Little mountain cheeses

It’s up all the way to Portela da Nave - until you get to the first white house that appears on the road. It’s here that work starts before sunrise everyday. At six in the morning, Idálio Martins is already in his little cheese factory for the first task of the day – turning on the gas to boil the caldron of goat’s milk. Then there’s time for a change of clothes, and off he goes to start milking.

His little cheeses come from the work he puts in with his flock of 150 goats. Goats he likes to look after himself. “Yes, I have the soul of a shepherd! It’s something I’ve loved doing since I was a child. I never felt embarrassed about it – and there’s a lot of that mentality about, which is why, of course, there are less and less young people interested in working in agriculture. They may not have a job, but they’d be embarrassed being seen planting potatoes, or picking carobs!” He tells, completely matter-of-fact.

But, at the same time, Idálio accepts his chosen sector is very demanding. “Whenever animals are involved, it means there’s work to do seven days a week. For example, the flock has to be taken out to pasture for between two to three hours, morning and afternoon”, he explains.

Milking is done mechanically, it its own area next to the paddock – about two kilometres away. Afterwards, the milk is transported in churns for cold-storage (between 2.5º and 3.5º C).

Only after finishing his chores does Idálio Martins have time for breakfast – a fresh goat’s cheese with strawberry jam. “I’ll never get sick of it”, he laughs. The routine only takes a break on Tuesdays, his “day-off”.

Today, cheese-making “businesses” have to be licensed by law in order to produce and sell cheeses to consumers – whether from the premises or elsewhere (mini-markets, supermarkets, markets or fairs). It’s a way of guaranteeing to the consumer that the cheeses were made in good, hygienic conditions.

It’s a process Idálio Martins began in the summer of 2008, with the intention of creating a “quality product”. “I just never imagined it would take the Town Hall three years to grant me a licence!”

Up until now, he’s invested more than 60.000 euros in the venture. He’s never received any EU funding or help from the state. The only exception has been his recent candidature to PRODER (“Programa de Desenvolvimento Rural” / programme for rural development) for a better milking machine, costing 15.000 euros.

But as to the making of his cheeses, there are no great secrets. After the process of pasteurization (which takes around three hours at a temperature of 90º C), the goat’s milk is cooled to 55º, to be combined with the salt and cardoon thistle.

Patrícia Inácio, 33, Idálio Martins’ wife, has found an original way of adding to the quality of the cheese. She dissolves the rock salt slowly, using a sieve – and thus the insoluble impurities don’t pass through to the milk.

The cardoon (Cynara cardunculus) serves as a curdling agent. It’s prepared by infusion the day before. “This particular variety comes from Faro, where there are old people who gather the cardoon”, Patrícia tells us. It sells for €25 a kilo – sometimes more. On average, the Martins’ cheese making business spends €625 a year on this thistle!

The cheese mixture then sits for an hour in its requisite tank. It is then cut up “until it looks like grains of rice” – ready for the “cheese-making phase” of the whole process: filling special moulds, on a counter called a “francela” (a kind of cheese press), that allows the whey to drain away.

Four pairs of young hands then wring out the mixture, creating dozens of little cheeses. “They have to be nice and dense, and dry. The minimum these cheeses should last, kept cold, is a week” Idálio Martins estimates.

Alongside Idálio and Patrícia, Jessica Catarino, 17, a future quality control technician, gets to grips with the cheese mixture. She’s a pupil at the nearby “Escola Professional de Alte”, which has partnership agreements with small and medium-sized local businesses so that their pupils can get a taste of the real world before they graduate.

The plastic trays full of just-made cheeses fly into the refrigerator, where they stay for a short while. At the end of the morning, it’s time to clean everything carefully by hand, in preparation for the afternoon shift - where the whole process is repeated.

A large part of the Martins’ production is sold at the elicatessen specialising in regional products at Faro’s Municipal Market. But, elsewhere, the cheeses are also sold in Faro, Olhão and São Brás de Alportel. And now some restaurants have started buying the cheese direct from the little factory.

Every Wednesday, at the end of the day, after making their little fresh cheeses, Idálio and Patrícia take to the road. They load up their refrigerated van with the most recently made products, and sell door-to-door. Each little cheese costs one euro. They take two different routes, every two weeks – and they deal first-hand with the reality of the “serra”: an increasingly ageing population, more and more “forgotten”, and left to their own devices in the isolation of the hills.

“On the way back from Espargal, we go from hill to hill. It’s extremely unusual to find a young person. Many of our clients are old, between 60 and 70 years old. Many live alone and when they see our van, come straight up to us to talk”, Patrícia tells.

For Idálio, the rural exodus is nothing new. But it still saddens him. “Ten years ago, when I took my goats out to graze, you’d still see a lot of people working on their land. It was rare NOT to find someone working on his or her vegetables, or around the trees. These days, I can go weeks without seeing anyone. It’s so sad. Everything’s abandoned, left untended.”

Only more people are found “on the road to Parragil, where we always have people waiting for us. Sometimes, they even call their neighbours to come and buy from us!” But, strangely, although there are many foreigners in the Loulé area, the couple has still to win their custom.

“The foreigners are very wary. We ask them if they’d like to try, but until today, not one local foreigner has bought anything! They don’t even seem interested in what we’ve got to sell! There have been so many burglaries in the area, that many people are simply afraid when they see us at their door”, he laments.

Just like other activities in the Algarve, the seasons affect the cheeses. “Traditionally, the old cheese-making establishments produced from December to the end of June”, said Idálio, whose objective is to keep production going all year round. “We sell more cheeses in the summer – but it’s also the time of the lowest milk yield”, he explained. On average, the little business uses 200 litres of milk per day.

And there are other factors. “Goats are very sensitive to rain, or damp. If they don’t graze well, or get cold, that’s enough to affect their milk production”, he told. And, when this happens, Idálio buys milk from trusted colleagues in Messines, or in Moita de Guerra, north of Cortelha.

Medium-term, the couple plan to construct a small “shop counter” to attend the growing number of people who come to their door in Portela da Nave, to buy the little fresh cheeses.

And, for the time being, Idálio is content to “maintain quality, and the market” that he has. In the future, he hopes to sell fresh goat’s milk – an expanding market in nearby Spain.