This is a Hands-on Two Day Workshop
April 20-21 (Saturday/Sunday), 2013 from 9am to 5pm
State of Maine Cheese Company, Route 1, Rockport, ME
Bonnyclabber Cheese™ founder Rona Myers Sullivan of Sullivan’s Pond Farm, Inc., will offer a workshop covering the basics of her clabbered milk cheeses and their natural wraps and coverings. Rona will go over the conditions, techniques and troubleshooting methods that she finds crucial to the most consistent rustic fermented milk cheese. You’ll learn about culinary-safe leaf wrapping options and how she macerates them. Rona will share the secrets of her beeswaxing technique and appliques, and how you can make your own grapevine ash in a retort. Bonnyclabber curds take a couple of days to prepare, so they’ll be ready before class for your hands-on shaping, wrapping, ash coating and waxing pleasure!
Space will be limited to this hands-on two day workshop: the first 15 students who send a deposit into our Guild Treasurer will be guaranteed a spot. Additional students may choose to be placed on the waiting list in which case they will need to be prepared to join the class with a few days notice in case of any cancellations.
COST: $150 for Guild members, $175 for non-members (price includes a one year membership to the Guild)
Send your $75 deposit (checks can be made out to the “Maine Cheese Guild”) to guarantee a spot to:
The Maine Cheese Guild
c/o Mark Whitney, Treasurer
Pineland Farms
32 Farm View Drive
New Gloucester, Maine 04260
Rona Myers Sullivan was born in Virginia at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where first began her interest in heritage artisanal and agricultural skills. Rona studied music in Chicago, and Fine Arts in Richmond, Va. , where she met her husband of 25 years, Tim Sullivan. In the early 90’s her focus turned to organic growing and backyard habitats, and in 1998 she began garnering blue ribbons for her art and products made from purchased goats milk. The Sullivan’s began with just four dairy goats in 1999, purchasing their little farmstead on the Chesapeake Bay a year later. Their Grade A micro-dairy was completed in 2003 in a simple 12X24 building of their own design.
The term Bonnyclabber was anglicized by Scots-Irish settlers from an Irish term meaning ‘clabbered’ milk. As they traveled south on the Great Wagon Road along the Blue Ridge, they dubbed the area ‘Bonnyclabber Country’ where the same daily staple was being consumed with cornbread crumbled in it. It is with this inspiration that Rona created and named her aged raw milk cheeses, made with fresh warm milk, without starters or rennet, cooking or freezing. The Isabel series was born out of necessity after the blackout of Hurricane Isabel in September of 2003, yet is
based on the same raw milk product names and affinage.
Rona is writing a book about the Sullivan’s sustainable dairying experience, as well as contributing articles for publications such as the Dairy Goat Journal, and is adding an educational space for agri-tourism at Sullivan’s Pond Farm.