Tara Tarbet from Highland, Utah
“When I got married 30 years ago, I couldn’t do a thing! Well…. I could make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, but that was about it. Lots and lots of stuff to learn and do while we’re alive! I just take one step at a time and figure it out as it comes!”
Well Tara Tarbet has certainly figured out how to do a whole lot of stuff! She has a wonderful blog (Welcome Home Farm) which she says “isn’t as good as The Barefoot Kitchen Witch’s -she is wonderful!.”
(Note: Jayne-if you are reading this, I hope you realize how much your blog is appreciated!)
This is Tara’s impressive blog profile:
We homeschool Vet2Be so he has time to spend with the animals and get all his schoolwork done. We also have a son (Son1) who is fluent in Spanish and currently works for Hubby, two married daughters (Teacher, and RN) and one daughter who is studying BioChemistry (Prion) at a state university. I also love to play and teach guitar. And I’m learning banjo and piano! I lead a bluegrass band of about 9 teenagers ages 12-16.
Are you as impressed as we are? The amazing thing is that she found the time to write to us with her tip for heating milk on the stove (September Moosletter).
You sound like a busy person.
How do you find the time to make cheese?
Hmmm… How do I find the time to make cheese? Very carefully! I usually make soft cheeses like chevre, feta, and mozzarella, because they take less babysitting. It helps that I don’t watch TV, either. There are so many more enjoyable things to do than sit in front of the ‘tube’.
Once in a while we will rent a movie, but our ‘down time’ is usually spent on hobbies instead. I’m a guitar instructor in ‘real life’, which takes alot of my time. I usually have between 15 and 20 students, and we also have a little student bluegrass band. I’m the choir director at church, too. Often the house doesn’t get cleaned as often as it should, and the weeding doesn’t get done often enough, either! I steal bits and pieces of time throughout the week to do the things that I like to do, like making cheese. Life goes in cycles, in the winter I don’t make much cheese because we don’t have as much milk. Instead I spend more time quilting, spinning, knitting, and arranging music for my students.
How did you get started making cheese?
What are you making?
I started a batch of Feta this morning. It is done draining and I am ready to slice it up this evening. I read an old(1970’s-ish) Solait Cheesemaking pamphlet that said to use yogurt as a starter for Feta. Instead of the mesophilic starter in Home Cheesemaking I used some homemade goat milk yogurt, then I follow the other directions in the book.
We also love to make yogurt. We eat about a gallon a week between the three of us at home right now.
I also have 1/2 gallon of milk on the counter to see if it will clabber. Someone asked me about clabbered milk and I did some reading on the internet to find out what it was. It is similar to buttermilk, but it is made with raw milk and no starter. That’s one of the experiments I’m working on this week. Apparently every farmhouse kitchen had a ‘clabber jar’ on the counter. One woman on Basic Cheesemaking (a yahoo group) said that she freezes her drained clabbered milk and makes a ‘killer cheesecake’ out of it in the winter. I’m waiting for the recipe because that sounds wonderful to me! (Note: Tara made clabbered milk after she sent this in, and it’s all on her blog.)
How old is your son and how did he end up with 4 dairy goats?
Did he show at the fair this year?
We think Matt is well on his way to being a vet! He can probably start taking on clients anytime now. Thank you, Tara.
Julie Renee Holland says
I was lucky enough to meet Tara a few years ago. I have to say that she is very generous with her time and her information. Tara and her family do a great job with their farm and they are considered a local resource among the DIY families in this area.