Blessed Are the Cheesemakers
Tucked away in the rolling green valleys of Crozet, Virginia, atop a hill at the end of a narrow path, sits the Our Lady of the Angels Monastery, home to a community of Cistercian nuns. There, as commanded by God and the Cistercian Constitution, the nuns lead a monastic way of life in solitude and silence, in assiduous prayer and joyful penitence, rendering unto the divine majesty a humble and noble service. For Cistercians, this manifests as manual labor, and for the Sisters at Our Lady of the Angels, that labor is making cheese.
Source: Author
The Sisters do not speak to each other when making the cheese. They wear protective earmuffs to block the noise of sudden jets of steam shot from pressurized milk and water in huge stainless-steel vats. The work is difficult. Often the nuns are immersed up to their biceps, arms covered in protective gloves, cutting clumps of curds and whey. The two are separated through further labor, and the curds are squeezed with machinery assistance into two-pound wheels, then sealed in red wax.
The nuns’ quiet work and contemplation put me in mind of our own Caplin Reading Room at UVA Law, with its high ceilings, tall pillars, sconces, and windows of natural light; it takes only a mild imagination to see the Gunner Pit[2] as resembling a cathedral—a mild irony in light of Thomas Jefferson’s strong advocacy for the separation of church and state. The Pit will be filling up shortly as the Law School readies itself for final exams in the coming weeks, and the spirit of work—hopefully as joyful as the Sisters’—will soon enter the hearts of students. Perhaps we will find it enriches our souls as well.
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Outsiders are free to visit the Monastery and purchase the nuns’ cheese most days from 2-4 p.m., except on national holidays and Sundays. Special arrangements must be made to tour the actual cheesemaking facility, but a virtual tour is available online. On Saturday, I visited Our Lady of the Angels with Staff Writer Sophie Zane ’27 and her cousin, Piper, who is a rising fourth-year medical student at UVA. We bought three wheels and ate a quarter of one wheel on a picnic blanket under a tree with sourdough crackers and honey.
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