Botton Creamery
Making cheese with purpose
Driving down the steep narrow lane to Botton in the North York Moors National Park, it's hard to know what to expect at the bottom. There's a welcoming feel about the hidden village, safe from the busy world. It feels quite magical, especially as there's a special room where a simple activity produces something very delicious and distinctive: Botton Creamery's cheese.
A herd of around 20 Ayrshires and Dairy Shorthorns calmly graze on the varied pastures around Botton. Those pastures are carefully managed by farmer Jake, who works to enrich the fields and encourage biodiversity and wildflowers to grow.
The cows' rich milk is taken daily to the Creamery where a small team of magicians are ready to transform it into tasty cheese. With Peter at its helm, the team includes Nigel, Richard, Lisa and Adam.
Making cheese is a magical activity combining science, intuition, passion and patience. A small amount of vegetarian rennet and salt are added to the organic milk as starter culture and then the work begins.
When I visited, Peter and Nigel were working seamlessly together, effortlessly partnering on the task of 'catching' the cheese, and getting it ready to go into moulds. They share a passion for consistency, high quality, and making the most of the precious milk.
There's a fair amount of waiting involved in cheese-making, initially getting milk up to temperature, then getting it ready for the moulds, waiting for it to settle, and ultimately, waiting for it to mature, so from the outside it may look like the team are sometimes just hanging about.
Get closer to the operation and you'll quickly see the importance of precise measurements, checking temperatures and being fastidiously clean. Every day, carefully completed charts are compiled to show how much milk is produced, how much cheese it makes, with a whole host of checks and attention to detail along the way.
Four raw milk, hard cheeses are made on site: Dale Dale End Cheddar, Moorland Tomme, Summerfields and Botton Gouda.
Each cheese has a distinctive flavour, reflecting the time of year when they're made, the method, cows' diet and housing. Summerfields is made through-out the Summer, only using the milk from cows grazed on summer pastures.
Once the cheese has been made, it goes into the maturing room. On the day I visited, Summerfields was made and then left to mature for a year.
Botton Creamery's cheese is worth waiting for: the cheeses are multiple award-winning: so much so, that the team struggle to list all their triumphs!
Botton is part of the Camphill Village Trust (CVT) where adults with learning disabilities live and work together in a caring and nurturing environment. In addition to the Creamery, they have two organic farms, a lovely tardis-like village store and a café. The Creamery and farm work together to provide work experience for the Camphill community and provide an income for the charity.
You can buy delicious Botton Creamery cheese directly from their shop in Botton, from Courtyard Dairy near Settle, and other shops in the area.