Working with Ruth Klahsen is an educational experience. I’m always awed by how much this woman knows about the politics of food, of farming, how developed her palate is and always, always by her generosity and integrity.
Here are some of the things I learned about Monforte, about farming and about the business of producing food at our first (but not last) Town Hall in May.
About Monforte
We use only seasonal milk. That way the animals aren’t forced by the use of hormones or light to produce beyond their natural cycles.
Ruminants (sheep, goats, bovine, and water buffalo in our case) produce milk from March to November. Monforte takes milk from ruminants only after they’ve nursed their young for a month. This isn’t common practice in the dairy industry.
Ruth meets with farmers before she buys their milk and only after she’s visited the barn. If the animals are stressed and bleating, that’s not a farm she wants to have a relationship with.
While our cheeses are not organic, the animals are raised naturally and humanely.
The new dairy will source milk from 2 cow’s milk producers (grass fed), 2 water buffalo milk producers, 12 goat milk producers and 12 sheep milk producers – or 28 family farms. The whey produced by our cheesemaking facility will feed pigs on another farm. Because that farmer, David Martin, feeds his pigs whey, he gets about $5.50/lb for his pork instead of $1.50, the going rate — and less than it costs to raise the pigs.
Monforte believes that farmers have the right to earn a good living. In Ontario, the average yearly income for farmers is –$7,000. That’s a net loss annually, every year. The average age of an Ontario farmer is 57 years.
When milk isn’t in season, Monforte will run a federally-approved, cheesemaking school.
About Monforte cheese
They are superb.
Monforte cheeses cost between $15 and $30 per kilo. Here’s how the pricing works: 30% for labour costs, 30% for milk, 30% overhead and 10% profit.
Most of Monforte cheese are acceptable for vegetarian diets; a few cloth-bound cheddars are wrapped in lard. We don’t use rennet, which comes from the stomach of ruminants imparting different flavours to the cheese depending on which animal the rennet came from. Microbial enzymes can achieve the same taste results as rennet. Most microbial enzyme is GMO. Monforte uses non-GMO microbial enzyme from a small company.
About the cheese business
Artisanal cheese should never touch plastic.
Artisanal cheddar is cloth bound.
There used to be about 600 small dairies in Ontario. Now there are five. Monforte would like to see that many again.
It takes a lot of water to make cheese – about 10 litres of water for every 1 litre of milk. Monforte’s new dairy will be using less water, about one to one
Reducing the chain of distribution is important to Monforte. That’s why we plan on selling at more farmers’ markets.
Most dairies make more money from the dehydrated whey the scrape off the walls of the dairy than they do from the cheese. Monforte prefers to sell the whey to pig farmers so they can get a higher price per pound for their pork.