Cheesemaking in Italy

As I briefly mentioned in the previous post, my first big exposure to the food world was my work on my senior anthropology thesis.

I have to say that this project was probably one of the best decisions of my life. I worked for about a year with Karen Evans at Rollingstone Chèvre in Parma, Idaho (about 40 miles away from Boise). It’s 5 years later and she’s still one of my dearest friends and I frequently go out to visit her farm and her goats. The second part to the project was living for a summer on a farm in Italy. I arranged it through the organization WWOOF Italia (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms). It was in a tiny 35,000 person town in Calabria, Italy. Nobody spoke much, if any, English. Taking the leap to do that was terrifying, but a wonderful experience. I learned so much. 

I’ve already documented my experience there thoroughly on my other blog here. My final thesis is there, though it’s 50 pages long with some pretty detailed anthropological theory. I also presented my work at the Student Research Conference at the College of Idaho as well as at the National Conference for Undergraduate Research. Both videos are on the blog, as well as the thesis, some of the fieldwork notes and lots of pictures. 

Beware, there’s a lot of cheese talk. You may want to dive in only if you have a block available to eat with some nice bread