Monthly Cheese Subscription - Routes into farming
Every month as part of the monthly cheese subscription, Oli focuses on a theme. For September, the theme is routes into cheesemaking.
Dear Monthly Cheese Subscribers
Recently I’ve been spending quite a bit of time visiting our producers and, where a visit hasn’t been possible, having a long catch up with them on the phone. As a specialist cheesemonger we consider it to be absolutely vital to know our producers personally for several reasons, apart from the fact that we like them of course.
One of the most important is to know what changes are happening with the cheese; this allows us to get the best cheese possible and look after it in the best way before it gets to you as small changes can really add up!
One of the more subtle reasons is to get a feel for what wider issues may be on the cheesemaker's minds as these often add up to tap into larger concerns. One of the things that I’ve been discussing most is the different paths into cheesemaking, and what limitations there may be for prospective new cheesemakers.
This month I’ve selected four cheeses that are among the farthest geographically from the shop and also that represent four different paths into cheesemaking. I’ve steered clear of hard cows milk cheese because next Saturday we’re participating in The Great British and Irish Cheddar Challenge. check it out on our website- there’s still time to order your box and get involved!
Baron Bigod
Fen Farm is a 3rd generation dairy farm in Suffolk run by Jonny and Dulcie Crickmore. Jonny grew up on the farm and came to realise that simply selling milk to supermarket aggregators was quite precarious. They began to look for ways to diversify and started selling high quality raw milk, from this point they realised that the best way to showcase their milk may be cheesemaking. They travelled to France to learn how to make Brie de Meaux and hand selected a herd of Montbeliarde cows to bring back to their farm. Today, Fen Farm is one of the most successful producers we work with, making cheese with 5000 litres of milk a day and exporting cheese as far as the USA and Australia.
Julie Cheyney had worked on farms in her youth and wanted to get into cheesemaking but didn’t have her own land. She and Stacey Hodges set up in Hampshire, buying milk from a local farm and making Tunworth, a pasteurised Camembert style cheese. Wanting to move away from Hampshire and make a raw milk cheese, Julie heard Jonny Crickmore on the radio talking about his drive to focus on the quality of his raw milk on Fen Farm and decided she’d found her dream location! She got in touch with Jonny and got set up on the farm. She makes small batches of raw milk cheese, using only raw milk from the morning milking, in Fen Farm’s first small cheesemaking room.
Holbrook
Martin Gott was first introduced to cheesemaking by industry hero James Aldwick. Having access to neither land nor facilities he and his partner Nicola Robson spent time making cheese and farming with Graham Kirkham, making Lancashire, and then in Somerset with the legendary Mary Holbrook. It was here that Martin created his first cheese, St. James, named after Aldwick. There followed a very long process of finding a landowner that would allow new entrants to the industry to rent farmland. Nicola wanted to run a farm and Martin wanted to make raw milk cheese on the farm so they stuck to their guns until they found someone willing to take a chance on them in Cumbria. Mary Holbrook died a few years ago and this raw milk goat cheese is named after her.
Sparkenhoe farm is a family farm in Leicestershire. David and Jo Clarke had revived traditional red leicester in 2005 and their son Will, after graduating from agricultural college, was keen to continue working on the farm and make his own traditional cheese. He managed to secure an EU grant to build a cheesemaking facility to make Stilton and was ready to sell his first cheeses in 2017 but with one minor issue; he hadn’t yet used the pasteuriser and could not, therefore, legally call his cheese Stilton, despite it being made to a traditional recipe in one of the three traditional counties. Assured by buyers that they weren’t worried about this he continues to make exceptional raw milk cheese and hasn’t yet had to turn on the pasteuriser.
Warmest regards,
Oli at The Bristol Cheesemonger
