon arrival, however, one feels that they’ve headed significantly further from the modern city and its expedience. On Lamont’s outskirts, a mile west and another north on the unpaved 60th Ave., Jesse and Betsy Meerman and family raise Holstein, Normandy and Jersey milking cows on their Grassfields farm and make traditional aged Dutch cheeses from their unpasteurized and non-homogenized cow’s milk.

To most of us, cheese is yellow foodstuff processed from milk products and other small print ingredients, chemicals and additives at a distant factory. Not so for Jesse Meerman, the sole cheese maker at Grassfields, for who cheese is an art, business, lifestyle and practical manner in which to utilize his dairy herd’s excess milk.

Since 2002 the Meermans have been selling “cow shares,” a program in which people pay for the boarding of a cow and receive its milk in return, to an ever increasing number of families. Now totaling 9 cows which supply 115 families, Betsy Meerman explains the growing popularity of their raw, unpasteurized milk, saying, “People want to know where their food is coming from.” As we stood outside the milking barn, she stressed how her customers seek authenticity and “real products” which taste better and are better for you. This type of critical consumer mentality, now so chic and trendy in our academic and professional city life, is just ordinary common sense out in farm country.

Past the milking barn and silo is the cheese shop, which also houses the cheese making and storage rooms. Here Jesse met me amidst many of his busy family members, especially babies, to explain his dairy work. Every few days he’ll draw fresh warm cows’ milk directly from the barn into a large, shallow steel vat in the sanitary cheese making room. With tiled floor, stainless tanks, hoses, bottles of iodine sanitizer and an air of sterility, the resemblance to a brewery is strong. Cheese is made from coagulated milk solids so rennet is added to the warm ripening milk to encourage this physical change. Next, various bacteria cultures are gently stirred-in according to the desired cheese style. Milk sugar, called lactose, is converted by both natural and inoculated bacteria into lactic acid or is run off in the residual liquids, making these aged raw milk cheeses perfectly suited for those who suffer from lactose intolerance. After a rest, the curds are scooped with plastic colanders from the clear liquid whey and are then formed into 13 pound wheels. The whey is fed to pigs and the young cheese wheels are then boiled in heavy salt brine which will protect the food from bacteria during the 3 – 6 months spent ageing in the adjacent environmentally controlled room. Meerman currently makes six varieties including Edam, Gouda, Cheddar and the same with various herbs and spices added.

Without succumbing to pasteurization, the Meermans must always be wary of bacterial contamination. Their cows freely roam rotated grass pastures, which is indelible to the operation. When allowed to live and eat in a natural, outdoor environment, free from antibiotics, corn based feed and cramped manure filled living conditions, these healthy and happy ruminants produce healthy and clean milk. The milk from conventionally farmed dairy cows, however, is unsanitary must be pasteurized. Unlike organic and biodynamic farming, modern industrial farming practices go against the nature of cows and must be heated before safely imbibing. Also, at Grassfields, each batch of raw milk and subsequent cheese is tested scientifically for microscopic intruders where as in conventional practices fewer tests are done in the hope that pasteurization will clean it up in the end. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Organic and raw milk farmers will tell you pasteurized cheeses, not raw cheeses, have been culpable in all recent human pathogen mishaps.

Both the raw milk and cheese have additional benefits afforded to them from the lack of physically and chemically damaging heat pasteurization: the naturally occurring enzymes and animal friendly bacteria alive in raw milk create a hostile environment for foreign microbes and potential pathogens. Producing raw milk and raw milk cheese must be done then in accordance with the laws of nature, which are ever present on this organic farm. The Meerman’s cheese making seems a predestined process, one that they are managing stewards of, rather than the sole contributing performers. First the sun, then the grass, the cows and finally the bacteria perform the actual intrinsic, microscopic work from which cheese results.

How’s it taste – exquisite! Creamily textured and strongly aromatic, the complexities easily outshine any store bought pasteurized equivalents; a pure and simple pleasure to enjoy. Like wine, the time spent ageing in a cheese cave hones the product’s attributes, often simplifying over-complexities and rounding out overt flavors and aromas. Eat the cheese warm, never cool, which masks its depth. For me, the real test of cheese is how well it melts, so I tried it with this recipe for Nebraska style Mac & Cheese:

First, gently heat some white wine in a large sauce pan while bringing a gallon of water to boil on another burner. When the pan is warm, slowly layer in thin slices of Edam, Gouda and Lamont Cheddar. (The recipe works especially well with various left over cheese ends and bits.) The sauce may be tempered with a little milk or butter, but the cheese and wine seem to work out fine alone. Add elbow, shells, or your favorite pasta to the water and boil until tender, careful not to overcook. Drain the pasta and combine with cheese sauce in a shallow baking dish. Top with yesterday’s bread crumbs and bake at 300F until the top begins to brown. Serve with pan steamed local broccoli and green beans.

Grassfields cheese is widely available in West Michigan; locations are listed on their website. Meet Jesse and Betsy Meerman in person downtown Grand Rapids at the Guest House September 11th where they will be sampling their cheese along side wine at Siciliano’s Michigan Wine Tasting. Details: www.sicilianosmkt.com and www.grassfieldscheese.com.

H 2 Ohhhhhhh

Gene Simmons walked jubilantly into the classroom. Not Gene Simmons the rock star, but my new Sociology professor at the local community college. This late middle-aged man with frazzled grey hair and a hidden, but tested vigor shook his head and laughed cynically. “If water is free,” he questioned, “why are we all buying it?” This was 1998. The American consumer, now readily paying money for something that was generally abundant and free, flummoxed Sociologists and delighted corporate bottling companies. This was a cultural crux perfect for analyzing late capitalist American, convincing evidence of our exponentially mindless consuming. A new need had been created – plastic bottles of untraceable water filled somewhere by someone else – and we were ready to pay for it.

Today’s trendy bottled waters did not, however, start out in plastic, but glass. Green, light blue and clear glass imported from the French Alps or Italian glacial springs filled with mineral laden naturally sparkling water preceded the present craze. These opulent products helped evolve a relationship between exclusive status and rare imports, one that is even more widely exploited today. (The best example being Bling H20.) Born out of locales where the public drinking water really was in question, they slowly became more common and profitable in the US market. At your grocery store, what was four feet of low traffic shelf space five years ago is now its own isle.

Sales have doubled since 1998 and as far as individually packaged beverages go, only soft drinks are more popular; so why the boom? We didn’t drink water from 16.9 oz. PET bottles growing up, so why do we now need cases stacked in the garage, pantry and refrigerator?

Obviously, we all need water to live. Only now it seems we need a specific brand of water. Here’s the message the International Bottled Water Association (IBWA) exudes: Tap water is for the common, unscrupulous person. Its integrity has been questioned and faults have been found. The daily Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) tests are evidence of its inferiority. Bottled water is clean, healthy, natural, and tastes the best. You buy a case at Costco for three dollars!

In actuality, tap water, being regulated by the EPA, is much more closely monitored than bottled water; which is not to say that all US municipal tap water is perfectly safe. Alternately, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) looks after the bottled water industry, and it’s a wonder more of us aren’t dead. Bottled water is not subject to anywhere near the same regiment of mandatory tests and evaluations as municipal water. Much of the testing is in fact voluntary and even that little bit of oversight is deemed unnecessary as long as the product is not moved across state lines.

Coca-Cola Corporation and Pepsi, producers of Dasani and Aquafina, respectively, dominate the current bottled water market. But before all the filtering, reverse osmosis and chemical flavor posturing, these products actually started out in a public water supply, not a pristine spring somewhere in the mountains. Coke and Pepsi are actually selling public water. So despite the minimum bottled water testing requirements, I’m sure they understand what a contaminated bottle of water would do to their profit margins. Drinking these particular products will of course not make you sick. They will, however, end up in your landfill and out last every living thing on this planet. Also, it takes more water to make a bottle of Dasani than is actually in the bottle, which is absurd. Unfortunately, convenience and the resulting profits neutralize irrationality.

Some would also call bottled water healthy, which in a sense it is, considering the corrosive and fattening high fructose corn syrup alternative. Yet ultimately it’s the water which is healthy, not the use of 17 million barrels of oil annually to make the packages.

The commodity is wrapped up nicely with what the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) tagged “a perception of purity.” Most of us do not really know what’s in our water. With all the world’s diseases, food pathogens and other health concerns, we’d like to at least believe that the cold plastic bottles of water now found in each and every convenience store are safe for us and our loved ones. Just like the health propaganda of margarine and the real butter scare, we wanted it to be guilt free and eagerly swallowed everything we were fed. It takes a long time to expose such authoritative chicanery.

A survey of the various bottled and municipal water watchdog groups turns up problems with both old and new ways of hydrating. Pharmaceuticals and poisons are commonly found in major public drinking water sources, and who knows what’s in many of the various brands of bottled water. With water now off the list of assumed health products, it seems there’s nothing left that we can take for granted. As far as food goes, our innocence has been lost and our trust broken by corporate food industries.

So what should we drink? Bottled water, a product of the loosely regulated free market, or municipal source tap water, a continually contaminated and cleansed natural resource? If we follow each option to its logical conclusion, it seems that the choice is ultimately one between private corporations and public governments, a curious position which has inspired me to tap my own personal artesian well. The bottled water industry, regulated by the FDA as a food item as opposed to a public need, seeks only to make a profit. Public water sources attempt to supply potable drinking water within a non-profit based framework. Both systems, along with irrigation and many other major public and private uses of water, rely on much of the same natural resources and will therefore always be at ends.

Becoming aware seems the first step towards healthy water consumption. Let’s stop assuming everything for sale is safe. And for the cynically critical, not everything is deadly, so participative decisions do make an impact on your and other’s health. If your local tap water is convincingly safe, try to choose it over the stuff sold in plastic. Currently only 1 in 5 plastic water bottles are recycled, so pay attention to your personal waste. Let’s question this bizarre system of single serving throw away packaging while simultaneously demanding clean water from our public sources.