Shepherd Becomes The Dairyman
(Continued from Page A 32)
are added to the milk in a tem
perature-controlled “traditional
Dutch vat.” Each batch that is
made requires constant attention.
Wajswol said that his hand is in
the vat “feeling the curd” for
about three hours out of the five
hour process.
When he determines that the
curd consistency is just right, the
cheese is placed in special plastic
molds and whey is squeezed from
it in a wooden cheese press simi
lar to that used for centuries in
Europe. This is also time-con
suming, with the cheese wheels
needing to be turned every 20
minutes through the four-hour
process.
Once in the cave, the cheese
wheels need close monitoring and
must be turned and wiped daily.
Every step along the way re
quires sharp attention to the
quality of the work in progress,
Wajswol noted.
Chesapeake’s Health Takes Turn For Worse
ANNAPOLIS, Md. Govern
ment’s failure to stem the enor
mous flow of nitrogen and phos
phorus pollution into the
Chesapeake Bay is the most im
portant factor in the decline in
the bay’s health this year, accord
ing to the Chesapeake Bay Foun
dation’s (CBF) sixth annual
“State of the Bay Report.”
The report finds that on a scale
of 0 to 100 (100 reflecting the
pristine Bay Captain John Smith
described in the 1600 s), the Bay’s
health rates a 27, down one pint
from 2002’s rating.
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“This cheese needs company
when its being made,” he said.
“There’s no ‘automatic.’ Auto
matic doesn’t make great
cheese.”
Another challenging aspect of
sheep dairying is care of the ewes
themselves.
Wajswol allows the sheep to
graze as much as possible and
doesn’t administer wormers or
other medications while the ewes
are milking from April to No
vember.
But East Friesian sheep have
their share of troubles, according
to Wajswol. These include lamb
ing difficulties and a tendencies
toward ailments such as pneumo
nia.
Wajswol uses estrus synchroni
zation and artificial insemination
to have the ewes iamb in April.
Lambing season is hectic because
of the number of ewes that need
assistance.
“We don’t sleep in April,” he
said.
Today’s report comes less than
one month before the 20th anni
versary of the Chesapeake clean
up program, an event that will be
marked on Dec. 9 by the region’s
top elected and appointed offi
cials.
“It is a tragedy that instead of
celebrating the 20th anniversary
of the Chesapeake Bay Program
this year with progress toward a
restored Bay, we must report that
the Bay has taken a turn for the
worse,” CBF President William
C. Baker said. “Three and a half
years after making the commit-
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The flock is milked in a porta
ble parlor that Wajswol built
himself, based on a Swiss design.
Average milk production for
East Friesians is 5 to 6 pounds
per day.
Sheep milk is extraordinarily
rich in solids up to 10 percent
protein and 7 percent butterfat,
according to Wajswol. It is natu
rally homogenized and yields
about one pound of cheese for
seven pounds of milk, compared
to the ratio of about 1:10 for cows
milk.
Wajswol’s wife Debra and chil
dren Chelsea, 13, and Ethan, 11,
help with the milking and other
jobs on the dairy, including the
important job of taste-testing
cheeses.
Wajswol said that a big invest
ment is needed to make good
quality cheese. His new large
scale operation, which will in
clude a cave built into a hillside,
a retail store, and accomodations
merit to a restored Bay by 2010,
the states and federal govern
ment have yet to implement any
decisive actions that will, in fact,
begin to reduce nitrogen and
phosphorus pollution, the prime
cause of the bay’s illness.”
The “State of the Bay Report”
which CBF issues for the first
time in 1998, is a comprehensive
measure of the bay’s health. For
the report, CBF analyzes 13 indi
cators: oysters, shad, underwater
grasses, wetlands, forested buf
fers, toxics, water clarity, dis
solved oxygen, crabs, striped bass
PHONE:
r Farming, Saturday, November 29,2003-A33
Cheese wheels ripen in Wajswol’s cave.
for tourists to watch sheep-milk- “You gotta love it and put a
ing and cheesemaking, will cost whole lot into it to get it right,”
about $2 million. he said.
(rockfish), resource lands, phos
phorus, and nitrogen. CBF scien
tists compiled and examined the
best available historical and up
to-date information for each indi
cator and assigned it an index
number.
This year’s decline was the re
sult of increased nitrogen and
phosphorus pollution and the re
lated increases in “dead zones”
(areas of the Bay and its tributar
ies where oxygen levels are too
low to sustain life), as well as de
creases in water clarity.
Chesapeake scientists have de
scribed precisely the series of ac
tions that will be necessary to im
prove water quality consistent
with the requirements of the fed
eral Clean Water Act. Yet, these
actions have not been implement-
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The Clean Water Act requires
that ali permits for sewage treat
ment plants, industries, large ani
mal operations, and municipal
stormwater be sufficiently strin
gent to protect water quality.
“The states and EPA simply
are not enforcing the law,” Baker
said. “There are thousands of
permits issued in the watershed,
and I can count on one hand the
number that have both nitrogen
and phosphorus restrictions.”
Other factors contributing to
the decline were state budget
problems that have slowed land
preservation efforts and the con
tinued dangerously low levels of
the blue crab population.
Improvements were seen this
year in forest buffer restoration
as a result of federal/
state/private partner
ships and shad popula
tion increases that have
been observed in all the
major tributaries.
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