This August schedual is pretty rough and again finds Joe alone making cheese while I’m at the Polson Farmer’s Market. Happily though, curds and Notz are a faster make day than when you have to hoop the cheeses.
There is a heavy pall of smoke in the air – what with Washington, Idaho and our own Montana sporting far too many fires – and it can’t make for happy cows as it doesn’t make for happy cheese makers either! Outside at the market, it’s hard to breath deeply and you wonder just how much oxygen intake is going on! By the second day out at the Missoula Farmer’s Market, I can tell it’s not much. Pretty lightheaded and loopy adding another layer of empathy for those who fight fires for a living!!
The smoke is too much for Horatio, our Vanguard. Happy to report he has sense recovered. You can barely see the Mission Mountain range up ahead.
The fresh cheeses have their own schedual of demands and with the curds that includes smoking. I have to say it was a bit hard to deliberately go out and add to the smoke in the air when I lit our tiny fire used in the process!
On our way up to Whitefish for their Tuesday Farmer’s Market about a week before the smoke overtook us, we witnessed the start of one of the many fires in Glacier National Park this year. Frightening to watch it grow in the 30-45 minutes it took for us to drive north on Hwy 2 from Kalispell to Whitefish.
