Marian

Marian

White Stilton with Blueberries is more of a dessert cheese, but is great in crepes, pancakes, croissants, on bagels and in salads.

Marian

Marian

Marian

CROPS – the wheat and barley look so prosperous, each plant now 4 or 5 plantlets, leaves bold and green, at the end of the month sending the flowerhead, the ear soaring upwards. One winter barley field that the deer hammered is looking a bit sorry for itself, very open, you can see the individual plants, not a mass all together. The oilseed rape mostly got away fine, and is doing that amazing growth – flowers sent out on the end of stalks branching in every direction until it becomes a tangled web almost over your head. The maize emerges, pale green against the soil. We’ve got a lot on the clay ground: we are banking on newer varieties than will grow OK on the colder, heavier ground, close to the deer in the woods – a gamble that I hope we win.

We wanted rain – but be careful what we wish for – was the dry spring our summer? Weather seems to come in chunks – long stretch of dry; will we have an equally long stretch of wet that leaves us grumpy – there is no pleasing farmers!

GRASS – the peak month for grass growth, especially now we have had rain. At the beginning of May, some paddocks outgrow the cows’ ability to eat it, even though they are at their milkiest and hungriest. So we walk the grass, measure it, guess how it will grow over the next few weeks, and lay aside the paddocks that will grow too long for the cows to eat right down, to make into winter feed. Then out comes the silage caravanserai, a metal team of mower, tedder with its long whirling prongs to spread the grass to dry it a little, then row it up for the great beast of a forager with its hungry mouth to pick up, chop and throw into a chasing trailer. Back to the clamp with the chopped grass, roll it down tight and sheet it to exclude air, and wait for the magical fermentation to take the green leaves, so fleeting, to a feed that will last the cows through the winter.

It’s a joyful, purposeful time, lots of driving big machines, getting the work done against the weather, the fields turned white and the silage clamp filled. The silage team take off to the next farm, eagerly awaited in turn. A full team is a lot of money for a few brief days a year, so we share contractors who drive the biggest and speediest kit.

COWS – At the beginning of the month the spring cows are all empty, and all cycling like crazy, an erotic frenzy like Friday night in a student town. Knots of cows ride each other, bunt each other – where’s the bull? We start serving in early May, and by the end of the month it’s much quieter – maybe three quarters of them are in calf. We use AI during May for all the most fertile cows. We watch who is riding and who is ridden, and serve them. We defrost the straw of semen from liquid nitrogen, and stick it in the end of a very long (2 foot) stainless steel blunt syringe. You stick a gloved arm up the cow’s back passage (a few ears back at that), and feel which ovary is ripe. You then ease the syringe up into the cow’s uterus – if she’s good and ready, it’s open to receive it, and gently find the correct horn and discharges the semen in just the right place. Not so much fun for the cow, but it does get the best bulls for grazing and cheesemaking from round the world into our herd.

CALVES – The products of last year’s service are frisking in the fields, confident, curious and playful. They’ve recovered from the tummy upsets they had – the fertility was so good in May last year, so many calves came at once, we struggled to keep the calving area as clean as we should have. If we do as well getting the cows in calf, we need to make sure the maternity ward is big enough for the deluge of calves. We are working out what we can sensibly do.

HEIFERS – The 15 month old heifers are now big enough to conceive. Different breeds start cycling at different ages; Friesians when they are far too small, even cycling at 6 months old; if they conceived, a calf would split them apart. Montbeliards and their crosses don’t cycle till they are a safe weight. We anxiously wait for them to get going, they show no interest in sex whatsoever, then when they start, they get in calf at once.

CHEESE – we are selling a little milk out at the peak to avoid making too much – no point in having more than we sell and also handling so much cheese puts huge extra pressure on everyone with such a physical process and our half-hundredweight cheeses. We started weighing each cheese when we make it, to avoid making some big and some little depending on who punches the curd or how much curd in the vat. This is to make the weight people are lifting as reasonable as it can be, but it means suddenly the shelf full of new cheeses look like peas in a pod – a real satisfaction, like looking at a tidy room, not a teenager’s bedroom.

The milk is steering a course between too creamy and rich giving too rich a curd, and too proteiny, curd that is heavy and grainy. We’ve a great interchange and interest between the cow and cheese teams: each side interested in having just the right milk to make the right cheese. I can’t wait to get to the grading at 3 months and find out whether the cheese is as right as the curd feels. Last year’s May cheese is coming through with a rich buttery note in the back of the flavour that is very luscious.

RECIPE – Nettle pesto: I love the satisfaction of foraging for food. Nettles are a rich vegetable, introduced into Britain by the Romans. They are uncomfortable if they sting you, so we might as well make use of them. With gloves, pick the top 5 leaves from a nettle patch before they flower – I keep a little patch picked to stop them flowering. Wash in salted water, they are a rich home for insects.

Put in a pan with a little boiling water to blanch the nettles (why is it called that when it makes them go bright green?), drain and puree. Pound garlic, cobnuts/hazels rapeseed oil and Quickes Traditional Goats Cheese. Use as pesto, on pasta or as a sauce on slices of chicken.
I apologize, I can’t remember who gave me this recipe at a show – if you read this, please let me know, so I can credit you.

MARY QUICKE

I took my first visit to Oklahoma City and the new Uptown Grocery Co, in Edmond, where I worked with the great staff in ‘The Wedgery’ (Cheese Shop) and featured the following cheese:

Westminster Sharp Cheddar, Barber’s 1833 Vintage Cheddar and Long Clawson’s Huntsman and Lemon Zest.

My activities included ‘The Art of Huntsman Cheese Making’ demonstrations, the hand crafted layering of Double Gloucester and Blue Stilton ……..which certainly created great interest with customers and staff alike. The Huntsman was then spread in celery sticks which were subsequently cut into bite size pieces, for serving. This is also a great way to serve Blue Stilton.

CROPS – The spring barley we put in last month is up, leaves like shot silk against the brown earth. We cultivate the last of the overwintered stubble for maize, good to collect summer sun in plant form to feed to cows into the winter – time shifting the summer bounty. Wheat and barley sown last autumn now starts to look like a crop, plants turning into little clumps. Each plantlet will produce an ear so we want enough to make a good crop, but not so many that each ear is poor and each grain will be starved. Now as the ears start running up the stems, the deer grazing starts eating yield; we look hopefully to see if the stalkers’ work over the winter has dented numbers (no).

GRASS – The grass is the centrepiece to feed the cows. It grows faster every week, which is lucky, because the cows get hungrier, needing more to fill their bellies, restored in size now they’ve got them back to themselves after calving. All the green gold fills the milk tank. We obsess over the grass, measuring the growth in each paddock, putting the cows into them at just the right time for them to take good mouthfuls – the heart of getting enough grass into them to fill their bellies and udders.

It’s a brave sight to see the whole herd grazing, companionably spread out across the paddock, each cow harvesting her little area. For the first couple of hours, all heads are down. Each cow takes several mouthfuls for each step, each mouthful a full one – you can audibly hear the grass torn & chewed. They eat the grass as short as they can, leaving the sward clean to grow back again, giving us leafy spring-like grass right through the season. That’s the heart of grass feeding. At the same time, we check to make sure the cows have recovered from calving. Next month, in May, we want to get them into calf, to make sure they calve next year to harvest this glorious rapidly rising green tide.

The calves and youngstock are all now old hands at grazing, no longer nervous, skittish, jumping at shadows. We bring milk to the youngest calves until they are strong enough to do without. The milk bar, hauled along behind the buggy, behaves like an ice cream van to children, magnetically interesting. They will follow it months after they are weaned, trotting eagerly after it, very useful to move groups of animals between fields.

CHEESE – The rising tide of milk hits the cheese dairy. We are making 3 times more cheese a day than in winter. Suddenly the work multiplies – making the cheese today, all those 27kg, 60lb cheese in press for three days, all that young cheese to be turned every week. It needs as much love and attention as each winter cheese, only suddenly there’s a lot more of them. Don’t ask for any extras, don’t ask for long chats, till the tide of milk recedes, but the team will make sure each one is perfect.

DEVON COUNTY SHOW – Amazing to hear the line up for the food. All the menus and all the prices, even of the most humble burger van, is vetted to be good quality produce from the South West wherever possible. I’d always had great food at good value at the Show; I’d thought it was always a lucky chance, or my good choice. It’s because the doughty catering committees make sure it so – that the food at the Show reflects our beautiful county of Devon, and is a joy to everyone who goes – see you there!

RECIPE – Line caught Pollack with Quickes Traditional Cheddar Cheese Sauce. I love all fish, but white fish, even delicious line caught Pollack from Gibsons Plaice, needs a little added cheesy interest. Make a white sauce in your normal way, add a reasonable amount of Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar and let it melt in. Add a tiny squeeze of lemon juice and some finely chopped tarragon. Stir in a little cream if your waistline can stand it, season, and pour over the Pollack. Put a few breadcrumbs on top. Bake in medium oven for 20 minutes until the fish it just cooked and the topping is just browning.

MARY QUICKE

In the old town of Clermont is ‘Cheeser’s Palace Café – Cheese & Chocolate Shop’ owned and operated by Carol Kayser and her daughter Amanda, who have over 50 years of experience in the Food Industry including Restaurants, Gourmet Stores and Catering…….and this is where I recently took part in one of their Cheese Classes, featuring:

Westminster Vintage English Cheddar – Blue Stilton – Cotswold – White Stilton with Mango & Ginger – Lemon Zest

Wensleydale with Cranberries – Red Dragon – Cahill’s Porter

The featured cheeses were Quickes Farmhouse Cheddar and Quickes Oak Smoked Cheddar, along with Westminster Vintage Cheddar and Stripey Jack. Also included were Cahills Porter from Ireland and Sage Derby….both cheeses ideal for those St.Patrick’s Day celebrations! Sage Derby may not be Irish….but it is green!!