The whole countryside has a blowsy, let-out look, brambles tangling and reaching everywhere.  I took a shortcut between two fields through a patch of woodland and just in a hundred yards, lost sight of the track in the undergrowth, ended up stepping along wobbly marsh grass to get 50 yards back to the path.  A wild boar jumps out from the wheat a couple of yards ahead of Val walking with her little Jack Russell.  Young buzzards call to each other, finding their place in the world.  Four slugs, yellow, black, grey and brown sit in a row feasting on rather liquid fox calling card where the tyres run in the lane: profusion in the damp weather.

CROPS  -  The crops have looked mostly great, just one field for us of oilseed rape that told us of the tricky time last harvest and getting these crops in the ground.  Now we have the combines in, telling us how they actually grew – until the crop is in the trailers and off the field, it’s a guess.  It looks like another catchy harvest, cool weather and showers.  After last harvest, everyone is keen to go early, so we all try and get the contractors’ combines rolling on ours as soon as it’s fit to cut, one contractor balancing demands from all sides.  The broad heads of the combines cut twenty to thirty feet wide at a time; once they are here, they make short work.  Grain pours into trailers, race back to tip into the barn, some going up to our co-operative grain store, some we’ll keep at home.  Prices have been crazy, changing on every speculator’s twitch, grain and weather report – our cool weather comes from El Nino off the coast of Chile, will there be a drought in Australia?  It’s clearer if we just keep more to feed our cows, we don’t have to understand so much of the whirl of the world.

Our clover swards are amazing – walk into them, it’s a sea of scented flowers, smelling of clover honey, bees busy – are there as many as there should be?  There are some ragwort plants, so we’ll graze so the animals will avoid the poisonous plants, rank when fresh but eatable if cut, and pull plants to stop them being cut or seeding as they come to flower.  It’s the perils of old set-aside, fallowed land, you get more biodiversity than you want.

COWS  -  It’s another grassy year, and the cows are grazing well.  We pushed them to graze a little hard, so they lost a little too much weight.   We give them a little more grass every day, they’ll not eat it down so neatly, and we may have to tidy up with a machine, but they gain the weight back, looking sleek and shining as they should.  The August calving cows return from their holiday away on more clover, now come back to start their year’s work.  They calve outside, so easily and cleanly on the pasture in the warm weather, start milking to give us milk all through the winter.

We’ve just tested clear for TB in the cows, our badgers kept healthy, our vet says, by the river on one side and our band of coniferous woodland, barriers enough that our healthy badgers can patrol to keep out the sick ones we know are all around.

CALVES  -  look well this year, we still aren’t sure what wasn’t working before, but we are content they are better than last year’s calves.  We listen for every little cough, wondering if we’ve done enough, not quite sure what else we can do.

CHEESE  -  We do our annual building work in the cheese dairy in August, not so much this year, we’ve brought it up to shiny over the years.  The main thing we always do is check over boilers and pasteurizer to make sure they are doing what they should, and do a clean of all the bits like the high ceiling, that don’t get done while we are making every day.  Then we settle back into making – August cheese with that clovery note on the finish.

The maturing cheese looks cleaner than it’s done for a while, a lot of brushing, and the ozone (same as on a bright day) seeming to hold the cheese mite so we can keep up with a manageable level of brushing them.

PRIZES  -  Great Yorkshire Show  -  we’ve won a first prize for Quickes Traditional Goats Cheese and Quickes Traditional Oak Smoked Cheddar, and a second prize for Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar.
Great Taste Awards  -  a cracking 3 Gold Stars for Quickes Traditional Goats Cheese and 2 Gold Stars for Quickes Traditional Mature and Vintage Cheddar.  Nantwich  -  we son Gold for Quickes Traditional Oak Smoked Cheddar, Quickes Traditional Mild Cheddar, Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar and Bronze for Quickes Traditional Extra Mature Cheddar.

RECIPE  -   My mother and father are always exploring delicious ways of cooking vegetables, I love to be there as they make their evening meal.  Saute a chopped onion and 4 chopped leeks in 2oz butter.  Add 12oz sliced mushrooms, stir for 2-3 minutes on a medium heat.  Stir in a little flour to thicken, add ¼ pint water, yeast extract, bay leaf and thyme.  Bring to the boil to thicken and simmer uncovered for 2-3 minutes.  Off the heat, stir in soured cream or crème fraiche, adjust seasoning.  Serve at once on a bed of rice, generously topping with grated Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar. It’s flavoursome to have on its own or to accompany the main course.

MARY QUICKE