What Does This Have To Do With Cheese?

I closed my eyes, inhaled gently, and imagined hard, but the Timonium traffic din quickly short-circuited the conceit that had placed me at the Inner Harbor. How silly; I, maybe more than most, knew the lovely nutmeg scent wafting downwind from the McCormick plant two miles north hadn't perfumed the downtown air for over two decades.

On 8 December 1988, less than a month after opening the Old Waverly History Exchange & Tea Room - the McCormick teapot, um, "borrowed" for my business card and sidewalk and neon signs - it was announced the McCormick Spice Company would abandon its landmark Inner Harbor building and the Rouse Company would tear it down. The lawsuit I filed and the "Demolition Makes No Scents" campaign I spearheaded for Baltimore Heritage quickly turned legions of citizens into historic preservationists; I've seen nothing to rival that reaction in all my 30 years of advocacy, and certainly not for a building as vernacular as the spice plant.*

But it really wasn't about the building. Intense civic pride for McCormick, homegrown and world-known, fueled the losing fight that concluded with another chink in Baltimore City's ever-eroding industrial legacy.

Less than a mile southeast from where McCormick stood, along the waterfront promenade, the displays in the Baltimore Museum of Industry recount the story of what we invented, innovated, and fashioned, often out-churning other cities in straw hats, umbrellas, men's suits, raincoats, bottle caps, silver flatware, canned oysters, coal, beer, soap, etc. It's tough now, though, to tally a fair number of factories still humming within Baltimore City limits. Some companies moved to Baltimore County or far, far away to expand or cut costs, while others merged out of existence. Whatever the reason, the industrial drain sucked away large numbers of jobs employing citizens across a wide spectrum of education and experience.

What does this have to do with cheese?

The recession may be responsible for my job loss at East Baltimore Development Inc. (EBDI), but I was ready to revisit self-employment, ideally to work as much with my hands as with my head, satisfying a deep desire to count my efforts at each day's end, as before, for 13 years at Old Waverly (how many guests served, scones baked, dollars in the till, etc.). But to be clear, I felt honored to serve as EBDI's director of communications and was particularly proud, and often moved, when publicizing the success stories EBDI's commitment to workforce development precipitates. Linking underskilled and undereducated residents with the resources to change their lives is the embodiment of tikkun olam, Hebrew for repairing the world, and as a Jew, it was not just my obligation, but my privilege to assist. The advantages afforded me by accident of middle-class birth were accentuated almost daily, intensifying my appreciation for a job I called the intersection of everything I had ever done professionally. It was a tough job to lose.

But after a short period of shiva, I set about plotting my next act, quickly abandoning the idea of working from home, however calming and comforting, and embraced the notion of another challenge rife with meaning and emotion.

Overthinking wasn't required. I'd plan around what makes me tick - my native town; old buildings; design, style, and creativity; self-sufficiency and entrepreneurship; doing things right/doing things my way; fantastic food, artisan cheese and the exploding farm-to-table movement. I set off for Wisconsin to see Growing Power in Milwaukee and parts of dairyland further to the southwest. Back home and barely weeks after losing my job, I enrolled in the University of Vermont's Vermont Institute for Artisan Cheese, this country's only school for artisan cheesemaking, traveling for three months back and forth to complete all beginning and advanced classroom requirements. A week's apprenticeship at New York's prizewinning Old Chatham Sheepherding Company, America's largest sheep dairy, was a total wheat/chaff, er, milk/whey experience, yet the eye-opening daily realities of cheesemaking (literally 90% janitorial and 10% production) didn't deter me, but only help me focus on a business model that might scratch my pesky social work itch and reverse, if only in the tiniest way, the siphoning off of industry in Baltimore City.

With artisan cheesemaking as a blossoming segment of the sustainable food movement and my signature products already in development, it seems opportunities will be ripe to train others. Next needed is a location and I've looked at several, mostly in broken-down East Baltimore buildings. I suppose I've blown well-past a casual interest in this cheesemaking thing.

To quote Fiddler on the Roof's Tevye, himself a milkman, "Sounds crazy, no?" There's only one dairy left in Baltimore City - must be a good reason, and I must be a little meshugana.

The banning of cows in Baltimore City in 1917, a breakthrough in sanitation, led to a huge reduction in the number of dairies. But neither cows, goats, sheep, nor water buffalo need be on-site to make artisan cheese (only farmstead cheese), so I'm working on co-owning goats to manage their care and feeding for the payoff of sweet, organic milk; hopefully, the close proximity of countryside to downtown should limit the sloshing during transit that damages fat globules in milk. The greater degree of difficulty, really, is in finding the just-right location for cheesemaking - easy access, not too big, not too small, suitable for customization and eventually expansion. Oh, and then there's coming up with the $$$. Note to self: breathe deep, keep dreaming, keep moving.

OK, to also keep it real, and to answer Tevye's question - well, maybe, especially considering the direct route to a paycheck working from home and the myriad reasons that render urban cheesemaking a rare phenomenon. But I'm compelled to follow this cheese trail to see where it leads and the journey so far, briefly described here with lots of (Swiss) holes, has been extraordinary. I'll soon fill you in and take you along.


*Indeed, I contend I lost my lawsuit because the judges on the Maryland Court of Special Appeals considered the McCormick factory building plain and thus worthless. Demolition commenced in June 1989, but the building put up a valiant, months-long fight as the wrecking ball much more often bounced off of it than landed solid blows. The Rouse Company (now out of business and its successor, General Growth Properties now in bankruptcy), contending the building needed to come down for "immediate soil testing" in advance of new construction, of course never built a thing, landbanking the parcel after demolishing the building to avoid paying property taxes on the improvements. The last Baltimore Sun article detailing plans for a new building on the vacant site, published two years ago, made no mention of McCormick, a factory so handsome the company long-featured it on their packaging. The building, were it still standing, would no doubt today be Baltimore's hottest harborfront condominium complex. Instead, all that's left is a vacant lot and memories of visits to Ye Olde McCormick Tea House, though some brokenhearted swear they still smell what can only be a phantom cinnamon fragrance.