COUNTRY CHEESES TAVISTOCK

The art of cheese making was nearly lost in this country. Years ago, cheese making was an art that stayed in the family environment, passed from one generation to the next. A farmhouse cheese was one that was made on the farm where the milk was produced and the cheese was really just a method of preserving milk. However, during the Second World War milk was classed as a national commodity and farmhouse cheesemaking ceased, all soft cheese production stopped and milk was transported to factories to be made into hard cheese, again as a method of preserving large quantities of milk. By the time the shortages of the war ceased, many cheese makers had moved on to other things.

Prior to the war there were over five hundred registered cheese making farms in the South West. After the war there were only fifty. The popularity of supermarkets is also culpable for the decline in artisan cheese making. The fashion for vacuum-packed ‘convenience foods’ hit an all time high and many people became accustomed to the unchallenging, mediocre flavours of foods that were manufactured and mass produced.

We want to reverse this trend and introduce people to the old fashioned flavours of ‘Real’ cheese. The more people who taste the stunning examples of artisan cheese making in this area, the more people will go out of their way to buy it and the more the demand increases, more and more farmers can be persuaded to diversify and experiment with using their milk to make cheese. And most importantly, the variety and accessibility of exceptional ‘real’ cheeses will increase, bringing one of the nation’s most traditional, varied and nutritious foods back into our diets.