The Workshop: Lark Defect Diagnosis session we previewed twice on this blog actually happened on Tuesday, in a small cheese-industry space in Brooklyn, capped roster and all. We want to follow up on it now that it's done, because what came out of the room surprised us a little, and it's worth passing along even to members who couldn't make the trip.
Going in, we expected the session to be mostly about the defects themselves — the same crumbly pastes and uneven rinds we'd flagged in the announcement. That part went fine. What we didn't expect was how much time the instructor ended up spending on something closer to recalibration: several attendees told us, unprompted, that they'd been diagnosing problems by memory and photo comparison for so long that they'd half-forgotten what a rind was actually supposed to feel like under a thumb. One member put it plainly during a break — she said she'd gotten "fluent in describing cheese and a little rusty at actually touching it." That's not a criticism of anyone's skill; it's just what a year and a half of screen-mediated troubleshooting quietly does.
The gap between watching and doing
The instructor adjusted partway through the day once this pattern became obvious, slowing down the early diagnostic steps — the visual scan, the smell, the first press of a thumb into the paste — instead of moving quickly to the "so what caused it" reasoning most attendees expected to spend their time on. That turned out to be the more useful half of the day for most people in the room. Several members told us afterward that the actual cause-and-effect reasoning was something they'd kept sharp through webinars and case studies; it was the hands-on sensory calibration that had quietly eroded without anyone noticing until they had a real wheel in front of them again.
If you run a small operation without a lot of other cheesemakers to compare notes with day to day, that's worth sitting with. A year of isolated troubleshooting can leave your instincts a little out of practice even while your book knowledge stays sharp, and the only real fix is time with other hands on other wheels.
What this means for the rest of the calendar
We're taking this back to the Education Committee as we plan the fall coursework. The virtual defect-diagnosis session we mentioned as an alternative for members who couldn't travel is still on the calendar, but we're going to build in more explicit sensory-calibration time rather than assuming that piece has held up on its own. If you attended a lot of virtual coursework this past year and are planning to come to an in-person session later this year, don't be surprised if the first hour feels more basic than you expected — based on what we saw Tuesday, that's probably exactly the hour you need.
For members who couldn't make Brooklyn, we're collecting the case notes from the session — the specific defects worked through and how they were traced back to cause — for members who want a written version. Reach out to the Education Committee if you'd like a copy, and watch this space for the next in-person date; based on how quickly this one filled, we don't expect the next one to stay open long either.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.