A bear.. eating berries in the front yard.

So, Barbie the dog was barking and growling this morning. A quick look outside and this little guy (Black bear) was spotted across the street eating berries from a low hanging bush. He was tagged, I think you can see, by a yellow DEP tag in his right ear.

Here it is hanging out in the bushes. It ate a lot of berries, which are located just to the left of the bear in this picture...

Here, it's just dropped a poop on the lawn right there and has turned around to check out it's handiwork..

..and here it goes, up the driveway.

Eventually, it moved across three more neighbors lawns and wet up the hill to the west. See ya!

In cheese news, this here is a pic of the slabs of an English Derby style cheese I made yesterday, as they're draining on the board. The idea was that I cut them into slabs like this, turning them every 15 minutes and keeping them covered with a warm towel for about an hour. Later on, I broke them up into small pieces and packed them into the 2lb mold and they're in the press as I type this. It'll get unpacked tonight when I get home from work and dry for a couple days before I do the wrapping for aging time.

Derby cheese is supposed to have a hint of tangy, sharp flavor, sorta like Cheddar, without the drawn out process of the Cheddaring process itself. It should be more flavorful than my Jack cheese, and would have been similar to my Cheddar.. except that one should be plenty flavorful stuffed full of Jalapeno's as it currently is..

I was originally planning to stick with the American styles for a while and go around the bend with each of those for a while, but the call of the English cheese was to great, and I wanted to try out this old-fangled funky "bandaging" and oiling method that is traditionally English. It's similar to waxing, in that it's a protective coating for the cheese, but doesn't use wax. It's just muslin cloth and oil or lard slathered around the outside of that. It will supposedly mold up quite a bit, but won't get under the muslin to get into the cheese. Funky, I know.. should be disgusting and cool to see it happen.