Michael loves milking cows.  So much so as soon as he hit the teenage years he was pretty much responsible for milking all of the cows on the family farm, both before and after school. Michael’s family hasn’t a long history of farming and he was much more of the artistic persuasion (his uncle is the famous actor Nigel Davenport). His dad bought the farm on a whim: he decided he wanted to farm and, marrying a local girl, went into farming feet first, with no experience.  He soon tired of it and left it to Michael and his mother (who is nearing 100 years old and still lives on the farm to this day!) Now with his wife Mary, Michael continues to farm their 180 acres on the flats on Lincolnshire.  Their farming is traditional in nature, with small fields, hedgerows and even a barn owl, which allows them to produce all their own forage (feed) for their 70 cows – a closed herd of Friesians, with the odd Brown Swiss and Red Poll. In 2005 the milk price collapsed and Michael and Mary decided they would have to diversify to continue.  So they went on a Chris Ashby…

Cheese-maker, Rose Grimond makes Bix, Witheridge and Highmoor on their farm near Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire. Andy interviewed Rose to find out what makes this fantastic cheese-maker tick. Give a brief synopsis of your business and career. I used to work with ex-offenders in London until my greed got the better of me and I started a food business supplying restaurants and Borough Market with produce from the Orkney Islands. From there it was a move to the family farm with a young family that ignited the idea of turning the milk from the farm into cheese. What made you get into doing what you do? A mixture of wanting to help the farm diversify and a desire to make great food. What is your philosophy for your food/business? Let the food speak for itself. Great food is undeniable. Describe a typical working day. My days are dominated by cheese and children. Most simply: children, cheese, cheese, cheese, cheese, children, eat, sleep. What’s the best part of your job? And do you have a favourite memory from work? I am lucky enough to work with great people and there is nothing more gratifying than making good food with good people. That’s…

Nestled on the border between England and Scotland, Doddington Farm is almost as far north in England as you can get. And allegiances up here are mixed; indeed the Maxwell family, who run the farm) only started farming at Doddington in the 1950s when they moved their whole farm and dairy herd down from Scotland’s wet west coast in search of drier and better farmland. Taking on a tenancy from the British Admiralty, the Maxwells secured a large area to farm, encompassing the small village of Doddington in Northumberland, just south of Berwick on Tweed, and set about establishing their successful dairy farm. But the 1980s saw many changes in farming and the introduction of milk quotas started the Maxwells thinking about how to diversify to keep their farm viable. Diversification would help to provide jobs for all the family, as by this time the next generation of the family were running the farm, with brothers Bob and John tending to the animals, arable land and milking the cows (a hodgepodge mix of Montbelliard, Holstein, Friesian, Swedish Red and Normandy breeds that give a diverse milk – interestingly the different breeds seem to stick together in groups out in the…

An in-depth video interview with Barry Graham, who was at the forefront of the raw-cheese British cheese-making revival in the 1980’s. Starting with just four Ayrshire cows and a parcel of land. A founder committee member of Britain’s Specialist Cheesemakers Association, Barry has helped grow Loch Arthur community from its humble to a multi-million pound farm, farmshop and creamery, whilst still retaining true to its farmhouse and raw milk routes. In this interview he talks about the challenges he’s faced and how the industry has changed in the last 30 years. View the video below, or listen to this interview with the free downloadable or in-browser mp3 Podcast at Podomatic or iTunes.

“This room is not for me”, stated my four-year-old daughter, Mary, as she entered the final ageing room where Young Buck Blue is matured. You could understand why – the room smelt strongly of ammonia as the cheeses reached their final maturity and the blue breakdown of the interior was most evident. The maturing room we had been in just before, however, was a delight: heady, boozy and yeasty – before the blue has developed in these blue cheeses but the yeast coats were showing at their best. Mary wanted to stay in that room. We were visiting Mike Thomson, creator of the amazing Young Buck Blue cheese in Newtownards near Belfast. In 2013 Mike set out on his own as a one-man band to create one of Britain’s finest blue cheeses, and to be the first producer of raw-milk cheese in Northern Ireland for over half a century. Many years earlier I had met a young Mike on a cheese-making course and he, like me, had progressed to the wide world of ‘cheese work’ as cheese-maker for Sparkenhoe farm in Leicester. But his dream was always to return to Northern Ireland. Eventually, with a large help from crowd-funding site…

Stuck deep within rural Ireland is the small market town of Portumna. It is near here, on a small family-owned farm, that one of the finest goats’ milk cheeses is made – Killeen. A fortuitous coming-together of great things – fantastic Irish pasture, well-looked-after goats, and Marion Roeleveld’s Dutch cheese-making know how – have created a cheese that is unique. Kathy and I chugged up the lane to this family farm early one morning, to be greeted by Marion’s partner Haske, peering out at us from the container-made home he constructed with his own hands on the edge of the farm’s land. Haske came here when he was 18, but by then he was already into goat farming. Not being from a farming family, when he was four he had asked his full-time teacher dad for a pet goat. His dad said that if Haske could milk a goat, he could have one. So, at the age of four(!), Haske went to a nearby farm and did exactly that – slowly he learnt how to milk and keep goats. By the time he was five he could milk by hand, and, in fulfilment of the bargain, his dad bought him…

Read how about The Courtyard Dairy’s newest recruit – Louise Pauley went to help make Stichelton cheese earlier this year, and what she loved about the place. “I’ve decided that making cheese is similar to doing Tai Chi… The people are calm, the environment simple and uncluttered. The moves are deliberate, controlled, rhythmic…quiet. This is the flip-side to the normal hectic, noisy bustle of the Courtyard Dairy where Yorkshire meets Lancashire…well sort of, and us Cheesemongers pass on our knowledge about the amazing cheeses that Andy has chosen for our counter. This was my first visit to a cheese maker…no pressure…just watch, listen and take it all in. In the middle of 15,000 acres of beautiful, flat farmland, lies Collingthwaite Farm, the home of Stichelton, a stunning blue cheese produced on the Welbeck Estate, Sherwood Forest, by Joe, Ross and the rest of the team……the people and the cheeses are lovely. The day goes like clockwork. Last evening’s milk sits patiently in its steam jacketed tank (one half of a pair of tanks, made at the same time about 60 years ago and never parted) waiting for the mornings milk to be added. The slow make starts, the science bits…

Joe Schneider wanted to make a raw-milk (unpasteurised) Stilton and so set up a small dairy in partnership with the Wellbeck Estate in Nottinghamshire in 2006. Unable to call it Stilton (as it is made with raw milk) he named it Stichelton. Joe uses the fabulous milk from Collingthwaite Farm on the estate where he is based to make one of Britain’s best cheeses: Stichelton. Buy Stichleton online > Buy Stichleton online >

Hidden amongst the forest and lakes on the border between Northern and Southern Ireland is an idyllic small cottage.  Here lies a truly inspirational cheese-maker; one of the pioneers of farmhouse cheese-making in Ireland – Silke Cropp. Arriving from Germany in 1985, Silke was looking to start the good life.  So she and her husband bought a derelict old cottage and smallholding, and set about restoring the cottage to its former glory. Children soon arrived, and, as part of her plan, Silke bought a goat to provide the household with milk.  Not a pure-breed milking goat, this semi-wild beast produced just enough milk for the three healthy boys, with a little surplus. Silke began using this surplus goat milk to make cheese.  Using the stovetop in her kitchen, with space to mature cheeses in the larder next door, Corleggy cheeses came into existence.  These were the days before health authorities and inspections and all the cheese was made on the stove, based on recipes from one old book (“I made a lot of bad cheese in the beginning!” she laughs), using a drainpipe in which to drain the curd, and a homemade cheese press constructed by following a drawing of…