One Month Left

So it’s been a little bit since I’ve added anything and quite an amount of cheese has been made in the meantime so I figured it was about time I wrote something more down. A lot has happened in the past week or so, especially since my parents were out here for a visit. That was definitely a great thing. I got some good company for a while plus in showing them around I got a chance to see some more of the area other than this small part that I’m always working on. A few farmers were kind enough to milk for me a couple of the afternoons which gave me a chance to go some places with my parents. Also things have slowed down here some since school has started again here in switzerland meaning there are fewer tourists coming to buy cheese. It was kinda funny, I think my Dad especially was quite surprised at the traditional conditions here in the cheese house and also the amount of manual labour involved. He was helping me make butter one day and working at kneeding the butter balls which is pretty heavy work, well he soon had ideas on how to make it a lot easier. We went to some pretty cool places together, as you can see in some of the pictures. Now next week my youngest brothers will be coming out too which should be a lot of fun as well. Hopefully we can do some interesting stuff as well. I want to check the underground hydro electric plants with them, another mountain peak and make an overnight hike into the mountains with them. We’ll see though.

As for the cheese thing, like I said it is getting less busy now being there is less milk and less tourists as well. There have been some cool events going on as well. A couple days ago there was this saumerfest in Guttanen. This was an evening party celebrating the tradion of Swiss people walking the mountian passes into italy to trade cheese and other products. A saumer can roughly be translated as a wanderer and is a big part of the tradition here since this is one of the areas they would walk though. Then on Sunday there is another party called the Alplerchilbi celebrating the alpler who is someone who milks the cows and makes cheese on the alp, me.

But ya, its kinda crazy, there is only one month left here for me. Time goes by incredibly fast sometimes. I feel more and more confident in cheesemaking all the time. Jan has even let me make all the decisions for some of the cheese from time to time. Lots left to experience and learn but I am also ready to be somewhere I speak the language and with friends and family again.

One last story. Some of you may have heard already but a few weeks ago there was a family from Canada looking at how we make the cheese here. After some discussion we found out that we knew some of the same people out in Canada, a friend from Alberta. I don’t know what the chances are of this happening in remote switzerland but they gotta be pretty small.

Anyways, thanks again for the messages and I hope all is going well. Also take some time to try a piece of good cheese and if you can’t find any, my parents have brought some of my cheese home so grab some from them.

Chao for now

Shep

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