Historical Setting: The Great Skellig, 924 C.E.
Lately Brother Lugh has been using his personal time after matins, not for sleep, or private prayer, but to take the trek across Christ’s saddle, then he goes on down to the hidden garden of Sister Brigid to help her with the farm chores. She does have two prongs for weeding. She is prepared to share her work.
While I know the Sister doesn’t see her garden as anything other than a way of gifting the monks with daily extras for their larder, Brother Lugh is thinking it has a purpose to enable laying up stores for the darker season to come.
He’s declared a small crevice in the rock on the cold north side of the southern peak a cellar for roots. He squirrels away the excesses of summer. He half buries root crops, and dries Swiss chard to powder for broth, and now when he accompanies Sister Brigid on her morning rounds, it isn’t just to help her carry the skins of goat’s milk, but now he makes it his mission to take up any leftovers, then use every means imaginable to preserve the excesses of this season. He divvies the milk into the drinking cups, only offering an amount that can be consumed immediately when it is delivered, so nothing is wasted, and the skins can be returned promptly to Sister Brigit with the excess. While Sister Brigid rinses the skins in brine to prepare them for the next milking, Brother Lugh pours the leftovers into a large pottery bowl thinking it will turn itself to cheese. I’m sure the sister knows what I know. Good cheese curds aren’t made simply by molding milk.
And, yes only a few days into it, it is a smelly, disgusting project. Sister Brigid doesn’t want it in her little house, so here it is in our cell.
“Please, Brother Lugh, believe me, that rosy colored scum on the top of the soured milk is neither cream nor cheese!”
“You don’t know! You would just waste this extra milk simply because it stinks.”
“There is a reason only the farmers who butcher the goats make the curds to start the cheese. You need something more from the beast.”
“Sister Brigid would never let me slaughter a kid just for the rennet. This will just have to do.”
So, he already knows what is missing.
And now this is long, wakeful night for both of us, while Brother Lugh is puking up his stinky experiment in cheese making.
(Continues, Tuesday, November 3)
