KOOKOOLAN FARMS
A small, diversified family farm in Yamhill, Oregon, committed to organic farming practices, rotational grazing, grass-based animal husbandry, humane animal handling practices, and producing the healthiest, best-tasting, premium poultry in Oregon.
Please call Chrissie at 503-730-7535 or email kookoolan@gmail.com to register for any of our classes.
We offer classes on farmstead skills almost every Saturday! Different instructors, different demonstration cheeses, different special topics and techniques every time. Most of our classes are $65 per person, always course fee includes a $10 coupon good toward anything we sell. Cheesemaking classes include a truly spectacular cheese tasting plate, with a selection of at least 6 to 8 premium artisan cheeses, often as many as twelve, both local and imported, relevant to the day’s topic, and intended to inspire your sense of confidence and adventure in your own cheesemaking! We have the full line of home cheesemaking supplies from New England Cheesemaking Supply Company, the full line of Mad Millie Cheese Making Supplies from New Zealand, Portland's own Urban Cheesecraft, and soon from Canada's Glengarry Creamery as well. We do accept Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and debit cards.
Sunset Magazine published a list of 100 Trends That Are Shaping The West, and our little cheesemaking school was recognized as one of them! (February 2011, page 34; we're #68 on the list). We were also mentioned in the May 2010 issue of "Food and Wine" magazine! as one of the Top 100 (in the world!) new food and culture experiences (also in position #68, see page 80)! And watch the video on the Oregon Travel Commission's "Wanderfeast" promotion!
"1859" Magazine just published a nice endorsement of our cheesemaking classes (and a great photo of our pasture-raised Pekin ducks) in the October 2011 issue!
Call (503) 730-7535 or email kookoolan@gmail.com to register.
Cancellation policy: cancel at least 7 days or more in advance for full refund. Cancel at least 48 hours in advance, and we can apply your deposit to any other class or to any other product we sell. Cancel less than 48 hours in advance, and we'll do our best to fill your seat with someone on a waitlist for the class. If we’re successful we can apply your deposit to any other class or to any other product we sell. If your seat goes unsold, your payment is forfeited.
2012 Classes:
Feb 11 Goat Cheeses (Scott). A perennial favorite, one of our most popular classes. Learn chevre of course, but also other cheeses and dairy products from goat's milk, and the differences generally in working with goat's milk versus that of other species. $70/person SOLD OUT -- we've added an additional section of this class the following week:
Feb 18 Goat Cheeses (Scott). A perennial favorite, one of our most popular classes. Learn chevre of course, but also other cheeses and dairy products from goat's milk, and the differences generally in working with goat's milk versus that of other species. $70/person space available
Feb 25 Home Creamery (Scott). Learn how to make butter, sour cream, creme fraiche, ice cream, yogurt, kefir, soft fresh cheeses including cottage cheese, and culturing milk generally. A great introductory class that will give you the confidence to safely make these great products at home in your own kitchen! $60/person SOLD OUT, next offered on June 23, 2012Saturday March 3, 2012, 10AM to 4PM: Advanced Cheese Theory (Mary). This is an all-day class that runs from 10AM to 4PM and includes breakfast, coffee, full lunch of all-Kookoolan ingredients, and extravagant cheese tasting (which you'll be walked through by Mary Rosenblum). Come hungry, and expect to leave full! This class takes you beyond following a cheese recipe out of a book. You will learn the processes going on in that pot of milk as the enzymes in rennet coagulate the milk and the curd becomes a ripe and flavorful cheese. The demonstration cheese for this class is Burrata, a stuffed mozzarella. Understanding the relationship of proteins in the milk, the butterfat, and what the culture bacteria you added are actually doing, will give you a much better understanding of your results, both good results and not so good results. You’ll begin to understand how to make changes that will give you the texture and flavor you really want in your finished cheeses. We’ll examine those processes in a hands-on way as we make an English-style cheddar, trouble shoot less-than-perfect cheeses, and experiment to create a new type of artisanal mozzarella. You’ll have a chance to use both a pH meter and titration equipment to see for yourself how quickly the bacteria in the cheese pot create the acid that makes your cheese a cheese. Bring cheese you have made, both your outstanding examples to participate in a cheese contest with a small prize from Kookoolan Farms, and bring the less -than-perfect results where you could use a bit of help understanding what happened and how to make it better next time. The class includes a cheese tasting plate featuring examples of the major types of cheeses as well as an excellent lunch prepared from all-Kookoolan ingredients. $95 per person, SOLD OUT WITH WAITLIST, offered again September 29, 2012.
Saturday, March 10, 2012, 1PM to 4PM: Italian Hard Cheeses (Rudy). Enjoy an afternoon of wine and cheese. Local winemaker Rudy Marchesi owns Montinore Estates Winery in Dilley, Oregon. Learn the art of cheesemaking and enjoy a selection of Montinore's biodynamically produced and certified wines, plus a cheese tasting plate of eight fine imported Italian hard cheeses. Learn the techniques that will enable you to make Asiago, Parmiggiano, Romano, and many other favorites at home, for far less than the cost of buying the finished aged cheeses. $75/person, SOLD OUT, offered again September 22
Mar 17 Irish Cheddar (Scott) $75/person. SPACE AVAILABLE
Mar 24 Bries and Blues (Scott) $75/person SPACE AVAILABLE
Mar 31, 5pm to 8pm: How To Make Mead (Doug) Kookoolan Farms is also a fully-licensed winery. Doug Remington, manager of Main Street Homebrew Supply Store in Hillsboro, Oregon, is consulting meadmaker at Kookoolan Farms, currently authoring a new book on meadmaking that will be released in about a year, and is a fifteen-years-plus friend of Farmer Chrissie. Mead has historically been made by just about every culture on earth: a common, joyous, ancient thread shared by all cultures and societies all over the earth, each with our own spin on wines made from honey. Mead is just a genre, as beer or wine are genres: mead is any alcohol produced from honey as the primary source of fermentable sugar. Mead can be sweet or dry, sparkling or still, weak or strong in terms of alcohol content, and flavored with hundreds of fruit, herb or spice adjuncts. Grape juice mixed with honey, called pyment, is a time-honored tradition in many countries, and here in Oregon's wine country you can count on pinot noir pyments coming from Kookoolan. A “melomel” is mead made with any combination of honey and any kind of fruit juice, where the fruit juice is not just a flavoring after the fact but is part of the fermentable must; apples, cherries, and apricots are three of the most popular blends. Nobody knows the archaic words “sack” mead or “sack” wine anymore (meaning strong alcohol and sugar): these are sherry-style, or liqueur-style, or dessert-wine styles which are closest to my favorite meads. The best European meads are aged for five years or more in oak barrels, and Kookoolan World Meadery will definitely be producing a straight-up, oak-aged mead. The Picts, a particular tribe in Scotland, made a mead with heather blossoms; heather bitters the nectar much as hops do for beer, but in addition a wild fungus grows on the heather blossoms that produces a slightly psychotropic effect on the drinker. Queen Elizabeth’s favorite mead used bay leaves, thyme, rose petals, and lemon balm. In our class Doug will turn a bucket of honey into fermenting mead right before your eyes! This class includes detailed handouts enabling you to make mead at home, plus Doug will walk you through a generous tasting of a half dozen or so commercial and homebrew meads. $70/person includes tasting a $10 coupon good toward the purchase of anything from Kookoolan Farms. SPACE AVAILABLE, MUST BE 21.
April 7: Easter weekend, no classes
April 14: Mozzarella 101 (Scott). We start with our own liquid raw cow milk, and in less than an hour you'll have hands-on experience kneading and forming the curd. This class does not have a brought-in cheese tasting plate because you'll be eating the cheese you make in the class, along with fresh tomatoes and basil grown right here on Kookoolan Farms and picked the day of the class! In this class you will have hands-on experience and instruction making fresh mozzarella from liquid milk. You will participate in kneading and shaping cheese, and you’ll get to enjoy eating the cheese too! $60 per person, SPACE AVAILABLE
April 21: Goat Cheeses (Scott) A perennial favorite, one of our most popular classes. Learn chevre of course, but also other cheeses and dairy products from goat's milk, and the differences generally in working with goat's milk versus that of other species. $70/person SPACE AVAILABLE
Saturday, April 28, 2012, 1PM to 4PM: Mold-Ripened Soft Cheeses/Bries and Blues (Mary) $65/person. Covers the basics of fresh drained cheeses, and introduces the next step of using surface molds to ripen your cheese. You'll learn how to make Brie, creamy roquefort-style blue cheese, and drier Danish style blue cheese. The cheese tasting plate for this class is particularly divine. $75 per person, SPACE AVAILABLE, about half full
Saturday, May 5, 2012, 1PM to 4PM: INTRODUCTION TO HARD CHEESES/FETA FEAST! (Mary Rosenblum). This popular class is our most basic introduction to making hard cheeses. Feta is the quickest and easiest of all hard cheeses, and is a great transition from making soft fresh cheeses (very easy) into making pressed hard cheeses (more difficult than soft cheeses, plus for aged cheeses you have to wait a long time to find out whether you got good results). Feta was perhaps one of the earliest cheeses to have been developed, but is not as well known in the U.S. as some other cheeses. This class will teach you not only how to make this cheese, but also how to serve and enjoy it. Enjoy a meza plate of middle eastern appetizers along with a sampling of several different fresh and aged fetas. No pre-requisite, no cheesemaking experience required, ideal introductory class for anyone wanting to try making hard cheeses at home. Bonus: This class also includes how to make cottage cheese! $70 per person SPACE AVAILABLE
May 12: Soft Cheeses 101 (Scott). One of our most popular classes, the ideal beginner's introduction to cheesemaking. Soft fresh cheeses are instant gratification! Learn chevre, fromage blanc, cream cheese, ice cream, and an introduction to surface-ripened soft cheeses such as brie. $70 per person. SPACE AVAILABLE
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Saturday, June 9, 2012, 1PM to 4PM, Washed Curd Cheeses (Rudy Marchesi). This category of popular cheeses includes Gouda, havarti, and Colby, which are all made using the "washed curd" technique. This class is perfectly suited for beginners, for gouda lovers, and for folks who have already made cheese a few times. Rudy has been making Gouda-style cheese for years, having taken a one-on-one class from a Gouda Master on the East Coast several years ago. Rudy is the owner and winemaker of Montinore Estates Vineyard, and always brings a generous sampling of his wines to complement our extravagant gourmet cheese tasting plate as well. $70/person SPACE AVAILABLE
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June 23: Home Creamery (Scott). Learn how to make butter, sour cream, creme fraiche, ice cream, yogurt, kefir, soft fresh cheeses including cottage cheese, and culturing milk generally. A great introductory class that will give you the confidence to safely make these great products at home in your own kitchen! $60/person SPACE AVAILABLE
June 30: Artisanal Cheddar 201 (Scott) $75/person SPACE AVAILABLE
Saturday, July 7, 2012, 1PM to 4PM: Surface-Ripened Cheeses: Reds, Whites and Blues! (Mary). Covers the basics of fresh drained cheeses, and introduces the next step of using surface molds to ripen your cheese. You'll learn how to make Brie, creamy roquefort-style blue cheese, and drier Danish style blue cheese, plus "Stinky Cheeses" made using Bacteria Linens, the "red mold". The cheese tasting plate for this class is particularly divine. $75 per person, SPACE AVAILABLE
July 14: Scott Catino is not available, possibly offer a new class with a new instructor.
July 21: Mozzarella 101 (Scott). We start with our own liquid raw cow milk, and in less than an hour you'll have hands-on experience kneading and forming the curd. This class does not have a brought-in cheese tasting plate because you'll be eating the cheese you make in the class, along with fresh tomatoes and basil grown right here on Kookoolan Farms and picked the day of the class! In this class you will have hands-on experience and instruction making fresh mozzarella from liquid milk. You will participate in kneading and shaping cheese, and you’ll get to enjoy eating the cheese too! $60 per person SPACE AVAILABLE
Jul 28: placeholder
Aug 4: Mozzarella 101 (Scott). We start with our own liquid raw cow milk, and in less than an hour you'll have hands-on experience kneading and forming the curd. This class does not have a brought-in cheese tasting plate because you'll be eating the cheese you make in the class, along with fresh tomatoes and basil grown right here on Kookoolan Farms and picked the day of the class! In this class you will have hands-on experience and instruction making fresh mozzarella from liquid milk. You will participate in kneading and shaping cheese, and you’ll get to enjoy eating the cheese too! $65 per person SPACE AVAILABLE
Aug 11 Home Creamery (Scott). Learn how to make butter, sour cream, creme fraiche, ice cream, yogurt, kefir, soft fresh cheeses including cottage cheese, and culturing milk generally. A great introductory class that will give you the confidence to safely make these great products at home in your own kitchen! $65/person SPACE AVAILABLE
Saturday, Aug 18, 2012, 1PM to 4PM: INTRODUCTION TO HARD CHEESES/FETA FEAST! (Mary Rosenblum). This popular class is our most basic introduction to making hard cheeses. Feta is the quickest and easiest of all hard cheeses, and is a great transition from making soft fresh cheeses (very easy) into making pressed hard cheeses (more difficult than soft cheeses, plus for aged cheeses you have to wait a long time to find out whether you got good results). Feta was perhaps one of the earliest cheeses to have been developed, but is not as well known in the U.S. as some other cheeses. This class will teach you not only how to make this cheese, but also how to serve and enjoy it. Enjoy a meza plate of middle eastern appetizers along with a sampling of several different fresh and aged fetas. No pre-requisite, no cheesemaking experience required, ideal introductory class for anyone wanting to try making hard cheeses at home. Bonus: This class also includes how to make cottage cheese! $70 per person, SPACE AVAILABLE
Aug 25: Soft Cheeses 101 (Scott). One of our most popular classes, the ideal beginner's introduction to cheesemaking. Soft fresh cheeses are instant gratification! Learn chevre, fromage blanc, cream cheese, ice cream, and an introduction to surface-ripened soft cheeses such as brie. $70 per person. SPACE AVAILABLE
Sep 8: placeholder
Sep 15: Soft 201: Surface Ripened Soft Cheeses (Scott) $70/person SPACE AVAILABLE
Saturday, Sep 22, 2012, 1PM to 4PM: Italian Hard Cheeses (Rudy). Enjoy an afternoon of wine and cheese. Local winemaker Rudy Marchesi owns Montinore Estates Winery in Dilley, Oregon. Learn the art of cheesemaking and enjoy a selection of Montinore's biodynamically produced and certified wines, plus a cheese tasting plate of eight fine imported Italian hard cheeses. Learn the techniques that will enable you to make Asiago, Parmiggiano, Romano, and many other favorites at home, for far less than the cost of buying the finished aged cheeses. $75/person, SPACE AVAILABLE
Saturday, Sep 29, 10AM to 4PM: Advanced Cheese Theory (Mary). This is an all-day class that runs from 10AM to 4PM and includes breakfast, coffee, full lunch of all-Kookoolan ingredients, and extravagant cheese tasting (which you'll be walked through by Mary Rosenblum). Come hungry, and expect to leave full! This class takes you beyond following a cheese recipe out of a book. You will learn the processes going on in that pot of milk as the enzymes in rennet coagulate the milk and the curd becomes a ripe and flavorful cheese. The demonstration cheese for this class is Burrata, a stuffed mozzarella. Understanding the relationship of proteins in the milk, the butterfat, and what the culture bacteria you added are actually doing, will give you a much better understanding of your results, both good results and not so good results. You’ll begin to understand how to make changes that will give you the texture and flavor you really want in your finished cheeses. We’ll examine those processes in a hands-on way as we make an English-style cheddar, trouble shoot less-than-perfect cheeses, and experiment to create a new type of artisanal mozzarella. You’ll have a chance to use both a pH meter and titration equipment to see for yourself how quickly the bacteria in the cheese pot create the acid that makes your cheese a cheese. Bring cheese you have made, both your outstanding examples to participate in a cheese contest with a small prize from Kookoolan Farms, and bring the less -than-perfect results where you could use a bit of help understanding what happened and how to make it better next time. The class includes a cheese tasting plate featuring examples of the major types of cheeses as well as an excellent lunch prepared from all-Kookoolan ingredients. $95 per person, SPACE AVAILABLE
Oct 6: Basic Hard Cheeses/Cheddar 101 (Scott) $70/person, SPACE AVAILABLE
Oct 13: Mozzarella 101 (Scott). We start with our own liquid raw cow milk, and in less than an hour you'll have hands-on experience kneading and forming the curd. This class does not have a brought-in cheese tasting plate because you'll be eating the cheese you make in the class, along with fresh tomatoes and basil grown right here on Kookoolan Farms and picked the day of the class! In this class you will have hands-on experience and instruction making fresh mozzarella from liquid milk. You will participate in kneading and shaping cheese, and you’ll get to enjoy eating the cheese too! $65 per person SPACE AVAILABLE
Oct 20: Milk soaps (Kristin). Just in time for preparing for holiday gift giving, luxury handmade milk soaps make beautiful, thoughtful gifts. Easier and less expensive than you'd think and oh so satisfying to be able to do it yourself! You'll learn safe handling, needed equipment, where to buy ingredients and supplies. Kristin will make a batch of soap from scratch while you watch! You'll be able to take home two bars of soap and a complete handbook written by Kristin. Simple hot-process soap making lets you complete your soapmaking in only two hours. Learn hot process soap making. Make your own soap and use it tonight: with hot process soapmaking there is no waiting several weeks for your soap to "cure." Make your own soap with all-natural ingredients including milk. The make-it-yourself price works out to about $1.50 material cost per bar for natural, homemade soaps. Great for allergies and sensitive skin, and great as a thoughtful, handmade gift for the holidays or having on hand for last-minute gift-giving year-round. Your instructor is a safety-conscious mother of young children, and she will also share her tips for sourcing, buying and (not!) storing the highly caustic lye used in all soapmaking. Kristin's handmade soaps are also available for sale in our farmstore. $60/person SPACE AVAILABLE
Sat, Oct 27, 5pm to 8pm: How To Make Mead (Doug) Kookoolan Farms is also a fully-licensed winery. Doug Remington, manager of Main Street Homebrew Supply Store in Hillsboro, Oregon, is consulting meadmaker at Kookoolan Farms, currently authoring a new book on meadmaking that will be released in about a year, and is a fifteen-years-plus friend of Farmer Chrissie. Mead has historically been made by just about every culture on earth: a common, joyous, ancient thread shared by all cultures and societies all over the earth, each with our own spin on wines made from honey. Mead is just a genre, as beer or wine are genres: mead is any alcohol produced from honey as the primary source of fermentable sugar. Mead can be sweet or dry, sparkling or still, weak or strong in terms of alcohol content, and flavored with hundreds of fruit, herb or spice adjuncts. Grape juice mixed with honey, called pyment, is a time-honored tradition in many countries, and here in Oregon's wine country you can count on pinot noir pyments coming from Kookoolan. A “melomel” is mead made with any combination of honey and any kind of fruit juice, where the fruit juice is not just a flavoring after the fact but is part of the fermentable must; apples, cherries, and apricots are three of the most popular blends. Nobody knows the archaic words “sack” mead or “sack” wine anymore (meaning strong alcohol and sugar): these are sherry-style, or liqueur-style, or dessert-wine styles which are closest to my favorite meads. The best European meads are aged for five years or more in oak barrels, and Kookoolan World Meadery will definitely be producing a straight-up, oak-aged mead. The Picts, a particular tribe in Scotland, made a mead with heather blossoms; heather bitters the nectar much as hops do for beer, but in addition a wild fungus grows on the heather blossoms that produces a slightly psychotropic effect on the drinker. Queen Elizabeth’s favorite mead used bay leaves, thyme, rose petals, and lemon balm. In our class Doug will turn a bucket of honey into fermenting mead right before your eyes! This class includes detailed handouts enabling you to make mead at home, plus Doug will walk you through a generous tasting of a half dozen or so commercial and homebrew meads. $70/person includes tasting a $10 coupon good toward the purchase of anything from Kookoolan Farms. SPACE AVAILABLE, MUST BE 21.
Saturday, Nov 3, 1PM to 4PM: Cheddar 201, Artisanal Cheddar (Mary). We start with our own liquid raw cow milk, and by the end of the class, the cheese will be finished and in the press. Your instructor is Mary Rosenblum, local science fiction author, cheesemaker, and cheese judge. This class has a great cheese tasting plate, with eight different cheddars: local and imported, flavored and straight, young and well-aged, even one made from goat milk. You will learn the old-fashioned Real Cheddaring process, using traditional techniques, a step up in taste and complexity from simple farmhouse cheddar recipes. The class also covers the basics of making any kind of hard cheese. Our Cheddar 101 Basic Cheddar class is recommended but not required. Bonus: This class also includes how to make cottage cheese! $75 per person, SPACE AVAILABLE
Saturday, Nov 10, 2012, 1PM to 4PM: Sausage: Fresh and dry-cured (Rudy). How to stuff and season. Make and cook patties and links, and then make salami and maybe pork/fish sausage. This class is suitable for beginners. You'll taste several different homemade and artisan cured meats, and you'll get to take own your own curing pork belly for finishing at home as DIY bacon. $80 per person, SPACE AVAILABLE
Saturday, Dec 1, 2012, 1PM to 4PM: Mozzarella 201 (Mary). This class is a step up in complexity and flavor from the basic quick-method handmade mozzarella. We start with handmade curd from our own raw cow milk, refrigerated overnight, and you'll have hands-on experience kneading and forming the curd using traditional, artisanal, slower methods. This class does not have a brought-in cheese tasting plate because you'll be eating the cheese you make today, along with fresh bread, cured meats, and other goodies! Highly recommended for beginners. Our Mozzarella 101 class is not a prerequisite. $65 per person, SPACE AVAILABLE
Dec 8: Basic Soft Cheeses (Scott). One of our most popular classes, the ideal beginner's introduction to cheesemaking. Soft fresh cheeses are instant gratification! Learn chevre, fromage blanc, cream cheese, ice cream, and an introduction to surface-ripened soft cheeses such as brie. $70 per person. SPACE AVAILABLE
ABOUT THE LOCATION: Kookoolan Farms is a diversified, small family farm in Yamhill, Oregon. We raise chickens for meat and for eggs, cows for milk and for meat, and raise vegetables in 5,000 linear feet of 4-foot-wide raised beds. We are also a meadery and kombuchery. We offer a full line of cheesemaking ingredients, cultures and supplies from the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company and from Mad Millie’s Cheesemaking Supplies. www.kookoolanfarms.com We gladly accept check, cash, Visa, Mastercard, Discover and debit cards. We do ask you to pay in advance for classes.
Online registration and shopping cart coming soon!
