Page 59 - San Angelo

Antonia, Marlene, Honey, Calpurnia, Breezy, Dixie, Lone Star, Chiquta, Chipeta, Jimmy Sue, Evelyn, Buttercup, Stormy, Tina, Cinnamin, Marisol, Joy, Jade, India and Red Baron, to list a few, are all living the dream just off Door Key Road south of town.

One of Conn’s goals for El Camino de las Cabras is to be a self sustaining and locally relevant business. She makes it a point to use local suppliers as often as she can, for everything from spices to hay to a local printer for her business cards. Even as the product lines grow to include goat milk soaps, special order cheeses, and the goat milk itself, bigger business is not part of Conn’s vision for the future. Maximum proft looks more like sustainably flling a niche and guaranteeing a good handmade product than making money off of other people’s work.

“It’s very satisfying to do everything, to take care of the goats, doctor them, milk them and make something with the milk. I don’t want to be one of those people that their business grows so much that they’re spending all their time managing others. I want to be with the goats, making the cheese myself. As long as I can, I want to be involved with all of it,” she said. Conn shirks the descriptor gourmet as a classifcation for her cheese, preferring the more inclusive term artisan, a word that takes account of the work of the hands and the heart investment in a product. The difference between the connotations of the two words mirrors the differences between goat keepers who make cheese and strict cheese makers. “Goat people are just friendly,” Conn commented, listing many instances when total strangers have been willing to offer advice or suggestions regarding goat keeping and cheese making. “Cheese people, people who just make cheese, are not,” she continued, relating an equal number of sour experiences she’s had while talking the trade with purist cheese makers.

Cheese making is a process. Even soft cheeses, which form more quickly, take roughly a week to move from milk pail to fnal product. Hard cheeses are more labor intensive and can take months of aging and turning to obtain the right favor and consistency. Conn prefers to make fve variations of the soft chevre and an occasional batch of feta in her 19 by 44 foot ranch house cheese room.

A week in the life of an El Camino de las Cabras chevre starts early with the sun breaking over the horizon in the east. Pumping sounds of the mini milking machine mix with goat calls and of all things, the sonorous voices of the Gypsy Kings. The goats fle in and are coerced onto the milking stand for the unchanged morning ritual: grain eating and milk giving. Conn will give them each a going over, apply homemade ointment to fresh scrapes and cuts when needed, give a little love and affection, and lead them out with the rest of the herd. All this is done by 8 a.m.

From there, the milk is stored in the cheese room. On day one, the milk is pasteurized and Conn adds the cheese culture

and rennet to begin the transformation. This stage will sit in the temperature controlled room for 24 hours in clean clear plastic tubs, letting the culture work its magic by commencing the exodus of the whey from the milk solids. A thin layer of yellowish clear liquid rises to the top overnight. The next day, the coagulating creamy whiteness is scooped into individual baskets which allow the whey to strain into a waiting pan below. This is the stage when spices are added, if they are to be added. The baskets are covered and another day of awaiting begins. The following day, the cakes of chevre are taken from the baskets, salted lightly on all sides to further aid the extraction of the whey and fipped onto a draining tray. They are covered with cheese cloth and twenty-four hours later are ready to be packaged, sold, and consumed. After the feeting celebration of the fresh cheese, the hours and hours of dish washing begin. Cheese making seems to be almost as much about dish washing as it is about goat milking.

Today, a year and a half into the journey, El Camino de las Cabras continues to fnd its way into this community’s culinary life. This spring, a Central High School culinary team made up of Chandler Mikeska, Brittany O’Conner, Torri Ortiz and Blake Shelton qualifed for competition at the State level using goat