Medesano-Parma

Hello again from Nice, and yes it is very 'nice' here.
But right now, I must tell you about our fun time in Medesano. We left Trento and intended to go to Bologna to participate in a 'global 350' event to raise awareness of global warming. After seeing the potential devastation to be wreeked on Venice with just a few inches of sea level rise, we were even more acutely aware of this impending problem. Unfortunately the train was late and we didn't have time to get to the event before catching the train for a small town south of Parma.
When we got to Fidenza, we were met by our next Servas host, Vito. And it turns out that Vito is the past president of Servas (or Porte Aperte as it's called in Italian). On the way to his house, Vito asked us what we planned to do in Medesano while we were there. The only plan we really had was to see how parmesan cheese was made. He informed us that we could walk 500 meters from his house and go to the farm where cheese was made. We would have to get there by 8:00 a.m. to see the process.
Below, are pictures from the farm/factory. The the whole milk of the morning is mixed with the skimmed milk of the evening before and then heated and mixed. The Cheesemaker checks it until it reaches the right consistency and then it's allowed to coagulate in the copper tank, each with a capacity of 1100 liters!. As he checked the cheese he would ocassionaly pull out a small piece of the bland cheese for us to try.
Next the huge glop of curd is lifted with a piece of cloth and cut in two halves, each weighing 45 kilos, and placed into molds. These molds are then placed in vats of salt water (the only flavoring allowed for true parmesan) for about three weeks. These now hardened wheels of cheese are then moved to a storage building where they are kept for at least two years and sometimes longer.
The whey, or leftover liquid from the cheese, is fed to pigs who then become another delicacy of this region; Parma Ham.
By the way Parmesan is the french version of the name and it's actually called parmigiano in Italian.
I'll tell you much more about Medesano, Vito and Erica, and Parma in a later post. Right now I'm off to visit the small town of Vence here on the French Riviera.
Ciao



































The pictures are from top to bottom: Jasper in the storage building-overwhelmed by cheese, the raw cheese being cut in two, Rory by empty vat, Raw cheese being lifted on cloth, mixing the milk, the salt water vats, Us with Erica and Vito in front of their house, buying cheese at a different farm, Erica and Vito, Their house, Erica with Rory, Jasper and Margherita.