As I drove away from Daylesford Organic Farm last week, having visited the food shop, kitchen and garden shop, restaurant, cooking school, spa and clothing boutique–each with its own enticing smell–I saw a dairy herd hanging out in the next field. How scenic, I thought, how lovely to see cows again. It took a minute to connect them with the multiple-award winning cheeses and yogurts in the pristine food emporium. But that’s how fresh everything is: the cows are milked twice a day in the dairy, and the dairy is round the back of the shop.
Photographs by Kendra Wilson, except where noted.
Above: The Gloucester herd, enjoying Gloucestershire life. With regular trips to the milking shed they keep the creamery busy, providing the basic ingredients for cheese, cream, butter, yogurt, puddings… Photograph via Daylesford.
Above: Snip to open, fresher-than-fresh milk.
Above: Behind the glass doors of the cheese room, chilled to a perfect humidity. Besides the cheese which is made on the farm (including Single and Double Gloucester, Baywell and Adlestop), Daylesford carries local cheeses like the celebrated Stinking Bishop.
Above: Spanish Manchego, from further afield but organically certified.
Above: Daylesford Cheddar, pictured here, is allowed to mature for nine months. It’s available online for £5.25 per 250 grams. Photograph via Daylesford.
Above: Dive into a creamy yogurt.
Above: Bledington Blue, a new cheese for Daylesford and a prizewinner; £9.99 for 400 grams, available online.
Above: The branding is so seductive that it is easy to forget that Daylesford is ensconced in a working farm. On entering the food shop, I was wondering whether the organic carrots would have soil on them. They did. Pictured here with heritage variety tomatoes brought directly over from the market garden.
Above: Cotswold style. There are more shops in London, and a further farm in Staffordshire. The estate in Provence, France supplies wine to Daylesford.
Above: Meet the workers, some young Friesians. Photograph via Daylesford.
Are you craving more cheese? See A Bucolic Farm in Vermont, Intellectuals Included.
N.B.: This post was originally published on September 11, 2012.
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