The late spring makes it even more delicious - so long awaited, the wonder as each set of leaves unfolds, the returning birds arrive - I love the house martens, back from Africa, swooping around the house.  Before they arrived, two hornets flew into the house, now they keep us safe.  How does a house marten deal with a hornet? 

Hoverflies hover like magic, bumbles bees are busy, they woke up covered in mites, but they don’t seem affected, I think they aren’t the varroa mite. 

CROPS  -  The crops at long last are starting to move.  The colder winter has held back their rooting, so the crazy growth that happens from now on won’t be so free.  In May we spread the last winter’s strawy dung and manure, plough it in, cultivate the ground and sow maize for the cows’ food for next winter - to make the milk for the winter after that one’s cheese.  Leaps across the years, I love the care and planning to have it all work beautifully.  The maize germinates quickly in the warmer weather, green rows across the red soil like some exquisite embroidery.  We need all the long days to get the work done.

COWS  -  The grass is growing ahead of the cows - a turnaround, until the middle of April, it looked like it would never come.  The cows, suddenly with a lot of grass, are flush with milk.  Time now, to serve the cows, get them in calf to the bulls we want - a lot of frisking, as they show their willingness to go the bull, standing to be ridden by their herdmates.  We cut the grass the cows don’t eat to stop it heading (it wants to set seed too) and make it into silage, the distinctive whine of the forage harvester audible across the parish.  

SILAGE  -  First cut silage is always a huge drama, the great team of mower, tedder, forage harvester, tractors hauling great trailers, and the loader, now very much a contractor’s job, going from farm to farm, eagerly awaited.  We all anxiously watch for the gaps in the weather, calculate when the team will be with us.  It’s the time that sets the course for keeping the grass right for the rest of the summer - have we kept the grass young and leafy, have we cut too much and left the cows short.  It’s also the time that sets how the winter feeding will go - is the silage good, is it enough, did we manage to get it into the clamp in the dry, or did it get rained on to give the cows a poor quality feed for the winter.  Please have patience with farm traffic on the road in May - this job is so important for us, less critical now we graze outside into the winter and grow other silages like maize and whole crop, but still great to get right.

CHEESE  -  It’s an endurance test as the peak milk goes on and on, with the later grass pushing the cows’ natural peak beyond the six weeks after they calve. We are making three vats of cheese every day, and dealing with the three vats a day for the last three days in press, as well as turning the all the cheese in store weekly.   We had some visitors, Stephen Jones of Somerdale, who walked in to our ‘cathedral of cheese’.  It sits in racking up to fifteen feet high, nine shelves high, our last year’s make.  It has a quiet, purposeful feel.  We’ve created a machine to help us deal with our cheese mite problem - we put a whole rack of 24 cheeses into a little chamber attached to a big dust extractor and blow the cheese with compressed air.  Lots of people came up with different bits of the machine - my Australian cousin, Keith, who’d seen dust extracting on mineral ore in mining, Duncan Lyon of Devon Grain who lent us the dust extractor from our co-operative grain store and advised us to try compressed air, and all the people who’ve helped and come up with suggestions.  It’s helping us slowly sweep back the rising tide of mite. 

Lots of people want our cheese at the moment - the spring seems to have woken people up to the idea that a little treat won’t go amiss after a hard winter and hard year before that.  The packing department have been complete champions, starting early and working late, and every possible hand on deck. 

I’m so in awe of our whole team’s commitment to doing the job just right - and thank you to our customers for rooting for our cheese.

RECIPE  -  Jane’s classic omelette - my daughter’s staple at university.  I’m using goose eggs because my friend Marion Trigg has some and they cook so beautifully.

For four people: Chop an onion and sweat with garlic in some olive oil.  Add a chopped tomato and a handful of chopped mushrooms to the pan.  Grate loads of Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar, and dice some fully cured chorizo.  Mix eggs, ¾ of the grated cheese and chorizo.  Pour onto the sweated vegetables and mix briefly.  Let it cook on a low heat, then flip it, cutting in half if necessary. Just before you take it off the heat, sprinkle the remaining cheese over one half, and put the other half on top to make a glorious cheesy filling.  Serve immediately with a twist of black pepper on top with a rocket or other strong flavoured salad.

MARY QUICKE