38
estate’s 3000 acres of woodland which is half soft and half hard wood. Pine trees are cut and stored for a year before being chipped for burning in one of the estate’s five biomass boilers. “We also collect dirty water from wash water in the parlour and cheese dairy and use this to flood wash the collecting yard around the parlour, particularly during summer when it can get greasy.
And as well as three 1200t silage pits there are also two new lagoons, one is a whey pit for cheese whey and the other a slurry lagoon which is injected through an umbilical injector. A separator is used to split the liquid from the slurry and the solids are spread on the arable land.
Milk from the herd is used to make Stichelton Cheese, a blue cheese made on the farm by
Joe Schneider at Collingthwaite using raw milk. Joe is in a joint venture with Welbeck and Randolph Hodgson (of Neal’s Yard) and the business pays a premium for the milk from the Welbeck Abbey herd.
“Producing milk for cheese is a dying art,” says Joe. “Having a shared end goal is crucial to making high quality cheese, so milk is paid on quality targets with the current price at 43p a litre, but a target of 45p. The price is determined not only on the levels of butterfat and protein, but also the ratio between the two.”
The joint venture covers all aspects from the primary producer to the marketing with Joe making the cheese in a converted barn on the farm. Each year 50t of cheese is made using 500,000 litres of milk, a third of the milk produced annually at Welbeck.
While working solely with one farm Joe has noticed that cheese acts like a single malt and reflects qualities of the milk produced, which are mainly due to seasons and weather. “The cheese is a full expression of the farm, both good and bad. In the winter cheese is drier, tighter and takes longer to ripen. While in the autumn it is syrupy, sweet and faster ripening. Stichelton cheese takes either three to fourth months or five to six months to mature depending on the milk,” explains Joe.
This in turn challenges Graham to manage a level quality of milk production through turn out and bringing cows in, requiring stringent forward planning to ensure the milk is at optimum quality for making cheese.
The business model for the cheese was built so as not to
The farm shop also sells Stichelton Cheese which is made on the farm with raw milk from the Welbeck herd.
Raw milk is sold in the farm shop at £1 per litre plus the cost of the bottle.
Raw milk sales have already grown to 200 litres a week through the vending machine.
Welbeck Farm Shop sells as much local produce as possible.
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100