It’s been a headlong dash from the grip of winter, that cold and frost and bare ground, feels not long ago, to the overflowing of wild growth everywhere.  By early  June it seems we’ll be overwhelmed by green, by the end, dry weather and plants seeding gives the illusion we are back in control.

The hedgerows give their annual procession of flowers – cow parsley:  glorious profusion to tatty remnants in a few weeks, elderflowers, splashed across the landscape, foxgloves, vetches, meadowsweet and honeysuckle, the sight and smell of summer.  The buzzards wait above the hedges, each in their favourite site, keeping watch for movement, swooping heavily on the dinner that thought it was well hidden under the skirts of the hedge.

CROPS  -  Wheat puts its flowers out – green ears, waiting to be fertilized and filled with stored sunshine.  The oilseed rape replaces the yellow flowers with its untidy tangle of pods coming up the stem.  The maize grows from tiny plants a few inches high to great flag leaves racing its neighbours to the sky. 

GRASSLAND  -  We’ve clipped the wings of the grass, cows eating what they can, and the rest cut for silage, keeping it leafy for grazing later in the year, and storing the wild growth for the lean times.  It grows a little slower now in June, off the maddest chase, steadier, drier leaves, but still hoping to put up a seed head while we’re not looking.  We are looking on the cow grazing and measure the grass growth, working out what to graze and what to cut to keep it best for the cows. We balance keeping enough ahead of them, but not so much that it gets stalky.

COWS  -  The spring calved cows are rapidly getting in calf now – by the end of June, we should have most of them ‘stopped’ – stopping cycling, safely in calf.  Their milk has come off the peak yield, as they start to look after the new pregnancy, rather than the drive to feed their last calf.  We have had such good fertility just recently, so we wait, cautiously hopeful that we’ll do it again.  The cows are looking very good - sleek, shiny, no lame cows – I watch them as they come in for milking, it’s a good way of making sure I’ve sighted every animal.  I was watching them in a hat, which for some reason alarmed them, and a few turned tail and ran the other way, so I had to double back behind the hedge so I got behind them again.  They react when you change shape, crowding round if you sit down in a field, so I suppose the hat made me look odd – I didn’t think it looked too bad.
 
We dry off the autumn cows in preparation for them calving in August.  The dry cows go off on their summer holidays to restore themselves before the rigours of milking.  They graze the outlying fields, the orchards and by the woods.  We don’t graze these fields so carefully, so they are stalky and we waste grass, but give a rich wildlife in the trees, field margins and thick hedges.  Hardworking ladies enjoy some downtime in the dappled shade, where a black and white cow can almost completely disappear in the broken light.

CHEESE  -  We make a lovely cheese in June, the milk a nice balance with the grass high in sugars from the high sun giving good protein, but stalky enough to make a creamy but not too creamy milk.  The milk is coming down a bit, another peak over, we can catch up with some of the extra jobs that get left with the highest volume of milk.

We are selecting cheeses for the shows – we won a lot of prizes last year, how will it go this year.  We always aim to make a quintessential cheddar – creamy, complex, unfolding flavour, with a long long finish.  Val Bines, our masterly cheese technologist, selects the most perfect ones she can find, then Tony Rowe, our storeman, scrapes away the rind and oils it with olive oil and coats it with plasticoat, then put a special cloth around it – a prizewinning art all to itself.

PRIZES  -  so far this year are:-

Devon County Show    

Quickes Traditional Hard Goats Cheese -  Supreme Champion

Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar  -  2nd

Quickes Traditional Mild Cheddar  -  3rd

Royal Bath & West Show

Quickes Traditional Oak Smoked Cheddar  -  Gold

Quickes Traditional Cheddar with Herbs  -  Bronze

Quickes Traditional Hard Goats Cheese  -  Bronze

Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar  -  Bronze

Quickes Traditional Mild Cheddar  -  Bronze

RECIPE   -  Mustard greens in cheese sauce -  I’ve got a deluge of mustard greens in my garden, and I’ve spent some cooking (and gardening) time on making the best use of them.  They are easy to grow, and we need to keep cutting them to stop them running to seed.  My favourite recipe for them is to sweat them in olive oil with a clove of garlic, till they are cooked.  Make a cheese sauce. Tom, my husband, makes it properly, with 20g butter heated, then 30g of plain flour mixed in, then 400ml milk, whisked briefly to prevent lumps, brought to the boil stirring it, then add 75g Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar, stirred in till it’s melted, then poured over the cooked greens and season with salt and pepper.   It works to re-heat gently, so I make a big batch that can do a couple of meals as a substantial vegetable, that even works as a light lunch with some new potatoes or fresh bread and Quickes Traditional Butter.

MARY QUICKE