The cheeses should be regularly turned, for the first fortnight, every day, and have their faces thoroughly rubbed and polished with the naked hand. Nothing else will do so much to help form a satisfactory rind. A cloth carried along should be used to wipe off any surplus grease on the bench or turner, so as to prevent its daubing the next cheese and making additional work. This same cloth, thus made greasy, will answer the additional use of wiping off any mould that may be found collecting on the bandage.
In this way, a lot of cheese, with comparatively little additional work and trouble, but a trifle more attention, can be kept looking clean and wholesome; and if this neatness does not actually help improve the quality of the cheese—we think it does—it will so much improve the appearance, that you will not only be rewarded by the satisfaction afforded, but can safely count on a fraction more from the buyer—enough to more than pay for all the labor bestowed in curing.
CHAPTER XXII. SKIPPERS.
One of the most annoying things in the drying-room is the cheese-fly. It is very small but very effective in its way; and as it has the power to so rapidly increase its numbers, it sometimes gives a good deal of trouble. To a beginner, its ways seem almost past finding out, yet its path often becomes disgustingly visible.
We know of no sovereign remedy for these pests of the drying-room. The best preventive is perfect cleanliness in all the surroundings. No pools of whey or slops of any kind in, under or around the building, should be allowed to furnish the first broods. But few factories are so arranged as to leave no putrid whey-spouts or other receptacles for the eggs of the fly. When hot weather comes on, the flies, therefore, swarm all around the building; and most curing-rooms are so open as to afford them easy access. Once in the room, the trouble and warfare begin, and cease not until the dog-star no longer rages.
The cheese-fly is not very particular where it deposits its eggs—whether in the cracks in the benches or turners, in wrinkles in the bandage, in the checks in the rind of the cheese, or on the smooth face. If the weather is warm enough and there is the least bit of moisture, the eggs will hatch anywhere around the cheese. As soon as hatched, instinct leads the skipper to burrow in the cheese at once. It is a mistaken idea, we think, that the fly inserts the eggs. It drops them in clusters, wherever it is convenient. It may be on a turner, which is standing idle. It is taken up thoughtlessly, clapped over a cheese, which is turned on it, nicely covering the eggs, which hatch between it and the rind, and the brood is soon found thriving nicely in the cheese. Perhaps the eggs are laid on the smooth face of the cheese, in plain sight, if one looks carefully enough for them. The next time the cheese is turned, the eggs are in the same situation as those laid on the turner. They may be laid on the bench, and the cheese set on them. A careful hand, who is used to hunting eggs as well as skippers, will look closely for them everywhere, and be sure that the face of no cheese that has them on is turned down, and that no turner is used containing them. In all these cases, care and neatness have their advantages, and pay.
If a cheese is leaky, look out for it. We have seen the eggs of the cheese-fly deposited on the best cheeses; but sour, stinking, leaky cheeses attract them most. Here they are in their natural element. The eggs dropped on the moist cheese anywhere, even on the bandage, will do remarkably well. They no sooner hatch, than the tiny worm works its way through the bandage or rind into the cheese, and there he feasts, fattens and grows.
It is almost traditional that a skippery cheese is invariably a good one. We admit that good cheese may be skippery—it is so, sometimes; but the leaky, greasy, rank smelling and strong-tasting cheese, is the skipper's delight. In such a cheese, he luxuriates in all his disgusting glory.