Welcome to the Spring Brook FarmCheeSe houSe

Come discover all the new and exciting waysour kids are learning!

At Farms For City Kids our innovative hands-on learning program is how we bring education to life for

our kids. From the moment the children step off the bus at Spring Brook Farm, their lessons begin.

As they take in their first impressions of the Farm’s landscape, a

sense of sustainability and land stewardship is instilled by helping

them realize that they, just like everyone on the Farm, must take

nothing for granted when it comes to the respect and caring for

the environment and the animals around us. And even though

Spring Brook Farm, like the many farmlands across America,

represent the single most important foundation of our food supply

chain today, most children, when asked the question, “Where does

our food come from?” answer with the response, “From the store”.

So in our commitment to further evolve our educational mission,

through a generous gift from Jim and Karli Hagedorn, the Spring

Brook Farm Cheese House was built to help children truly

understand that the answer to the question of where their food

comes from is so much more than simply ‘From the store’. And it

is the Spring Brook Farm Cheese House that plays a vital role in

opening up many new levels of instruction to connect our kids to

the world around them.

As Carmen Diaz of PS 20, one of the teachers to visit Spring Brook

Farm with her class, said, “We love when a curriculum comes to life

for our students. We want the kids to have the opportunity to see

how food is grown and harvested, to experience how much work

goes into taking care of animals and the importance of teamwork

and how everyone and everything is important and affects our

environment and our well being.”

This learning experience comes full circle at the Cheese House

through the production of our all natural Tarentaise cheese, just

one more example of how the Farm takes the lead in supporting

itself and our educational mission. The cheese making process

visually demonstrates all that it takes to get food to our tables -

through the careful and deliberate partnership of the cheese maker

and the farmer in the care of the fields, our natural resources and

all living things, both those we can see – like the cows – and those

we cannot – like bacteria and microbes.

Life before the cheese house left our young farming students with

one never ending question, “What happens to the milk?” While

discussions about pasteurization and how milk can be turned into

cheese or butter took place, the reality for a young mind is still –

“What happens to the milk? ”

NOW the children can witness

firsthand exactly what

happens to the milk!

continued...

Welcome to the

Spring Brook FarmCheeSe houSe!

info@farmsforcitykids.org

Check out our website...

farmsforcitykids.org

2009 Spring Newsletter

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• MOOS FROM THE FARM is a Registered Service Mark of Farms For City Kids Foundation, Inc.• FARMS FOR CITY KIDS & DESIGN is a Registered Service Mark of Farms For City Kids Foundation, Inc. • Farms For City Kids is a 501(C)3 non-profit foundation. • © 2009 Farms For City Kids Foundation, Inc.

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CoChon 555 Selects Farms For City Kids!This past January, the Cochon 555 event in New York City, a premiere

culinary event sponsored by Brady Lowe of the Taste Network, featured

5 top New York chefs, 5 pigs and 5 winemakers in a friendly competition

for a cause – and Farms For City Kids was the foundation selected!

The event raised awareness both for our unique educational program

as well as for the Taste Network’s well known support of the farmers

who produce the food that reach our tables everyday.

Jeremy Stephenson, our Cheese Program Director, helped highlight the

important connection between chefs and farmers as he sampled our

all natural, hand made Tarentaise Cheese with over 200 event attendees.

The event was a great success and not only was a “Prince of Porc”

crowned but Farms For City Kids has once again been selected as the

foundation of choice for the next Cochon 555 event in Boston.

Cochon 555 began in Atlanta and is national in scope. Chefs

and judges from each city are selected by Taste Network to

participate in the event. Learn more about Cochon 555 at

amusecochon.com.

The Taste Network’s mission is to provide cultured events and

education focused around artisan cheese, wine and cuisine to

its clients and the public at large. Visit them at tastenetwork.org

FRoM MilK To CHeeSe“Phew... it takes a lot more work than we thought”At a very base level the Cheese House offers a physical truth that

the milk from the cow the students just tended can be turned into

food through a very basic chemical process. So we first engage

them in conversations about the air, water, sunlight and care that

animals need in order to survive and flourish as well as their

importance to all aspects of the farm – from the barns, to the

gardens, to our pastures.

The cheese making process actually begins in the well-managed

pastures the cows graze on every day. Through careful management

by our field foreman and herd manager, our Jerseys graze in a

different pasture every day. This “rotational grazing” allows each

pasture to be grazed on one day a week, resulting in six days of

rest for every pasture. It is an important sustainability practice and

good stewardship of the land that not only ensures our pastures

provide nutrient rich grass throughout the grazing season but that

these same pastures grow back lush and healthy each spring.

After a day of grazing, the cows rest or eat hay in the barn before

milking and their evening meal. Everything they have eaten

throughout the day will be reflected in the taste and quality of their

milk. This, combined with the different pastures, gives our Tarentaise

cheese its unique aroma and flavor. Even the weather has a direct

impact on the smell and flavor of our cheese because weather affects

the nutrients in the grasses and the overall growth of the pastures.

After every fourth milking, the milk is pumped over to the cheese

house. A sample is drawn from each batch and analyzed in the lab

for different components such as protein,

fat and bacteria. The same aspects that

apply to the animals apply to the cheese

– air, water (humidity) and care, in the

rubbing and flipping over of our cheese,

so the good bacteria can get to work

helping our cheese to age and taste

delicious.

Bacteria is just one part of the cheese

maker’s recipe that is a complex mixture

of special bacteria and microbes that have been formulated and

cultured through the centuries – hence, the term culture. The

discussion of cultures provides the perfect opportunity to introduce

the concept that life surrounds us, even though we cannot see it

and the subject of microbiology is introduced.

Making cheese from the dairy farm’s primary product,

milk, can only happen by carefully using some of

these ‘unseen’ and most manageable animals on the

farm. Without bacteria and microbes, the soil could

not support the plants, which harvest the sun’s energy.

Dead organic matter could not be transformed into

usable nutrients for all that grows on the farm and

we would not have the opportunity to utilize certain

species of these microbes to help us produce one of

the most amazing products that can come from any

farm... CHEESE !

And the Cheese House brings these organisms to

life. The Cheese House lab provides special agar dishes, which

the students use to swab surfaces, including fingers and hands,

so they can watch as the collected bacteria start to grow over

the course of their stay. The samples are then identified under a

microscope to answer some important questions, “Are there tiny

‘bugs’ that are helpful to us? How can these tiny, little objects be

beneficial? Which are the bugs that can be harmful? and How do

we resolve the problem of harmful bacteria in the milk”?

As a team, children are coached through the process of making

cheese, right from the raw milk collection in the dairy barn, to the

heating and cooking process, to the adding of culture and cutting of

the curds. The final step is pressing and forming in the molds. Sounds

simple on paper, but to see the excitement in the eyes of the children

as they are entrusted with the fine measurement of temperature,

to performing some of the steps in the washing and rubbing of the

‘student cheese’ wheels, all the while following

instructions to the finest of details that have

been passed down to us by world respected

cheese makers, is AWESOME. The children feel

empowered, respected and important.

Without question the addition of the Cheese

House to the Farms For City Kids program has

been invaluable, allowing our educational staff

to integrate more hands-on science into the

program though our student’s participation

in various experiments related to the cheese

making process. It demonstrates that just because something does

not look alive and you can’t see it growing, does not mean that it

doesn’t require constant care and attention to flourish.

The important work the students participate in

on the farm, and in the cheese house, is just

one more way to help them learn that careful

planning, hard work, communication, respect,

teamwork and a positive attitude will always

have a positive impact on their own lives and

those around them. And one of those ‘aha’

moments happens that very night at dinner

as they eat their homemade Tarentaise

Mac ‘n cheese and taste the rewards

of good stewardship as it is

now so evident that well

managed, happy cows

make delicious cheese!

As their week comes to an end, our

students leave Spring Brook Farm

changed, having witnessed firsthand

exactly where and how food makes

its way from the farmlands of America

to their stores and homes.

To learn more about our Spring Brook Farm

Tarentaise Cheese visit sbfcheese.org

Jeremy Stephenson,cheese maker

For more information, please contact: Rob Macri, educational Director 802.484.5822 or Alida Curcio, Chief Development officer 516.767.5757 • info@farmsforcitykids.org