Continuing our activities in Florida, we headed further south to the Whole Foods Market in Coral Gables, Miami, where we featured Barber’s 1833 Vintage Cheddar and Cotswold Cheese.

Our activities took us to the warmth and sunshine of south Florida, to the Whole Foods Market in Palm Beach Gardens.

We worked with some great staff here, including Luis, Sean and  Maria-Rose and their customers loved the cheese that we featured,

which was:

- Barber’s 1833 Vintage Cheddar
- Cotswold
- Red Dragon

Marian

Once again Somerdale participated in the annual Winter Fancy Food Show held in the giant Moscone Center, San Francisco.

We had daffodils at New Year, grass growing, birds sounding spring-like.  The winter has still got some bite, but every succeeding day has the sun higher, the day longer, driving winter down to the bottom of the year as we slowly and surely climb out.  Tiny signs of growth peep out – snowdrops, so modest and quiet, little red female hazel flowers, and the lambs’ tails like male flowers that have been slowly developing and lengthening, suddenly bursting out.  Oak flowers give a purple look to the woodland on the other side of the valley, darker and richer on the ends of the twigs.  I saw a buzzard sit quietly on a post on a tree guard for some apple trees we planted.  Suddenly he dropped heavily on a clump of grass only four feet below, then laboured away in his heavy flight with a little speck in his talons.  One bird’s feast is one vole’s spring gone.

CROPS  -  the warm winter has kept grass growing on the headlands, and deer haven’t hammered any crop too much, although there are plenty of bitten leaves. On the wheat, that keeps mildews down, as new growth is clean, just as long as the crop can just keep ahead of the grazing.  There are deer hoof prints every maybe 18 inches; in hard winters, I’ve seen them every 6 inches, and the crops just can’t keep pace with the nibbling.

GRASS  -  the grass growth depends on soil temperature, and also air temperature.  It won’t grow if its feet are too chilly, and then soft growth can be burnt off in a sharp frost or a biting wind.  We usually have a cold few days that brings grass growth down to a crawl – 5kgs, the weight of 5 bags of flour across somewhere the size of a football pitch a day – even going backwards in a sharp frost as growth gets freeze dried.  Then by the end of the month, the whole great stampede of growth will just be gathering pace just as cows calve down and want feeding.  Our farm team make best use of the grass available throughout the season, where possible, we want the cows to graze themselves rather than the expensive process of making, storing and feeding silage. The team recently had their expertise recognised, finishing runners up in the Grazing category of the Mole Valley Farmers, Forage for Profit Awards 2012.

COWS  -  This year, we’ve delayed calving, after the last two years of hard winters had the cows pecking away, turning pasture to lawns.  Cows need to wrap grass round their tongues to bite it, so if the grass gets too short they have to work much harder to get their food, and when they’ve just calved, a girl doesn’t want to struggle.  Calving later, the grass will be easier to harvest for them.

CALVING  -  The cows calve, as far as possible outside as it’s cleaner and more private for them.  The calf starts the cow milking, those first unbelievable steps, driven to find that teat by instinct.  They stagger their way around their mothers, butting their heads, helped by a gentle nudge in the right direction (no milk between my front legs). Suddenly and it looks randomly, they’ll touch a little tongue on a teat and bang, we’re latched on, slurping noises and the palpable sound of relief from all sides.  Sometimes you’ll get a heifer whose udder is a little tender and that first suck is a shock, but soon everyone realizes that the way to comfort is being suckled.  Then that parting as we take the calves to their pens, cow and calf lost and bereft for such a short time, before their herd mates become their world.

MILKING  -  Then we bring the cows into the parlour, where they need to learn for the first time or remember for the older cows, that the milking machine will give the same relief.  That’s where we are keen on more placid animals, as quite enough new stuff is happening for a heifer (first calving cow) for them to be flighty and untrusting of people – our faces are too close to their hooves for that to be fun.  The work suddenly expands hugely – lots of animals inside, plus calving, night checks, tending calves and newly calved cows, lots of cows to parlour train and milk. 

CALVES  -  We have to teach the calves how to suck from a pink rubber teat.  It’s easiest to teach them in a shed: first they sit out of the way feeling orphaned, so it’s easier in a little pen.  You go in, encourage her to get up and explore the interesting pink shape – come on baby, there’s something nice there, push her close enough to the teat, open your mouth, squirt of warm milk in, what’s that, latch on, and away we go.  You can turn them from ‘where’s my mum?’ to a sassy calf in a day, so quick.    Depending on weather, we’ll get calves outside as soon as we can – much cleaner and healthier, and take the mobile milk bar out to them with the buggy.  Soon the buggy becomes the high point of the day, chasing after in, then twenty little tails waggling as they all slurp at once, and we just check everyone’s got a teat.

HEIFERS  -  We check the older calves and yearlings are growing on – for last year’s calves, the late winter is the time to check weights and feed on any that are a little light so they are big enough in May to go to the bull.  At this stage, 3 months away, some look too small, but it is surprising how much they will grow.  Most of them are starting to bull, frisk around and ride each other, showing they’ve reached puberty, but some of the heifers with a Montbeliarde sire are a little slower off the mark, keeping us waiting till the last minute (15 months).  Oddly enough,Holsteins (we don’t have them, but are the standard dairy breed) can start bulling as young as 4 months, and no later than 10 months, which  looks scary as it is far too young to conceive a calf.

CHEESE  -  At the beginning of the month, we are on one small vat, finding jobs to doing, repairing racks, washing cheeseboards, making lots of the little truckles for next Christmas.  By the end of the month, the new milk start pouring in, and every day the vat is deeper, so we’ll have a full vat, wondering when we’ll be on two vats and on.  First it’s a relief to have more work, then we know it’s the long pull to the peak in May.

DEVON COUNTY SHOW  -  I’m very excited to have just been elected to be President of the Show this year: it’s the best party in Devon, and put on by farmers to show off farming and the countryside at its best to farmers and everyone else.  It’s such an honour, and great to see how we can tell the tale of farming in ever more interesting ways.

RECIPE  -  We’ve been interviewing talented young students from Harper Adams University to show our cheese off to delis.  We’ve been asking them what cheese they enjoy, and one, Emily Osborne, came up with this simple but enjoyable recipe.  Mature Cheddar toasties:  Briefly toast bread, then slice some Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar and grill till soft.  Add a splash of Worcestershire Sauce, then put back under the grill for a few seconds.  Lovely as a snack or a light lunch with salad.  The Worcestershire Sauce just adds another layer of flavour.  Student cooking at its best!

MARY QUICKE

I always think of January as cold, wet and dark, the weary start of the hundred hungry days to Easter, when there is little keep for man or beast, and we all live off our reserves (or the shops, if you are human). Then you get one of those dazzling days of sunshine, low rays picking out every detail, bright yellow gorse with its coconut scent, bright red rosehips, a bright blue sky, warm in the sun out of the wind if you’ve enough layers on. Even on the coldest and wettest day, moths dance in torchlight in the woods. The little fallow hind I met in the road looked fat and prosperous after a kind autumn. I saw a raven delicately nibbling a crab apple, then flying off with it in its beak.

CROPS – the field we got to too late to drill to winter barley is turned over ready for spring barley in the spring. We are growing more barley because the deer dislike its spiky awns on the ear, so we hope to reserve a bit more to us, not keep the deer quite so fat, but it’s less happy with damp feet than wheat. We’ve put oilseed rape in fields less prone to deer, but it does seem to draw them in, and they track their way through fences and hedges and banks. It’s well established, but it will be a fight to keep enough uneaten to get a reasonable crop.

GRASS – the fields we grassed to keep buried archaeological remains from being damaged by cultivation are coming along well – looking bright green and healthy in a dun landscape. We’ve just brought in the last of the dry cows and yearling heifers. They looking like furry mountain cows, the calves got called ‘the fur balls’: they didn’t look like dairy animals. They were happy and self sufficient just getting grass, not really interested in people (no food). But now everyone is inside, that rustle of hooves on bright straw, suddenly people are interesting as we come bearing gifts of food.

Now at the tender soil, lowest grass growing time of year, we preserve the grass for the magic time next month when we start calving and life bursts forth again in that annual miracle. We hold our breaths, get on with the inside work of feeding and bedding up, brace ourselves for the cold snap that always comes – how long, how cold? The days get perceptibly longer, but we are a long way before the weather follows the sun.

COWS – Milk is the best we’ve had for cheese at this time of year. We’ve got our minds round feeding for the milk to make the best cheese. Our carefully bred Friesian x Swedish Red x Montbeliard cows give a happy shape of fat and protein for our cheese. The good fertility of these crossbreds means we’ve now got enough autumn cows not to have spring cows milking on to give late lactation milk which is high and weak fat, giving a more fatty cheese.

CHEESE – Curd feels lovely in the vat, firm to the feel, not too fatty on the outside. Looking forward to grading this cheese! We still have lower amounts of milk. We are making truckles, little cheeses that are fiddly , now we can give them the attention: next Christmas is already well under way. In the store and packing, we can catch up with work that got left in the rush to get this Christmas’s orders out – we had a late flurry, after a slow start. If shops had a good Christmas, they start ordering sooner rather than later, and that seems to have already started. In a mad world for politics and economics, we can all take a bit of comfort in a lovely bit of cheese!

I’m very proud that Charlie Turnbull of Turnbull’s Deli and Café in Shaftesbury called our Vintage Cheddar ‘genius cheese’, and Owen Davies of Cheese Cellar reported that in their tastings of our Ewes’ Milk Cheese and Vintage came at the top, and we ‘can do no wrong’. Thanks for letting us know, it’s really great and supportive of our work to know it’s appreciated.

RECIPE – Jo Mason of Rowcliffe, that great supporter of artisan cheese, gave me this recipe for Roasted Jerusalem Artichokes. She grilled grated Quickes Traditional Smoked Cheddar on roasted Jerusalem artichokes. She scrubs them clean then roasts them in the oven in a medium heat, sprinkled with a little olive oil and pepper. When tender, she grates the Smoked Cheddar over them and grills for a few minutes till melted and just browning. They can make you air-borne (a bonus for some people) but the flavour is worth it.

HAPPY NEW YEAR – may your cheeses be rich and gorgeous, and a good friend to you and yours whatever the year ahead holds for you.

MARY QUICKE

My next stop was to a freezing, snowy Akron, Ohio!!…… where I worked in support of the Vernon Family and the 75^th Anniversary of their West Point Market store in West Market Street, Akron.

Yes, Westie was there too, to promote Westminster Vintage Cheddar and woke up the first morning to 3 inches of snow, which had to be cleared off the car before we could go to work!!

My activities here also featured Long Clawson’s 100lb Stilton, White Stilton with Mango & Ginger, Lemon Zest, Wensleydale with Cranberries, Cheddar with Caramelised Onion Marmalade, Red Dragon and Black Mountain.

I headed off to Cleveland, Ohio, with Westie, where I spent a couple of days at the Grand Opening of the new Earth Fare store.

Santa turned up there too!!

There was a great array of Somerdale cheese here and as you can see, the following was featured: Westminster Cheddar, Barber’s 1833 Cheddar, Cotswold, Blue Shropshire, Red Dragon and Black Mountain.

Westie has been on his travels once again and this time hitting two distant locations in Shanghai, China and Cairns, Australia. Why was he there? Selling cheese or improving his tan? – answers on a postcard please. (preferably from eyewitnesses in either Asia or Australasia)

Still in Pennsylvania, I headed to the GIANT EAGLE store in Wexford where I worked with a great team of staff in their Cheese Department.

Here, we featured Long Clawson’s Lemon Zest and their 100lb Blue Stilton.

I travelled next to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania where Long Clawson’s 100lb Blue Stilton was featured at Giant Eagle’s’ Market District’ Store in Settler’s Ridge.