How to Make a Homemade Simple Farm Cheese Recipe

Are you looking to level up your homestead game? I highly encourage you to get in the kitchen, and consider making this simple farm cheese. It’s a staple in our home, and I bet it will be in yours too.

What is a Simple Farm Cheese (or Farmer’s Cheese)?

Homemade Farmer’s Cheese or Simple Farm Cheese is basically the easiest cheese that you can make without any special ingredients. You do need an acid to help the milk separate into curds and whey.

Our Simple Farm Cheese is versatile enough to use wet or dry. You can also use it as a ricotta, a spread, a crumble, or even pressed into a jack-like cheese to slice. That, my friends, is why this is one of my favorite dairy recipes in my own homestead kitchen.

This is a great recipe to quickly use up some extra milk if needed, especially if you’re keeping dairy animals.

Making Cheese at Home

Generally speaking, cheeses are made using rennets and cultures. I’m not sure that you’ll find another at-home recipe that is as simple and versatile as this one. We use a lot of strainers, bowls, measuring cups and spoons, and cheesecloth.

Always make sure that you begin with sanitized surfaces and equipment. I like to use bleach. If you’re a bleach hater, you can use white vinegar, peroxide, steramine, or any other substance that will disinfect everything that your milk/cheese touches.

Remember that you’ll almost never make the exact same cheese twice. There is not a perfect cheese. Each batch is different based on the cow’s diet, your current atmospheric conditions, how old the milk is, and more. The flavor of the cheese may even change slightly.

The Best Milk for the Best Flavor

It’s no secret that I’m a raw cow’s milk lover. We milk cows, we have gallons of milk, so that’s what we use. Different breeds of dairy cows will produce different levels of quality cheese. That’s another discussion though.

You can use this recipe with raw milk, goat milk, or even pasteurized milk. 

However, UHT (ultra high temperature) milk will not work. The high temperatures required for UHT milk will not make you any cheese. The proteins have been denatured too much by the heating process required to pasteurize the milk.

Whatever you choose, whole milk brings the creamiest texture for a deeper flavor.

I’m not sure if organic milk will make a difference in cheese quality or not. Do your research if that’s something that’s important to you.

How To Make Simple Farm Cheese

Here are the details on making this easy homemade cheese.

Farmer’s Cheese Basic Ingredients

• ​a gallon of milk (Raw cow’s milk is my personal preference.)
• 1/2 cup of lemon juice (It doesn’t need to be freshly squeezed.)
• A tablespoon of salt (I use Redmond’s Real Salt for everything in my homestead kitchen.)
• herbs (optional)

Simple Farm Cheese Supplies

• ​slotted spoon
• strainer
• large stock pot
• food thermometer
• large bowl
• cheesecloth

How to Make Simple Farm Cheese

1. Start by pouring your fresh milk into your pot.
2. Add the lemon juice to the milk, and stir it well.
3. Bring the milk up to 180°F (or 82°C). If you don’t have a thermometer, the right temperature is when pillows of milk solids float to the top. DO NOT GO OVER 190°F. YOUR MILK WILL BE RUINED.
4. Turn off the heat, and let it sit for at least 5-10 minutes. This is super forgiving, so if you have to leave it for a while longer, no worries.
5. Strain the solid curds by pouring the mix into a cheesecloth-lined strainer or large colander. You can use the slotted spoon to scoop them out, or you can gently pour them into the cheesecloth.
6. Next, let it sit for 20-30 minutes to drain extra whey. I prefer to tie up the cheesecloth and let gravity help finish the draining.
7. Put the cheese into a bowl, and sprinkle the salt over the top. Stir it well until the salt is evenly distributed. You can add herbs at this point if you’d like.
8. Finally, chill your cheese. It will firm up some more after it’s been chilled.

Variations From One Recipe

What we’ve made is like a cheater ricotta cheese recipe.  

If you choose to let is strain a little longer, it’ll dry to the point that you have cheese crumbles. You can break them apart with a fork.

For an extra step, you can take those cheese crumbles and put them in a cheese press to make a soft pressed cheese if you like. 

Lastly, leaving the cheese to strain for several days in the refrigerator will get you a cream cheese replacement.

How to Use Farmer Cheese

We use this anywhere a recipe calls for ricotta. Our favorite way to enjoy this soft cheese is flavored with dried herbs and then used as a dip. 

We also enjoy the drier, spreadable version in place of cream cheese and topped with our pepper jellies. 

The pressed version is sliced and used on sandwiches or for snacking. The crumbly cheese is used on salads.

Important Tips for Making Your Own Simple Farm Cheese

1. ​If you’re using raw milk, it’s best to use milk that is fresh. Five days from production date or less is best.
2. Make sure that your equipment is not made from a material that will negatively interact with your acid, such as aluminum. I use stainless and glass for most everything. A plastic or wooden spoon is fine too.
3. Cheese cloth can be reused but must be properly disinfected between uses. After using cheesecloth, rinse it well in hot water, then wash and bleach.
4. Choose a stock pot with a heavy bottom to prevent scorching your milk.
5. I mentioned needing an acid to make cheese. Many simple farmer’s cheese recipes call for white or apple cider vinegar. I’m not a fan of these ingredients as the end products tend to have a mild flavor of vinegar left in them. The lemon juice seems to work its way out through processing. I haven’t found citric acid to work as well as lemon juice, but I honestly haven’t played with it enough.
6. If you choose to add fresh herbs, then your homemade farmers cheese will need to be used faster before spoilage.

How to Store Your Simple Farm Cheese

Even easier than making our simple farm cheese is storing it. No matter which variation you make, store it in an airtight container and refrigerate it. 

Plastic wrap works well too. We use small, 8 ounce deli containers to sell our ricotta, but the cheeses that our family uses are often wrapped up in plastic wrap before refrigerating.

It’s a good idea to let a pressed cheese come back to room temperature before enjoying. 

Can You Freeze Simple Farm Cheese?

You can absolutely freeze any variation of this simple farm cheese. The soft cheese types freeze better than the pressed cheese.

Again, use an airtight container, properly label it to include the date, and freeze. I usually take them out of the freezer 24 hours before I want to use them, and allow them to thaw in the refrigerator. 

What Do I Do With So Much Whey?

There are so many things that you can do with whey. You can reheat it, back up to 180°-190°F to get a true ricotta.

Use it in your compost pile or swamp water as a fertilizer. You can water it down and fertigate your garden plants with it.

You can absolutely use it in your own diet. It makes a wonderful substitution for water in any bread or cake recipe. Add it to smoothies if you’d like, but the flavor isn’t great for drinking it straight.

My favorite way to use the extra way, is to feed it to my animals. We soak chicken feed or pig feed in our whey and let it culture for a day or so before feeding it to them. 

You could feed it immediately to pigs and chickens, they love it, but allowing it to culture a bit will unlock nutrients in your feed for your animals. By doing this, we’ve reduced our feed bill by about 30%.​

Conclusion on Homemade Simple Farm Cheese

I truly hope that you’ll give this simple farm cheese recipe a try. With just a few simple ingredients, you can have fresh homemade cheese in your kitchen in under an hour. Play with it and make it your own. Let us know how you like it.

Happy Cheesemaking!

Donna and her family have been homesteading for most of their 20+  years together in some shape or fashion. She currently lives on their 20 acre farm where they grow as much food as possible. What started as a just a few laying hens, has grown into large gardens, pastured poultry, pork, and lamb. They are continuously evolving their small farm to not suit their family’s needs, but also providing to their local community. Donna’s favorite part of the family farm is her self-built micro-dairy, where she gets to love on dairy cows while serving her local community. Milking, cheesemaking, and processing dairy have become the soul of their homestead and the center of their farm.