The Dairy

Until the 1980s the British Friesian had been a cow valued by farmers for its ability to produce beautiful creamy rich milk, but with the rise of industrial farming, many farmers found themselves compromising the quality of their milk, choosing a breed that could produce milk as quickly as possible so as to meet consumer demands and slowly the British Friesian was replaced by today’s more common dairy cow, the Holstein.

In 2005 Daylesford farm started a breeding programme to slowly breed the dairy herd back to become British Friesians. It was an extremely rewarding day for the team when the herd was awarded its pedigree status by the British Friesian Society.

Today the cows continue to roam the fields and graze their natural pasture diet. They give birth to healthy, happy calves, which are nurtured by the herdsmen and stockmen throughout every stage of their life and it’s only when calves are ready that they are gently moved from life in the field to the dairy.

THE CREAMERY

Just a few steps, 52 to be precise, from the milking parlour is the farm’s busy creamery. The fresh milk is pumped directly from the parlour into urns and divided between the milk house and cheese room.

Everything Daylesford produces at the creamery is designed to ensure that none of the milk is wasted. In the milk house, most of the milk is packaged up to be sold in sustainable pouches. The cream is skimmed from certain batches of milk to make skimmed and semi-skimmed milk, but instead of being thrown away, the cream is churned and rolled by hand to produce pats of butter. The by-product of that churning – the buttermilk – is also collected and sold in Daylesford farm shops.

In the cheese room Daylesford’s small team develops, matures and moulds eight different cheeses, from blues and goat’s cheese to Single and Double Gloucesters, Cheddar and another hard cheese named after the local village of Adlestrop. Daylesford continues to honour traditional methods of cheese-making, separating the curds from the whey by hand, using wooden pulley systems to weight and press the cheeses, and relying on intuition and skill to judge when the cheeses have ripened to be at their best.

The nature of organic milk means that it will change throughout the year, according to the weather, the season and the behaviour of the herd, so the cheese makers must understand and work in harmony with its natural properties and their mutations. Rather than standardising processes and flavours, Daylesford adjust their recipes to the milk and firmly believe that it is this artisan, small-scale production that gives their cheeses their distinctive flavours.

The cooked cheese curds used to produce Daylesford’s hard cheeses are poured into moulds then pressed slowly and gently, and the cheeses are turned by hand. Pressing too quickly means that the cheese makers might find liquid – essentially butter – stuck to the bottom of the moulds so they must check each cheese regularly to ensure it is being pressed at the right speed. Nothing is rushed. The Single Gloucester cheese matures for eight weeks, while the Cheddar will be aged for anything up to 18 months.

You will find a selection of Daylesford cheeses on our pub menus; whether on a delicious cheeseboard at The Wild Rabbit, championed on The Fox double cheeseburger or on a pizza at The Three Horseshoes and The Bell.