Here's what you need:

plain ol' liquid rennet. (you can order it from NE Cheesemaking - see Sources)

STAINLESS STEEL (SS) bowl. (NOT aluminum - no aluminum can touch milk that you are trying to turn into cheese).

Cultured buttermilk from the store (or make your own - see recipe # 2)

Raw milk

Pour in 1/2 gallon (or whatever) of raw milk. I skim most of the cream off mine - but it's your call on that.

Add a "glub" (that's unofficial for about 1/4 cup) of CULTURED buttermilk (just any old cultured buttermilk from the grocery store, until you get where you make your own out of raw milk -but that's lesson # 2). You have to add a little cultured buttermilk to raise the pH of the milk. No worries if you have a milk allergy, it's not enough to affect you and it's cultured so there's little lactose left in that stuff anyway.

Stir the concoction to distribute the Buttermilk throughout your milk. Use a wooden spoon or a SS one (just NOT aluminum). Even plastic is fine.

Turn on the stove and heat the milk til it's "baby warm". You want it the temperature you would feed a baby - a little past tepid. Technically I think it's 88 degrees, but who wants to fool with a thermometer. Stick your clean finger in there and if it feels warm, it's ready.

Now for the rennet: Dilute 5 drops of liquid rennet (for each 1/2 gallon of milk you're using) in a little bowl with about 1/3 cup water (again, just "some" water, this isn't an exact science). Stir the little bowl of rennet water for a second, then SLOWLY sprinkle your rennet water over your warm pot of milk while stirring with your wooden spoon.

Stir, stir, stir, make sure you get the bottom of the pot. Stir pretty good for about 30 seconds as you really want to distribute that rennet throughout the whole pot of milk. It's OK if your stove is still on while you're stirring this. You have a reasonable temperature range here for this cheese. (But if your milk ever gets so hot that you can't hold your finger in there for a good 10 seconds, you've killed it. )

OK, shut off the heat, cover your pot with a towel, or I have a tray I use. Just something to keep out the dust. Leave the whole mess sit undisturbed for 30 minutes.

Now, take off the cover (towel). Tip your pot one way or the other and you should see that the whole mess is one giant curd.

Take a long knife (really long, like a bread knife, it has to be able to cut through to the bottom of your pot). Cut 1/2 inch slices, through the curd. Turn the pot, cut the other way, all the way through. You are making a giant checkerboard. You can even cut again at a slight angle.

Leave the whole thing for a minute while you go scrub your hand and forearms good with soap - cuz you're at the fun part.

Roll up your sleeves. Stick your left arm down into the pot and GENTLY start stirring the curds around. Pull the long pieces up with your left hand, and cut them with your knife you have in your right hand. (It's not hard, use a dull knife if you need to). Keep stirring and cutting. You're trying to make little sugar cube sized curds.

Stir, cut, stir, cut. Turn the stove on if you need to to keep the temperature pretty warm - like a nice hot bath. Keep doing this for 12 - 15 minutes. You will see the curds have shrunk a LOT. Cut any giant plump ones. When about 98% of your curds have shrunk - to your satisfaction, you're finished. What you have now is the infamous pot of "curds and whey".

Pour the mess through a plastic colander lined with real cheesecloth (not the gauzy stuff they sell at the grocery store - use a worn flour sack kitchen towel or old pillow case if you don't have real cheese cloth)

Run cold water over the mess in your sink. Stick your hand in there again and squish, squish to separate the mess so it doesn't form one big curd.

When it's cold, sprinkle generously with sea salt, squish a few more times to distribute the salt. Sample it. Add more salt if you want. It's done.

You can pour a little whole milk or cream on it to make it more like the store stuff, but I like mine dry. When you set it in a bowl, you'll have to dump whey off it after about 5 minutes as more settles out.

Have fun. Hope it turns out for you. It really is easy. What my family LOVES, is to let all that drain for 12 hours in the cheescloth over the sink, then I press it between 2 plastic containers using a 5 pound hand weight for 12 more hours and - viola', farmer's cheese. Delicious.

First of all, don't confuse REAL buttermilk with CULTURED buttermilk. They are not the same critter at all!!!

You can't use REAL buttermilk (that leftover milk from butter making) to adjust the pH for cheese. You have to use "sour milk" - aka "CULTURED BUTTERMILK" (The only reason I can figure out as to why that stuff in the stores is call buttermilk is I guess they couldn't sell the name "sour milk" )

Cultured buttermilk is really more like yogurt - it's just plain milk that's been soured.

As you know, real buttermilk is a completely different animal and comes from making butter. Both can be used for baking, but for cheese making they are not interchangable.

I keep jars of both in my frig and use them for different things.

To make CULTURED BUTTERMILK you're going to have to break down and go get the grocery store version in the beginning.

Pour about 1/2 cup of store bought Cultured Buttermilk into a quart mason jar. Fill to the top with raw milk (warm from the cow, if you've got it that way, otherwise refrigerated milk will be OK, just takes longer).

Shake the jar and let sit in a warm spot for about a day or so. I lift off the lid periodically to see if it's sour enough. In the winter I set it on my wood stove or put warm water in my crock pot, set it on "warm" and leave it there.

When it's thick and sour, you have cultured buttermilk. Use it for making cottage cheese, or baking or salad dressing or any recipe that calls for cultured buttermilk. When you get down to about 1/2 cup in your jar, just refill with milk and re-culture it for another day. You can go several times re-culturing it, but once in a while I go get new store buttermilk and start over.

By the way is EXACTLY how to make sour cream, but use cream instead of milk. Put about 1/2 cup of cultured buttermilk in a quart jar (you can use your homemade cultured buttermilk now), add cream, and let it set out in a warm spot for a day or so. Just take the lid off periodically and smell it. When it's sour enough for you, it's done.

When the quart cream jar is full, set it out on the counter and let it come to near room temperature. (about 62 degrees actually). Pour the quart of cream into a 1/2 gallon mason jar with 2 piece metal lid, and start shaking.

(OK - I own a butter churn AND a food processor and yes, you can make butter in either of these, but I prefer the shaking method as there's lots less clean up. If I ever end up with 2 or 3 quarts of spare cream, I'll use the churn).

Shake, shake, shake. This can take 8 - 20 minutes. If it's too cold, it takes longer. Give it to the kid who is sitting in front of the television and tell them to make themselves useful!

The cream passes through several stages. First, thick cream, then fluffy "whipped cream" something about the consistancy of Cool Whip. It gets hard to shake now, but keep schleping it back and forth, as it's just about the "break" free. Then you have little butter pieces form with buttermilk.

Shake till the pieces are about pea size. Try to stop before it's one big clump as it's too hard to clean.

Remove the metal band, slide the flat lid off slightly (use it as a strainer of sorts) and pour off the buttermilk into a jar for bread, pancakes, bisquits, etc. (don't you dare throw it out, it's VALUABLE and RARE).

Fill the jar with cool water. Hold the metal lid on and shake a few times. Pour off the milky water, again using the lid as a strainer. Fill with water, shake, pour off. Repeat about 6 times. You want to keep at it til the water is clear, not milky.

Dump it in a big bowl. Sprinkle generously with sea salt. Take a flat wooden paddle (hardware store) and press the butter. Turn it, press it, turn it press it. You're "working" your butter. This gets out the extra water (which you can dump periodically as you work it) and makes the butter creamy rather than grainy.

Cut off chunks and wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in a freezer bag in your freezer for long term storage or the frig for short term storage. If it gets old or too sour for your taste, use it in baking. Sour butter makes the best bread and bisquits.