Yakkity-yak – and sheep and goats

Published 9:51 am Thursday, October 2, 2008

Driving from Snoqualmie to Fall City on state Route 202, some people may have noticed some strange, black, long-haired animals grazing in a pasture just past All Pets Go To Heaven. Those unusual animals are the Steil family’s yaks. During the past six weeks, the yaks have been at a breeder, but soon they will be back at the Steil’s River Valley Ranch.

The choice to own yaks came about when Julie Steil (pronounced “style”) needed yak milk for her new cheese-making business, River Valley Cheese, which opened Nov. 11.

“You have to have a very high butterfat content to make mozzarella,” Julie said. “Either yak or buffalo.”

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So she bought a yak to add to her collection of goats, cows and sheep. Five more yaks followed, and eventually a baby yak. Now, she can make her “Wild West” yak mozzarella cheese. The yak milk makes her mozzarella richer and creamier than most. Once a person tastes yak-milk mozzarella, they’ll never want to go back to store-bought cheese, she said.

Before starting her cheese business, Julie first began experimenting with cheese-making in October 2005. The Steil family had moved to their house on state Route 202 in Fall City in June of that same year from the Sammamish Plateau. Julie decided to sell her real estate investment trust business and become a stay-at-home mom. To keep herself busy, she worked on painting, carpeting and updating the bedrooms in their house for herself, husband Rob and their five children. When that was done, she grew bored. Having grown up in Augusta, Ga., – where she learned to love to cook – Julie began experimenting with different cheese recipes.

“Southern people take so much pride in everything being made from scratch,” Julie said. “I take it to the umpth degree – I milk the animals.”

Needing raw milk for the recipes, Julie began buying $22 gallons of organic raw milk from Whole Foods in Bellevue. Not used to using exact measurements in her recipes, she had to throw away batch after batch of expensive mixtures. Each gallon of milk produces only one pound of cheese, she said. Needing a cheaper way to experiment, the family bought a goat. However, she didn’t know how to milk it; goats need to be milked twice a day or they will get mastitis, a fatal disease in which the milk produced backs up in their system, Julie said. Luckily, she had a neighbor who offered to teach her.

It took time, but she finally got it. One day in April, Julie took one empty milk pail and one with soapy water to wash the goat’s teats and set herself to the job, wanting to surprise her friend. She finally succeeded at milking the goat. Then, ready to present her handiwork to Rob, she tossed out the water and headed inside. Once in the house she checked the milk, only to discover a bucket of soapy water. She had tossed out the milk, by accident. Though frustrated at the time, she laughs about it now.

“There’s such a learning curve,” Julie said. “It’s such a sense of peace when you finally figure it out.”

With her newly gained knowledge and plenty of goat milk, Julie jumped into cheese-making. Soon, friends began commenting on her cheeses and suggesting she sell them. But Rob said her cheeses needed to be better than most if she wanted to sell them. Using her family as guinea pigs, she began practicing, going through numerous batches before finally hitting on the perfect mix.