Gingerbread Jersey Cheese

Written By: Janette Locke  |  Posted: Tuesday, March 30th, 2010

Cheese - the yummy shredded stuff you spread on a taco or homemade pizza. Definitely, but what exactly is it and who makes it? Virgil Schunk, an Augusta cheesemaker, states that,
"Cheese is milk made into a product that's more easily preserved as far as time. Milk is very perishable. The earliest cheese makers did it to preserve their dairy products that they couldn't drink. They had excess milk so they made it into cheese. It makes an edible product that can last - some cheeses for even years, such as cheddar."

Hold it. Someone has to actually make the cheese? How does that happen? Well, Virgil and Carolyn Schunk should definitely know. They have been making cheese with products from their farm and selling it in their own family store for the past five years. The farm on which they live and make cheese has been in their family since 1918 and they have not only carried on the family tradition of dairy farming, but have also expanded it. When they started their store in 2005, three of their children were already farming with them, but the major fluctuation of milk prices made simple dairy farming quite unprofitable. The prices dropped so low that Virgil had to work off the farm just to pay for the cattle's feed since the milk check couldn't even cover that expense. In 2005 they were ready for a change and decided to do more with their milk than simply sell it as an unfinished product. They became cheese makers. Caroline explains how exactly they have been making cheese on their own farm for the past five years,
"We culture it, we pasteurize (bring it down to ninety degrees) it and then we add cultures. And we have seventeen different cultures that we use to make different kinds of cheese. The culture is what gives the cheese its different flavors. Then we add the rennet. The rennet, in a half an hour, will turn two-hundred gallons of milk into two-hundred gallons of milk jello." Her husband, Virgil, continues the description.

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