To Everything There is a Season

The Judean Hills

The Judean Hills are exactly that – hills!  And hills are great for goats.  As compared with sheep and cows whose bodies are short and full and graze on level ground, goats are slender and have long legs, making them perfect for grazing in hilly and mountainous regions.  Also, the rotating seasons changes the mountainous foliage, resulting in variations in the taste and smell of the cheeses.

The road from the farm

The 40 year old goat and cheese farm of Shai Seltzer sits on these beautiful hills.  At the base of Eitan Mountain.

These days, Omer, Shai’s 37 year old son, is the primary cheese maker. He has several assistants, who help him take care of the land and the goats.  Omer left Israel to go to college at Cal Tech in the US and got a degree in dairy science, but he always knew he’d return to the farm and to cheese making.  He described a lot of similarities between his degree and his father’s knowledge and interest of botany in terms of feeding the forest and feeding the goats, both required to make delicious cheese.

I started my adventure to the Seltzer farm early yesterday morning.  I thought I was finished for a while with waking up at 5 am – but that’s what I needed to do to get to the bus stop at Mevasseret Zion Sderet HaHotsviim Shera Ahayot (MZSHSA for future reference) by 8:00 where Omer told me he would meet me.  Getting there was an adventure in itself. Although Mevasseret Zion was only a 15 minute bus ride on #183 from Binyaney Haluma in Jerusalem, it was 45 minutes from the apartment.   First I had to figure out what MZSHSA and Binyaney Haluma were.  

Binyaney Haluma is the World Congress Center in Jerusalem – that was the easy part – thank goodness for Google.  I figured out that Mevasseret Zion is a town and SHSA was a bus stop in the town.  When I got on the #183 bus the driver didn’t seem to know what SHSA was.  I knew I was on the right bus, but I was worried that the driver didn’t know what I was talking about – he didn’t speak English!  Fortunately some students on the bus helped me figure out where I needed to get off. There was a lot of Googling to figure it all out - Google works in all languages!

On our drive to the farm Omer told me that week days at the farm are work days and that visitors came to the farm for the cheese only on weekends.  This was Sunday – the first day of the week in Israel – so it was a work day.  I felt very lucky that Omer was willing to have me come on a Sunday and to pick me up at the bus.   It was a long ride to the farm from the bus stop and I could not have walked.  Being there on a Sunday also meant that I’d be working - good!

Shai and Omer Seltzer

I was lucky to meet Shai Seltzer when we arrived at the farm.  He’s a 77 years old slender, cheerful man with a long white beard. Despite his reputation as being quiet and very private, he welcomed me to his farm with a big smile.  He had lots of question for me about why I had come to the farm.  Shai is well known in the specialty and artisanal cheese world.  He has developed methods for making the most delicious cheese by combining the right goats with the right environment and the right aging process.  His cheese age in natural lime stone caves.

The first job of the day was to take the huge bale of hay (maybe several bales) off the back of the truck.  The hay was wrapped and carefully tied with a large rope which was then tied on the other end to a strong tree.  The truck moved forward and the hay fell off the truck.  It was brilliant - at least to me!  Then the hay was pushed down the hill to its next destination.  It took four men to push the hay down the hill. 

Good morning ladies

Water anyone?

By then it was about 9:00 and time for the goats to leave their pens and go up into the mountains to graze for a few hours.  The pens are quite large and the goats are not crowded at all – they are safe and secure and seem very happy with their location, especially knowing that twice a day they will be released to the beautiful mountains.

In one quick moment the gate was opened, the goats left the pens en masse and headed right to their path, somewhat like the running of the bulls in Pamplona.  


They do this every day so they know the routine. Several of them stop on the way for a quick drink of water.  One of the helpers leads the way and the other helper stays at the end of the group to be sure none of the goats drifted off.  It was quite an amazing scene and reminded me of a Cascade bike ride – always having a leader at the front and one sweeping at the end to be sure none of us got lost.

There are about 150 female and 11 male goats whose job is to assure the continuation of the species.  These are a special breed of goats. It happens to be mating season right now. When I asked Omer about the percentage of the goats that become pregnant each year he said “100%”.  Busy boys!!!  Omer explained that about 30% of the herd is turned over each year in order to keep the milking goat herd young.  Because the goats are numbered and are milked by machine it’s possible to know how much milk each goat generates.  They also keep track of the number of kids each goat produces.  The “less successful” goats are usually sold. 

Now it was time for me to get to work.  Omer took me to the cheese room where he donned a lab coat to protect the cheese from his dusty clothing, and we both put on gloves. The small room, walls and all, is actually bleached for several hours each day to be sure the environment stays clean. 

Each type of cheese requires different maintenance to correctly move it through the maturing process. The first thing we did was turn the cheese.  During early stages, each cheese is turned every single day to assure that all sides are evenly exposed to the air.  We turned mostly soft cheese of several different varieties including some that were wrapped in grape leaves and some that had been exposed to charcoal.  Charcoal is used to protect the cheeses and also improves the surface molds on the cheese. Some of the cheese we turned out of the containers they had just been made in the day before.

At this point Omer determined that I could work independently.  He explained that in order for blue cheese to have its streaks, the mold, which causes the color, needs to be exposed to air throughout – not just on the exterior.  He showed me how to put holes in the cheese in a specific pattern, which allowed for just the right amount of air.  He left me to put holes in a lot of cheese, and went off to do other things.  Brave man!

Holy cheese

The next task was with a cheese called “Montego” that had been in the cooler for four months. This cheese has a crust on which the mold grows.  Mold is good when it comes to cheese.  

These cheeses are large, bulky and heavy. Because of their size and a smaller relative surface area, they stay more moist than smaller cheeses.  My job was to wash the mold off the crust of each cheese to prepare it for the next step. Each cheese was put in a tub of water to soften the mold, then the mold was washed off of each one, rinsed with a hose and placed on a cart to wait for Omer. This was wet, dirty work and was done outside the cheese room where water hoses and drains were located.  While I washed the cheese Omer coated each clean one with olive oil. When all were finished Omer and I put the cheeses in crates and carried the crates to the “cave” where each cheese was carefully placed on shelves inside a cave-like room where it would stay for at least another three months.  I asked Omer how he keeps track of the stages of all of the different cheeses.  He smiled and said “You just get to know the seasons”.

After we sprayed all the work surfaces with soap, scrubbed and rinsed each cart and table, I was finally able to sit down at a little tree-shaded picnic-type table to rest.  I had worked hard!  A moment later Omer walked over and handed me a glass bottle of something cold and white. Fresh goat milk yogurt, slightly tart but delicious, and so refreshing; nothing at all likes the yogurt from the grocery store.  Before taking me back to the bus he also brought me some mature Montego cheese which seemed appropriate as much effort was put into this cheese today. It was a perfect ending to a wonderful day.