June drips with rich green everywhere, especially luscious after our long winter and chilly spring.  It felt like our weather moved 500 miles to the north  -  I wonder how our summer will play out.  So far, we, the crops and the animals rejoice in the warm leafiness of it all.  There are so many young around - daft young rabbits, easy to practice on for rangy young foxes, fledglings - a little owl sits on the ground, turfed out by his mother, girding himself to take his first flight before the young hunter becomes prey.  The may, the hawthorn flowers, are still flowering in June, followed on by the elderflowers, those fragrant bridesmaids of summer.  Enjoy them all year, with the recipe for elderflower cordial below.

CROPS  -  we’re just growing wheat and spring barley this year as our only combinable crops, and they all look gorgeously lush, although a little patchy particularly on the minimum tilled crops.  The hard winter was hardest on them, and they haven’t grown such deep roots.  The long cold spring may help them catch up, because all the growth stages came later - like with people, late maturing may mean taller in the long run.  They flower in June - the flowers green ears, pollinated by wind at the end of the month.

GRASS  -  The grass growth has slowed down and is getting a bit more stalky.  Now’s the time we have to keep cutting back its flowering ambitions, to keep it leafy, and where our grazing system wins out, because we keep grazing the grass down, making silage of those paddocks we can’t get to graze.  This keeps the grass leafy and a delectable feed all summer long.  Let it go to seed and the cows trample and waste it, and it goes rank and mouldy underfoot.

COWS  -  The cows are getting in calf - just a quarter of the spring calved cows to go.  We’ve got a wonderful record to keep up from last year.  Higher yielding cows can be shy to get in calf  - too much to work at, filling the tank with milk and getting pregnant, and something has to give.   Our cows at 6000 litres a year give less than the national average, but they are happy to get in calf over and over again, so we are getting nearly double the national life in the milking herd from them. 

The calves are now all out, a little earlier than last year, and we are carrying milk out to pasture for them.  It was so lovely to see them skipping around on their first day out, tentative, not quite believing how lovely it was.

We’re getting our teenage heifers pregnant now.  They scared us by showing no interest in boys, or the cow version, no sign of bulling, riding each other and so on, but just like last year, suddenly all come bulling just when we need them too.  Many of them have Montbeliarde sires, a French cheesemaking breed, and we think they take their time to get to maturity, then there’s no stopping them.

CHEESE  -  Our cheese has taken on a beautiful buttery note with the grass and the cow breeding.  We’ve stopped working so hard to get less cream in the milk, as that was taking more grain than we wanted to feed.  Instead we’ve slowed the make down - put in less starter, the lactic acid bacteria that acidifies the milk, and let the acid develop more slowly, and then worked the curd more at cheddaring, the turning of the blocks of curd once we’ve run the whey off.  That means we avoid rapid acid growth, and develop our trademark flavour ‘creamy complex balanced and long finish’, which is becoming even richer, producing flavours in our mature cheese a year later that a customer described as ‘sensuous and luscious, unmistakeably Quicke’s’.

PRIZES  -  Devon County Show 

Mature Cheddar          -  Supreme Champion
Mature Cheddar          -             1st
Oak Smoked Cheddar  -            1st
Hard Goats Cheese      -            1st
Cheddar with Herbs      -            2nd
Mild Cheddar               -            3rd
Vanilla Ice Cream        -            2nd

RECIPE  -  I saw this simple and quick recipe for Cheese and Spring Onion Soup in an Irish cookbook by Jane Russell.  Sweat 4 trimmed and finely sliced spring onions in an ounce of Quickes Traditional Butter.  Add an ounce of flour and cook for two minutes.  Add a pint of milk and half a pint of chicken stock slowly (I use a balloon whisk which sorts out any lumps). Season with black pepper, and bring to the boil stirring continuously till it thickens, simmer for 5 minutes.  Stir in 4oz grated Quickes Traditional Mature Cheddar, pour into warmed soup bowls and garnish with 2 tsps chopped parsley and more pepper.

Serve with fresh bread and butter for a light lunch or easy first course for supper. 

Remember to make your elderflower cordial while the elderflowers are young.  I use a recipe I got from Bas Danes.  Use lots of flower heads, at least 20 good sized ones, 4lbs sugar, 2oz citric acid and 2 pints of boiling water.  Stir daily till all the sugar is dissolved, then I strain and put the concentrated cordial in the freezer, and scoop out as I need it.  The strained flowers in a jug of water give you your first and most delicious taste of cordial.  I like to eat a few sugared flowers fished out of the water on a thin slice of Quickes Mature Cheddar as a little tasty morsel.

MARY QUICKE