Pass the Cheese Please!

Parole: Caseificio (cheesehouse), fattoria per la produzione di latte (dairy farm), mungiturare (to milk)

Happy Mid-May!  I have been very busy since spring break with our work experiences and other things that we have been doing.  The weather has been warm to almost too hot, and has been nearly always sunny.  Today is no exception, being in the mid-80s and sunny as can be.  Here is a recap of some of the things I have been up to.

Caseificio

For the first week of the work experience portion of our program, I worked at a small Caseificio called Punto Latte. Punto Latte makes 6 wheels of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese a day.  Being small, we were able to stop and talk a lot about the cheese making, so we could fully understand the entire process.  We were also able to help make the cheese.  The milk used at the caseificio is from their own farm and one other farm.  Also on site there is a pig farm and a cheese/meat/salami shop.  At the caseficio, I learned a lot about the art of making Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.  Daily, there are so many small adjustments to be made to the amount of rennet (caglio) and siero innestra (whey from the previous day’s cheese; used for maintaining bacterial profile and increasing acidity of the milk) that is added to the caldron.  I did not realize just how much the acidity of the siero innestra and the milk would affect how much ingredients were put in and the quality of the cheese.  Also, the size of the curd has a lot of effect on the cheese.  Too small, and the cheese will be too dry, too large, and it will ferment during aging.  The milk fat affects how long the cheese can be aged and the milk protein (specifically casein) affects the overall cheese yield.  In general, it takes 16 kg of milk to make 1 kg of Parmigiano-Reggiano.  After the initial action, the cheese is more or less molded into the wheel shape, put in a salt bath for 20 days, and aged for 12 to 30 months.  The average is 24 months, and at 12 months it is checked by a quality control institute and branded with the Parmigiano-Reggiano consorzio marking.  If it is not up to standards, the rind is ground off, and it is sold as a regular, “national grade” parmigiano type cheese.

Because of the other operations at the caseficio, we also watched pig halves be cut up into pieces to be sold in the shop, saw their pig operation, and saw some prepping for making salamis.  We also toured the dairy farm where the milk comes from to make the cheese.  The owner of the farm has very good dairy genetics as a result of meeting Dr. Robert Everett when he came to Modena a long time ago.

Paganina Dairy Farm

My second work experience was at a large dairy farm called Paganina.  This farm milks nearly 1000 cows, and had another 1000 in young stock.  I had never worked on a farm this large before; I have only toured them.  The farm’s milk went to their own caseificio to make Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese.  For facilities, all barns were cover-all type buildings, and in the building with the parlor, there were locker rooms, a commercial kitchen for everyone to use, and an office.

While we were there, we worked mostly with the vet and herd management staff, and we milked in the parlor.  Their parlor is a double-40 parallel.  This means that 80 cows are in the parlor at a time, and each group of 40 was in there for about 20 minutes.  Therefore, in less than an hour, I milked the equivalent of my entire milking herd at my farm at home.   There were usually 4-5 people milking.

Each cow has an ankle RFID bracelet/pedometer, which is a part of their “Total Dairy Management” program.  The cow is recognized by the system as she enters the parlor, and her activity level, milk, and milk conductivity are automatically entered into the system.  As she leaves the parlor, she is stopped on a set of scales, and she is weighed.  At this station, the computer also decides if she can return with the rest of the herd, or if she needs to go to the vet check pens.  If she has had a spike in activity level, needs to be checked for pregnancy, or a milker entered a problem code into the keypad in the parlor, a gate swings and she is separated.  I think this total integration is very cool.  It is neat to look at graphs of all of this data, and it helps in diagnosing problems.  One cow lost 100 kg (220 pounds) in one day.  She was sent by the system to the vet check pen.  She had a bad foot, which explains everything.

We got a lot of practical experiences working with the vets.  We got to practice a lot of rectal exams (or as they call it, “rectal exploration”) to understand the reproductive state of the animal.  We would feel for follicles, swelling, abnormalities, and pregnancies.  If she was in heat, manure was put on her rump to mark it (tradition on the farm) and then later she would be bred.  We learned how to prepare semen for AI, and since Liz is AI certified, she was able to breed some cows (with the help of a step-stool, of course).  One of the vets, Toto, liked the idea.  He is not any taller than Liz, and when I was there, he bred his first cow at this particular farm, and used the help of a stool as well.  While I worked with the vets, I gave a lot of shots and was able to help with a lot of therapies.  We also checked every breeding age heifer every day for heat.  If she was showing signs of heat, we did a rectal exam to confirm.

I learned a lot at this farm, especially because we spent a lot of hours there and worked with the vet staff.  It was my first time doing a lot of the things that we did with the vets, because my farm is so small that we don’t have nearly as many animals that need to be worked on.  I also learned a lot about how to improve personnel management on the farm.  It was nice to have an experience which was very hands on.  Both at the farm and the caseficio we were able to significantly improve our comprehension of Italian, as we were listening to it all the time.

Odds & Ends

Last week we did the next step for our “residence permit”.  Monday was our appointment at the immigration office.  We thought that we would be done with this whole process after this appointment, however, we are not.  We went to the immigration office, waited an hour, got called up basically to make sure that we were at the office, waited another hour, got called up for photo IDs and fingerprinting, and then waited some more, and then were called up to get our fingerprints taken again, along with our palm prints taken.  We were told last fall by the Visa Office in NYC that all we needed to do was turn in paperwork to the police office.  This whole thing is a bureaucracy madhouse in which we have had to do more paperwork, pay nearly 70 Euros, and waste a lot of time and fuel.  Our next appointment is in July, which is after we leave, as they know.  This whole “residence permit” seems pointless and has wasted many of our limited days here in Italy.

In a couple days I will post some more, so this post isn’t overwhelmingly long.  I hope the rain at home stops soon!

A dopo!

Here is the final chapter about my spring break.  This week, as a part of our work experience, I have been working at a caseificio called Punto Latte, in Novi di Modena.  I have learned a lot about Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese production and about cuts of pork.  Cheese making truly is an art.  I will have more details about all of this towards the end of the week.  I hope you enjoy the last part of my vacation!  I sure did!

Stockholm

The last day of my break was spent in Stockholm.  Stockholm is made up of many Islands and is the capital of Scandinavia.  Its Old Town truly seems like a completely different city than the rest of Stockholm.  It has such a different atmosphere to it.  Old town, like in many old parts of cities, has stone streets, narrow alleyways, the royal palace, large churches, and parliament.  Stockholm, like most Swedish towns, has a walking-only street.  The one is Stockholm is MUCH larger than the one in Uppsala.  It is like a “downtown” type area, with lots of little shops, restaurants, and pubs.  Stockholm also has a massive public transportation hub, for buses, subways, and trains.

The Swedish language was difficult to figure out.  Some words looked very similar to English words, or were English, but the rest looked (to me) like gibberish.  The Swedish language is the closest language to that of what the Vikings spoke (very cool).  Further, a majority of people (or at least of the ones that I ran into) spoke Swedish and English.  Many of them, like announcers on our cruises and in train stations, would switch back and forth with no problem and hardly any accent.  The word for Hello in Swedish is “Hej”, pronounced like a soft, friendly “hey” in English, making it difficult to figure out if the person you are about to speak with, knows your language.

The Vasa

We walked around Stockholm a bit, and then we headed to the Vasa Museum.  The Vasa is a very old, elegant warship built by Sweden, which sunk in the Stockholm harbor in 1628.  She was about 1500 meters into her maiden voyage.  The ship had two levels of gun chambers and little room for ballast, so it was tipsy.  Investigations seem to conclude that it was poor design.  However, no one was blamed for the accident.  This is because half way through the building of the Vasa, the King demanded that a second floor or cannons be added.  This through off the balance of the entire ship, and as she tipped, the openings for the cannons were closer to the water than other ships, so she took on water, and went down.

The ship was recovered in the 1960s, and the entire project took several years to carefully excavate and bring to the surface.  It was well preserved in the anaerobic environment 40 meters deep into the sea.  It was slowly lifted by cables, and holes in the hull were repaired so it could float once it got to the surface.  Upon recovery, many skeletons were found.  Most of them were found alone, except for a man and a woman that were found together on the upper deck.  One skeleton was found pinned under a cannon carriage.  Not all of the sails were flying when it sunk, so several sails were found in the sail cabinet, never used.

The Vasa itself was very elegant and had a well thought out design (you know, except for the while faulty ballast engineering thing, which caused her to sink.  But we won’t talk about that).  The back of the ship was full of colorful statues, the coat of arms of Sweden, and the coat of arms of the Vasa family.  There were lions on all of the cannon port openings.  The lion is a symbol of Sweden, representing power and strength.  There were also lions on very front of the boat.  Sticking out from the sides, the ship had “musketeers’ quarters” for close contact battles with other ships.  Further, there were holes to drain water out of the boat  from upper levels, which would be plugged during battles, and the water would be pumped around the ship as fire-prevention.  This pump was a hallowed out log, and it worked similarly to a manual air pump for a bike tire.

Old Town

In the evening, I said goodbye to Kaylie, Adam, and Danna, and I stayed in Stockholm for the night because of early flight the next morning.  This is when I realized that I truly am a wanderer.  I enjoyed wandering around the old town some more, and finding the best place to see the sunset in the harbor.  While I was taking pictures, I noticed that a building across the harbor had a tower with a crescent on it, and another tower with stars on it.  Earlier that day, I saw a picture of only the crescent and the stars from this building on a postcard.  This is when I realized, that, the way I see it, a postcard is a challenge. You go to a place, see postcards, and they are usually some of the better sights of a city.  AND, you cannot buy a postcard with something on it that you have not actually seen, because that is called cheating the system!  I realized that the way I travel, is that I turn postcards into challenges for myself, which is perfect for my hobby of wandering around to get to know a place.

Parliament is connected to the Royal Palace through a tunnel under a bridge connecting the islands that the two are on.  Parliament looks like a really old structure, but it also has some relatively modern additions built right on top of it.  Appropriately, all of these buildings have lions on them.

Final Flight and what’s Next

I had an early flight out of Stockholm Skavsta on my final morning (Tuesday).  The landing into Milano Bergamo gave me the most beautiful view of the Alps.  Ever.  No argument about it.  (In case you were wondering, this is my 5^th flight over the alps since January 2010).  The airport I landed at is just south of the Alps, so we were very close to them on a clear, sunny morning.  The puffy clouds looked so beautiful with the snow covered alps sticking through them.  I couldn’t get a picture good enough to capture the true beauty of the Alps.

My spring break was an awesome experience, especially because I got to meet up with friends also studying around Europe.  I am so glad that got to see other countries, especially because I do not know if or when I will have the opportunity to travel in Europe again.  I never thought that I would ever be so far north or so close to Russia (while I was in Estonia, rumor had it that we were within 300 miles of Moscow….I looked at a map and we were even closer to St. Petersburg.)  The sunrise was at 4:30 am when I was on my way to the airport on Tuesday.  It is amazing the difference in the length of day between Italy and Sweden, purely due to geography.

The rest of the week I spent organizing pictures, writing about spring break, catching up on the news and with some friends back home, and working on some projects at the Faculty.

Best of luck to everyone back home as they finish up their final week of classes and enjoy finals week (if you can), and with the crazy weather in NY lately!

Parole: rompere (to break), pianificare (to plan),

Wow!  I can’t believe that it has been 12 days since my last post!  This last week was the final week of the coursework portion of our exchange program, so naturally it was a busy one.  We have the next two weeks off and when we come back, our work experiences will begin.

IZSLER

Last Friday with our Food Safety class, we visited the Instituto Zooprofilattico Sperimentale della Lombardia e dell’ Emilia Romagna.  This more or less means we went an organization which does consulting, experiments, and lab work for anything that has to do with animals and food.  There is an entire network of these institutes across Italy, and the one in Brescia is the headquarters for the regions of Lombardia and Emilia Romagna, and is where the milk testing lab is.  We learned a lot about what the Instituto does, and toured the facilities.  They began milk testing for quality reasons as it was related to milk pricing.  Now they do tests on individual cow’s samples and daily bulk tank samples.  They also test the long term stability of foods in their “challenge lab”, where they make foods or new food ideas from producers and see what happens from a microbiological standpoint.

Dairy Farm, Horse Breeding, and a Milk Processing plant

Tuesday, we went on a surprise field trip with Giovanni and Giuseppe for ag systems, and we visited a 450 cow dairy farm with a 30 stall herringbone rotary parlor.  The workers stand on the inside of this rotary, and it only requires 2 workers because they can walk straight across the middle instead of around the outside of the carousel.  They also have many horses they use for breeding, some beef cattle, and lots of solar panels.  We saw a couple fouls that were born within the past week.

After lunch, we went to a latteria¸ which processes Provolone Dolce and Provolone Picante (like a sharper, more flavorful cheese, not necessarily “hot and spicy), Grana Padano (a cheese that is made in a process similar to Parmigiano-Reggiano, however is not the same as it), UHT milk, and fresh milk. We toured the cheese making facilities and at the end, we got to taste some cheeses in the cutting room.  The Provolone was the best that I have had.  It was Picante, and had a strong flavor.  After the cheese facilities, we toured the fresh milk processing and we were each given a liter bottle of milk.  That milk was the first fresh milk we have had here in Italy.  We usually but the UHT milk because it is cheaper and does not need to be refrigerated (yeah it takes some getting used to seeing milk on a shelf.  Eggs don’t seem to be refrigerated in stores either).  The UHT packaging is especially neat because the containers are filled aseptically, meaning without coming into contact with air after pasteurization.  This means they are filled in a vacuum.  It was a productive day and it was interesting to see what a commercial, “American sized” milk processing facility looks like here in Italy.

TIM

Down the road we have a small TIM store.  TIM is telecom Italian Mobile—my cell phone carrier here.   The same two women are always working in the store whenever we visit.  Last weekend, I gave in and bought an internet key—it was just too frustrating at times not having internet in the apartment.  It was also a really good deal.  When you buy an internet key, they need to copy your passport.  The women know some English, and were reading the “We the people…” section of the passport, and said “we want to go to New York!  How about you run the TIM store and we come to New York?”  Today I stopped in to put some more credit on my phone, and when we walk by we make sure that we wave.  It’s fun to get to know and talk with the locals.

Silages

Wednesday we went to a seminar in the morning on Silages and Inoculants presented by Dr. Limin Kung Jr, PhD from the University of Delaware.  It was presented to the Faculty in English, and Federico had to translate to Italian.  He did a great job.  After, we went to dinner with some faculty members and with Dr. Kung.  Dr. Kung knows Van Amburgh and Overton, speaks at a lot of meetings in the northeast, and does research with the Miner Institute.

Dinner with Bentley

Thursday night we were invited to go to dinner with our Cultural Aspects of Food professor—Stefano.  He teaches for the ALMA Culinary institute, and his class of 20 American students was going to an authentic Sardinian dinner, and he invited us along.  As always, it was delicious.  We had many antipasti, and the main dish was a suckling pig.  The antipasti included cold cuts, salami, dried eggplant, tomatoes, breads, and a minced fish in a sauce with celery sticks.  The pig was juicy and delicious.  We also had a red wine to accompany the meal.  Most of the antipasti had cheese on them.  Usually it was some type of sheep cheese, as sheep farming and cheese making is very popular in Sardinia.  The restaurant owner himself is Sardinian, and he came out several times to check on us.  It was a very filling and a meal that was worth the money.

Bad Luck

For me, this week has been full of both good and bad things.  On a good note, this week Federico gave us the bikes that he has been telling us all about.  It is so nice to bike to and from the Vet campus.  When you include walking to the bus station and the tardiness of the bus system, going to the faculty by bus can be a 30 to 50 minute commute.  On bikes?  I have made it in 9.  Everything is so flat around here too, so it is easier than biking around Ithaca.  The only hills we have are to go under the rail on each side of the river.  These hills also cause some problems.

Being a road bike, “ol’ red”, my bike, has a few gears to choose from, but the only way to change the gear is to take the chain off.  Let’s just say that my bike thought it was time to shift.  Read that as I was coasting fast back up hill after going fast downhill under the train tracks, and the chain came off.  I coasted to the top of the hill and tried to get it back on.  I noticed that the chain was on the second smallest gear that day, and it seemed like it was pedaling harder than it was the previous days, leading me to think that the chain slipped to the smaller gear at some point (as the sprockets are not light up straight with each other).  So I wanted to put it on the next gear, where I thought that it was before.  I put the chain on the rear sprocket and popped it on the front one, but I popped it on too tight.  The bearing is bad that the rear sprocket is on, and it pulled it forward with all of the pressure of the tight chain, and now it doesn’t pedal at all.  Looks like I need to loosen the rear wheel and slide it forward to get the chain back off and maybe put a new bearing on it.  Guess I will be borrowing some tools from Federico soon.

To top things off, I also do not have a camera.  My trustee GE J1455 camera bit the dust this week—or rather, got bit by pavement.  I don’t really understand how it happened entirely, but as I was pulling it out of my pocket to take a picture, it fell to the ground, on the lens, with the lens extended.  No more pictures from that camera.  The lens rattles, there is no picture, and the screen says better luck next time.

Cibus Tour

Friday we went to the Fiera, which is an exhibition center.  It has many open halls and buildings for exhibitors.  This weekend the Cibus tour is there, and it features local producers and displays with the Slow Food Foundation.  The Slow Food Foundation purchases foods from small, traditional producers and markets them, in order for the producer to remain in business.  We tasted so many samples of balsamic vinegars, oils, salamis, cured meats, and cheeses.  We also picked up a lot of literature on local producers.  Further, we also saw the producer that we visited last week with Bentley, who made the Culatello for the upcoming Royal Wedding.

Now is the start to spring break.  We will be busy traveling somewhat separate ways as we meet up with other friends studying all around Europe.  This means it may be a while before I write again.

Ciao!

Nuevo parole di Italiano: fattoria (farm), caseificio (cheese house),

The official first week of classes for Universita’ degli studi di Parma has begun.  So what did we do this week?  We had some experiences on the Parma buses, learned some Italian, visited a farm, enrolled in the University, and paid some rent.

We have now figured out the bus system here in the city.  As you know, our last trip on the buses lasted a little bit longer than we expected it to.  We now have a bus pass for a month, and then in April we can buy a three month bus pass if we want to.  They only sell the “three month” passes every three months.

After our bus adventure, Federico decided the next day that he would pick us up at our apartment.  We went to the vet faculty and did some more translating of the blog and learned some more grammar from Federico.

Wednesday, Federico picked us up in the vet faculty’s van.  This van is like a box.  The sides and the back are literally straight up and down.  From our apartment we went to a dairy farm owned by the Scalabrini family, about 25 kilometers outside of the city.  It is a “antica fattoria e caseifico”, meaning it is an old farm and a cheese house.  The site includes its 300 cow dairy operation, its cheese production facility, and a store.  This combination is something found often in Italy.  As they are producing genuine parmigiano-reggiano cheese, they cannot feed fermented forages or TMR as per their co-op’s requirements.  They feed hay and grain.  They are not looking for quantity, but quality.  Further, the evenings milk sets in shallow vats in the cheese plant overnight in order to separate the solids, and when the mornings milk arrives, the partially-skimmed milk is added, and the cheese making process begins.  This means that timing is crucial.  As such, the farm uses a double 14 parlor in order to milk their 300 cows fast to feed the cheese plant.  This is a common practice in Italy.   Unlike in the States where parlors often run around the clock, they only milk for 4 hours a day to get the milk to their cheese plant on time.   At the end of the tour, Federico bought us 2 kilograms of Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, and the farm owner gave us what is an equivalent to about 2 containers of fresh Ricotta cheese.  (Grazie mille per Federico e la famigla Scalabrini!)  We mixed the ricotta with some tomato sauce and threw it in with some big noodles for dinner.  It was very delicious.

Today Federico picked us up again and took is to the central offices of the University in a small car, called a Fiat Panda.

The offices are located in the center of the city in a building that we have heard is upwards of 400 years old.  According to [http://old.unipr.it/ects.php?info=Guidaateneo&tipo=a0506&ID=4&lang=en], the earliest diploma found from the University was from 962 AD.  In the central offices, we went to the Erasmus department, which is the European name for an exchange program.  Here, we paid our rent (350€, which is roughly $482), got enrolled in the University, and learned about the bus system as I mentioned earlier.  However, to be fully enrolled, we need to bring passport-type photos to the Erasmus office, so we can get our ID cards and our exam booklet.  Luckily, we can just go to a photo booth (like the fun ones in malls) at the train station to get instant passport photos ourselves, relatively cheaply.  Once that is finished, we will be completely enrolled.

After enrollment, we took the bus “campus”.  What they call campus is where the main academic buildings and departments are, including the basics:  The ag school, engineering, math, sciences, and linguistics, among others.  We headed to the linguistics department for our first day of an elementary Italian course.  It was a bit overwhelming, but the translating that we did, our background in Spanish, and the lessons with Federico gave us enough background to understand what was going on—for the most part.  In the class there were students from Poland, Portugal, the UK, and Iran.  They knew much more Italian than we did.

Following class, we went back to the central offices for a meeting for Erasmus students about a teaching placement opportunity.  The University partners with local primary and middle schools and lets exchange students help teachers teach their native language.  This means that we would be able to go to an elementary or middle school and help teach English-an AWESOME opportunity.  We also can get credit for this if we put in enough hours.  Our ability to do this will depend on our class schedule, which we will find out about next week.

One more day of classes, and then we are off to Milan for a day trip on Saturday (at least that is the plan so far).

Arrivederci!