A Visit To Fen Farm Dairy
Rosie, who works on our Ecommerce Team, visited Fen Farm Dairy earlier this summer along with some of our other colleagues. In this blog she reflects on her trip and how her firsthand experience developed her thoughts on the relationship between food and place.
In the Waveney River Valley in Suffolk lies Fen Farm Dairy, where Jonny Crickmore and his team make the cheeses Baron Bigod, Raedwald and Punch, their newest offering.
Our visit to the farm in June offered the chance to see what goes into making these cheeses: the cows, the land, the cheesemaking and the ways in which the farm uses its resources. For me, it also raised questions about the relationship between food and place, and what it means to produce food on a smaller, more human scale.
On the morning of our visit, mist hung over the valley and the air was damp with the promise of rain. When we arrived, Johnny took us up the hill to the viewpoint overlooking the farm. With the attentive ears of a group of nearby cows, he told us about the history of the farm and his initial idea for a raw milk vending machine. First set up in 2011 with an honesty box for payment, the vending machine provided an outlet for the farm to sell their raw milk at the farm gate, forming a direct connection between producer and consumer. What began as a single vending machine has since grown into an on-site farm shop and two more farm shops across Suffolk. This success over the past 15 years is a testament to consumers yearning for food with a clear provenance.
Fen Farm Dairy’s herd of Montbéliarde cows
The milk used to make Fen Farm's cheeses, butter, yoghurt, and cream comes from its herd of Montbéliarde cows. Jonny brought this ancient breed over from the Jura region in the French Alps with the intention of making a soft cheese inspired by Brie de Meaux, which became Baron Bigod. Montbéliarde cows produce smaller yields of milk, but its richness in protein and flavour is what lends itself so well to cheesemaking.
Our visit came just after the spring calving season, so we were able to meet the calves, who greeted us with welcome licks. As the rain began to fall, we led a group of cows through the farm to the rest of the herd in a nearby field. The cows soon wandered over to investigate us, licking our raincoats and nudging our backs. On the walk back through the wet meadows Jonny pointed out the diversity of plants growing on the farm, including clover, chicory, and plantain.
Circular economy principles are built into the infrastructure at Fen Farm Dairy. Throughout the visit we saw how the farm makes use of its own resources to reduce reliance on external inputs. A biomass straw burner is used to generate heat from straw bales and circulate hot water around the farm. Solar panels provide a renewable source of energy that can be used during the darker months. The herbal leys and grasses grown in the fields provide feed for the cows during winter, avoiding the need for imported feed. Growing their own winter feed over several years also improves biodiversity, sequesters carbon and builds soil health on the farm, as well as allowing deeper root structures to form. This helps builds climate resilience as the plants are better able to withstand extreme weather events, which is crucial at a time when climate change is having an ever-growing impact on farming in the UK.
After our tour of the farm, we got suited and booted to enter the cheesemaking rooms. Each room had its own distinct smell and temperature, reflecting the different stages of cheesemaking and maturation. We were lucky enough to be entrusted with ladling the curds for that day’s Baron Bigod make, before seeing the moulded cheeses at varying stages of maturation.
Ladling the curds into Baron Bigod moulds Batches of Baron Bigod
Finally, we were able to taste different batches of Punch, a new washed-rind cheese that has been developed at the farm. The cheese maturation team at Neal’s Yard Dairy had been involved in some early conceptions of this cheese, assisting with washing trials, so it was exciting to see the developed product. Some had been washed that morning and tasted saltier and more briney, and others had developed rich, savoury flavours. Their textures also varied from sticky to silky to dense. Developing a new cheese offers another way to express the farm's milk and landscape. It will be exciting to see how the final development of this cheese will taste compared to these earlier iterations.
Tasting different batches of Punch
Visiting Fen Farm Dairy was an opportunity to understand everything that lies behind the final product of a cheese. The soil, the landscape, the cows and the local climate all contribute to the character of the milk and, ultimately, the cheese. The result is a cheese that could not be reproduced in exactly the same way somewhere else. Baron Bigod is the product of a particular herd, a particular farm, and a particular set of environmental and cheesemaking conditions.
The cheese is shaped by where it is made, and it is all the tastier for it.