Posted on 04/27/2007 6:26:43 PM PDT by dirtboy
Healthy, Tasty... Expensive
STOCKHOLM (JP) - Farmers in northern Sweden are milking moose, hoping that cheese-lovers with deep pockets will develop a taste for moose cheese.
It's healthy and tasty - and very expensive (nearly $500 per pound) because moose milk is hard to obtain.
Christer & Ulla Johansson started the 59-acre "Moose House" - the only moose dairy farm in Europe - seven years ago in Bjursholm (400 miles north of Stockholm). Moose House has 14 moose in the fields, but only three cows (Gullan, Haelga & Juna) can be milked. The cows were found as abandoned calves in the woods around Bjursholm, and were taken in by the Johansson family. The domesticated moose stay outdoors all year, and weigh about 500 kilograms (1,100 pounds).
Why so expensive? Moose only produce milk between May and September, and it takes up to two hours to milk a moose, with each producing up to a gallon of milk per day. Moose milk contains 12% fat and 12% protein, is kept refrigerated and curdling is done three times per year – yielding 660 pounds of cheese per year. Made in three varieties, the moose cheese can be sampled at the farm’s restaurant. Sales are mainly to upscale Swedish hotels and restaurants, and they have plans to export more cheese - especially their sour feta-type, which is laid down in oil and is easy to transport.
Moose House attracts 25,000 visitors per year, and is the main attraction in an activity center that also offers fishing, golf, canoe tours, and riding.
You haven't lived until you've sung this with a crowd at a beer hall at a Renaissance Festival!
Cheers!
Since it is illegal to keep a domesticated moose, the wild version would have to be milked, and these animals have a fifty-foot radius. If you get within 50 feet it's 50-50 whether you are attacked or fled from. Maybe if you wore a moose skin with attached head like caribou hunters you could get closer; or maybe not.
Ever seen this? It's a long segment about an indestructable Toyota truck. They crash it, run it down stairs, drop it from 10 feet, submerge it under the ocean for hours, drop a travel trailer on top of it, drive it through a shed, torch it, and in a follow on segment, put it atop a building that is then demolished. It still started and drove.
Oh, I suspect constipation can be classified as a complication. ;)
and if it comes as a result of a moose bite...it could be a very worrysome complication. ;)
Heheh, yeah they can be a little agressive too.
I had one go thru the pasture today, headed down to the lake. we see them daily up here in N. Idaho.
I'm not domesticating anything, I have enough to do with the Labs and the mare.
As I understand it, the moose being milked was rescued as a calf after being abandoned by its mother. But that's their look-out in Russia, not mine.
bwteim: hier ist süm tâsti møøsecheese für yøø!Ya,I knøw, ist nicht so veri gøøt als PfefferKäse! ;-)
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