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I don't know what I mean.

Arthur Cole 1:14

Welcome back to the Newt podcast. With me, Arthur Cole. Join us for a walk through the estate with our invited guests to the backdrop of the Somerset landscape and its wildlife residence. This week we turn our microphones towards the new water buffalo herd. And we follow the journey their milk takes from calf to creamery. We'll get up close to these most remarkable creatures, learn about the nuances of looking after them, and touch on the future of dairy farming in Britain. Let's jump straight into it. So we've just arrived at the Buffalo Farm. We're looking out across a beautiful Somerset Valley, and on the other side of the valley we've got Alfred's Tower looking at us, and we're meeting our farm manager Cameron Nee, and here he is now. Hello Cam. Hi Arthur.

SPEAKER_00 2:19

Good to see you. Welcome to the farm, welcome to Copplesbury Farm. We like to refer it to as the cop.

Arthur Cole 2:25

Well, this is going to be an unusual farm trip. Probably because we're in dairy country, but not everyone has these animals that they're getting milk from.

SPEAKER_00 2:34

No, absolutely. We've we've got our water buffalo here. They are a rarity in the UK, not typically found here. They're Mediterranean water buffalo, so bubblus, bubblus is the Latin for them, the genealogy behind them. They often get confused actually with a lot of other different buffalo bison types. I think we get we get a lot of people turn up expecting to see almost a North American bison roaming the plains, but not our girls, they are water buffalo. So part of the bovine family, similar to cows in that sense, but very different at the same time. So the cows have 60 chromosomes, whereas our water buffalo have 52. So whereas a cow could technically mate with a North American bison because they share the same number of chromosomes, not water buffalo, very, very different.

Arthur Cole 3:20

Fantastic. Okay, well, let's go on and meet your girls. Cameron, we've just stepped inside, oh, out of the wind, into a much warmer place, and with some really lovely fresh straw. And who's walking on the fresh straw?

SPEAKER_00 3:44

Yeah, so we've got we've got some of our newborn calves in front of us, and I guess the journey of milk ultimately starts with a calf being born. You can't milk a cow, you can't milk a buffalo without a calf being born. They've got to be what we call part of their lactation, um, they've got to be milking. Um, so that the calf is born, and with buffalo, this takes a little bit longer than a cow, actually. They have a longer gestation period. Typically, they average around about 310 days. A cow would typically um their gestation period could be 280 to 290 days, so it's that little bit longer. But what's really special about a buffalo is that they won't calve until they're they're happy, they're settled. They're a very sensitive animal, and we need them to be happy, and they can actually hold that calve inside of them for up to a year, which is incredible. Um, so once they feel comfortable enough, they're gonna have their calf, and we we get these lovely animals, these lovely calves born that we can see in front of us, massive ears, almost dumbo-like ears, and black eyes. They really kind of I feel they stare into your soul a lot more than your standard cow. But the calves are born, they stay on mum for the first three days, they get that colostrum. Colostrum is that fresh milk from mum, it's super rich, it's full of all the all the nutrients they need to get them up, get them going. They're quite dopey calves, they're a little bit slower to get going than your standard cow calf, but they stay on for three days. We then take them off mum. Mum now needs to go into the milking parlour, and we bring them into our calf shed, and they'll be in an individual pen from day three to day ten, and that's just where they're learning to drink from a teeth. So we're teaching them to drink from a teated bucket. At day 10, they'll then they'll then enter the nursery pen, which is what we can see in front of us. Um, and this is where they move on to the milking robot. So, this urban milking robot we can see in front of us, they can come into the feeding day when they want, it will scan their ear tag, they each have their own identification number on their ear tag, and the computer can then let us know how much milk they're drinking. So we can keep a track of it, um, and they could be drinking anywhere from sort of six to ten litres of milk, and that's milk powder that's freshly made up for them during the day. They'll spend the next 12 weeks inside these nursery pens, um, and we're introducing um hard feeds as well. So we've got a feed pellet in there, we've got some chop straw for roughage for their rumen as that develops. Um, and after 12 weeks, we're then gonna wean them off the milk and they're gonna move on to solid hard feeds as well.

Arthur Cole 6:07

Karen, you're scratching the nose of this one here, and they seem so friendly, these little carbs. Is it difficult not to form an attachment to these animals?

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Every farmer forms an attachment to their animals. Um, I think we'd be lying if we said we didn't. But at the end of the day, you know, they're here for a reason and we're here for a reason. We wouldn't have a job without them. Um that's certainly the way that I've always seen it. Um, and just because they might be destined for beef or milk production at the end of it, it doesn't mean we don't love our animals as much as anybody else. You know, at the end of the day, they're more than just a job for us, they're our life, they're our soul, um, they're our happiness. So, yeah, you you absolutely form that attachment, but it's it's something really special, and I think it's until you've farmed yourself, it's an attachment you can never truly kind of describe to someone.

Arthur Cole 6:58

There's a little blue tongue coming out here and and and licking my finger. I think somebody's somebody thinks my finger is a um is the milk teat there.

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Absolutely, yeah, they're just after a bit more milk, but little do they know they can just walk in straight into the cubicle there and uh and get some themselves.

Arthur Cole 7:17

Oh dude, they're marvellous. So we've got the buffalo walking down past us, being gently chivered on by one of cameras team, and um the bull has walked past us and the feet his harem, their udders are looking full.

SPEAKER_00 7:38

Absolutely, yeah. So Lewis is just bringing them into the parlour now. Um we milk them twice a day, so 5 30 in the morning, 2 30 in the afternoon. Um so fairly similar to your standard dairy cow, but there's obviously a lot of striking differences between them as well. If we start with the origin of them, where did they come from? So, if you went back 2,000 years, um they they originate from Asian water buffalo, so they're almost the cousin, these Mediterranean buffalo now are the cousins of what were the Asian water buffalo, and the Romans kind of fell in love with them. Um they found out about their milking characteristics when they were trading with Asia, they brought them over to Italy and they discovered the incredible quality of that milk, the really high butter fats, um, the fantastic creamy nature to it, and that's what's over the last 2,000 years, that's what has developed into what we now have in front of us the Mediterranean water buffalo. A lot darker, black hair, black skin, whereas your Asian water buffalo would be a lot greyer. They have a river buffalo there, and they also have a swamp buffalo. But the buffalo in Asia, very, very common. Um, they're actually milked far more than cows in Asia. Depending on the country, it wouldn't be unusual in Southeast Asia to find that each family would have their own water buffalo in the back garden that they'd be milking daily for their own fresh milk. Slightly different for us, we've got a few more than one or two. We have about between 60 and 70 milkers in the herd at the moment, and with all our calves and young stock, we have anywhere from sort of 150, 160 buffalo in total on the farm.

Arthur Cole 9:06

Where did we get our first herd from?

SPEAKER_00 9:10

Yeah, so our buffalo story started nearly three years ago now. Being in Somerset, we're surrounded by dairy farms. Everyone makes hard cheeses, they make the cheddar, but we wanted to do something slightly different. Um, and as we turn towards soft cheese, the the king or the queens we should say of soft cheese are the water buffalo. So we we purchased a number of them from a herd that was disbanding up in Hampshire, and we brought them down to Somerset, and we've topped these up with a few more from our friends at McCroom, Buffalo over in Ireland, over in Cork, who have been very helpful over the years, and that's brought us up to the number that we're at now. And we're now at a stage where we've got some of our own heifers, which are the females that are yet to have a calf yet. That's what we call heifers, same as a cow. Um, we've got our own heifers coming into the breeding herd now. And you'll just notice the one that there, she's licking the bars, ready to come into the parlour. They're incredibly inquisitive animals. You can see the way they're they're holding their heads up, trying to look through the gate. They always want to know what's going on.

Arthur Cole 10:10

Is Somerset a good county for buffalo?

SPEAKER_00 10:14

It is, it's a good county really for it for any bovine animal. We grow grass for fun. Um, what was really interesting actually was the summer we've just had was obviously one of the driest summers on record. We had droughts, we had extreme temperatures, but these girls just thrived in it. When the grass got poorer, they seem to do really well. They like what we call a rough forage, um, they like when the grass is slightly poorer quality, and that's because over the last 2,000 years they've grown used to being in a warmer, hotter climate where maybe not the luscious green grass of Somerset is a luxury to them almost. So we actually produce very, very high milk yields for a buffalo. Um, we're getting nine, ten litres a day. We might have some dairy farmers who are listening to this and thinking 10 litres a day, that's nothing. You know, their Holsteins are getting 35, 40 litres, but it's about the quality, the richness that these girls give. So we're getting butterfats of 8%, um, high proteins as well, and it's all about the richness of that milk and what Margareta, the creamery, can turn it into.

Arthur Cole 11:17

Well, we're going to be seeing Margareta later on and seeing what she does with your milk. Have you got any intention to expand the size of this herd?

SPEAKER_00 11:28

I think eventually we dream of being able to expand the herd, hopefully, increase it as mozzarella demand increases and we make more gelato and everything else. Um, so we've got scope for expansion, we're ready to go. So, yeah, hopefully in years to come the herd's going to grow in size.

Arthur Cole 11:49

So we've just taken a bit of refuge from the wind, and we're in the barn with high towers of bedding straw here. And this bedding straw, that's just one element that is so essential to high welfare standards in your herd. Tell us, Cameron, why are these welfare standards so high? What is the effect that it has, not just on the overall happiness of the animal, but the milk production?

SPEAKER_00 12:16

Yeah, absolutely. So, as you mentioned, we've got straw in front of us. So the buffalo are bedded on straw when they come inside for the winter when it gets too wet for them outside. Um, your typical dairy herd would be in cubicles, not straw yards. But buffalo, they're they're big girls, they can weigh 950 kilos, they've got this thick skin, and they love scratching on things. So, cubicles, they're just going to scratch, rip the metal up, tear it up to pieces. So, we give them the larger straw yards to lay in as well, and it just keeps them nice and clean. We bed them up every two days just to keep them nice and tidy, and it's really for two reasons. We're trying to keep them warm. Um, something you wouldn't really associate with a cow, keeping them warm. But a really interesting fact with buffalo is they don't have sweat glands. So in the summer, they get very hot, that's why they swim, they wallow, they cover themselves in mud to stay cool. But in the winter, they can get very cold. So you'll actually see them, you'll come in in the mornings, and they'll all be tucked up in the straw and they'll all be laying next to each other in a group. They have a very, very strong herd instinct, and that's to keep warm. But we want the straw bedding to keep them tidy as well, and we don't want a build-up of poo because that can cause issues such as mastitis. But keeping the buffalo happy is is so important. They're an incredible animal, um, but they're very, very different. They hate change, and happiness is very, very important with the buffalo. They have this herd instinct, and when they're not happy, when change happens, they can just turn off the milk tap. So they actually store the milk up inside their body, they don't have these big bursting udders like you would with a standard cow. And as I said, if they're not happy, they're just not going to produce milk, and they're not going to produce quality milk. So we want to keep them happy. Ultimately, animal welfare comes first with all of our decisions, but that stems down to the happiness of the animal as well. So you'll notice in the sheds we have the big hydraulic spinning cattle brushes in every single pen. They have access to these brushes so they can scratch themselves. And out in the fields, we have the same totem brushes to keep them happy. We want to naturally allow them to wallow. In the summer, they want to cover themselves in mud. They want we build them swimming pools for them to swim in. They're excellent swimmers. They want to stay cool and they want to stay content.

Arthur Cole 14:35

I've just heard John, your dairy manager, turn on the milking parlor. Let's go over and have a look. And a few means the first and the bat photograph on the mezzanine levels. And already we have to see the nose.

SPEAKER_00 15:17

The guys are attaching what we call clusters onto the buffalo's um this is about attaching a pretty standard parlour. This is what we've called a staminozoid herringbone parlour. So we've got um we've got 14 buffalo in here at the moment, and you can see them tightly pressed against each other when they first come in. The guys are going to clean their teeth. So we've actually got an automatic teeth cleaner on the end of this orange pipe here, and it's basically an electronic brush. And it's got two brushes going backwards and forwards with a little bit of chemical cleaner in there where we're just cleaning the teeth off. Teeth cleaning that is really important. What we're trying to do is we're trying to make sure what we call the back scan uh is nice and low. Um, when we then test the milk, when it goes to margaretta in the screen, we're looking for clean milk. And so teeth cleaning that's really important, particularly with buffalo, probably more so than your standard cow. Of course, they're bad enough on straw yards, and particularly in the summer as well, when they're outside, they're wallowing, they're covering themselves in mud. That's actually why we bought the automatic teeth cleaning brush, because they used to come in in the summer in the afternoons and they'd almost be like a proud child or a proud puppy standing at the door going, look how dirty I am, Dad. Um, it was almost a competition for them.

Arthur Cole 16:41

Cameron, getting up close to these animals, you really get an appreciation for the size of these animals. The horns on your buffalo are enormous. Tell us a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Yeah, they're they're really incredible, the buffalo horns. It's it's their identity ultimately. Um, a lot of cows, when you look at your standard cows, you'll actually, when you see a cow, not many cows have horns, but the majority of cattle breeds are actually a horned animal. We just um what we call we dehorn them at birth um for for ease of handling generally, but not buffalo, that would be very, very frowned upon. The the horns are the buffalo's identity, it's almost its spirit, and the bigger the horns, the older the buffalo is. So, what's something really special about the buffalo is actually how long they live. Our oldest buffalo in our herd is actually 16 years old. She's on her 14th lactation, she's had 14 calves, and that is a lot older than your standard dairy cow that might live six or seven years. So we're getting that longevity out of them, and part of that is the wild breeding that's still apparent. Um, but when you don't push them as hard as you would your maybe your standard Holstein cow. So we've got that longevity, and as they grow older, those horns grow bigger, they curl up, they curl round. But they know they've got them there. And that leads us on to one of probably our biggest problems with management with buffalo is bullying. Bullying can become a really big problem in the herd if it's not managed, and that again is down to their wild nature. Wild is probably the wrong word, but we haven't interfered with their breeding as much as we have with cows. So they've got this really strong herd mentality, they're still a matriarch of the herd, she'll lead them into the parlour, she can stand at the front of the gates and just stop anything going in. But they're very, very dominant animals and they use their their horns to control this. Um, they might pick a buffalo out that looks different, it might be a smaller buffalo, it might be a little bit skinnier, um, it might not be in calf, they can sense that, it might be that it has mastitis and they don't, and they will bully that animal. And what they're trying to do is it's that wild instinct where in the wild they would push that weaker animal away out of the herd. They'd say, You're gonna slow us down, we don't want you here. And that's ultimately what a buffalo is trying to do. It's trying to push that weaker one out of the herd. Now, in a in a closed environment, in a shed, we have to monitor that, we have to keep an eye on that, they can rough each other up, we don't want that. Now, you would say, right, this one's a bully, let's take her out. But you we found that if you took a bully out, another one would step in. So, what we actually have to do is take the bullied animal out. We've got to assess what's wrong with her. Do we just need to put a little bit more weight back onto her? Is it as simple as she's not in calf? And we we get her back in calf separately, and nine times out of ten, we can reintroduce her into the herd, they accept her, um, and it's all all good. Occasionally we just find one just that doesn't fit within that herd structure, they've almost made up their mind, um, and sadly it's time for her to leave the herd at that point. Um, so we do have to keep an eye on things, and a lot of the time they're very good at telling us these things. So you'll notice on the buffalo they've got this black hair, but they don't have as much hair as a cow does, but it's a lot longer, but it's very coarse, it's very rough hair. But when they get stressed, they actually lose their hair, so they almost become hairless, and that's a really good sign to say, look, please come and take a look at me. Something's not right. Um, so it we can kind of get ahead of a lot of things by just keeping an eye on little things like that. Another really interesting thing is their tails, they don't have a tailbone like a normal cow does. So um they actually can whip it a lot more. So you'll just be stood in the parlour and you might catch a right tail in the eye. And I think Lewis has got a little bit of a shiner at the moment. Um but I I yeah, can't can't can't go too much into that one, but he uh uh I think the buffalo won on that one, the tail, the tail won outright. Um so it's just one of those things you've got to keep an eye out for. But they really are lovely animals. They're not, I think a lot of people have this misconception that because they're big, because they're horns, they think buffalo, they think big, scary, but they're anything but that. They are so friendly. Um, they each buffalo is its own character. They want to come up, they want to say hello, they want head scratches, they want chin scratches, they want you to to climb in the pen with them, give them a good back scratch, you know. They they are so friendly and inquisitive.

Arthur Cole 21:04

Cameron, looking at this herd and just everything that you've told us about, how different an animal it is, and how different the process is and how different the the milk is, this is diversification, isn't it?

SPEAKER_00 21:17

I think it's diversification at its finest, absolutely. Um we we've had to learn a lot in the last three years, and um it's not just come from, well it's not really come from the UK at all. We've we've had great help from from the guys at McCruman Island. Um we've we've been over to Italy, we've been over to the Netherlands, um, and it's just it's a real learning curve at its finest. We're we're also very lucky to to have a herd on our sister estate at Babylon Storin in Cape Town. Um they've had them a little bit longer than us, and they've got a fantastic herd down there. So um speaking with the team down there with Corbus and Marazan, it's great to just learn so much about these animals. And it's not just diversification of cheeses, it's diversification of the meat as well. Obviously, we we have all these calves being born. You know, what do we do with them? We turn them into buffalo beef. And we have two products on that side. We've recently ventured into the diversification of buffalo veal, and it's not standard veal cows that a lot of people think there's quite a negative image of that industry, um, but it's anything but that. Um so at 10 months old, we would take one of the bull calves to slaughter. At that age, they're about 300 kilos. They have been grass fed, they've been outside, um, so they've not been stuck in a shed the whole time. But the reason we take them slightly younger is because buffalo beef is very lean and it's slightly tougher. Um, typically, when you slaughter a buffalo beef animal, if it was at two, two and a half years old, like your standard cow, it can be very lean, there's very little fat on it at that stage, and it's maybe it's not got the usability that standard beef would have. So um you wouldn't necessarily have your roasting joints, it dries out very easily. Very easy, very quickly, and even the steaks are a little bit tougher. They're fantastic tasting, but they're just maybe not as soft as people expect. So, what we do by sending some away for veal for our restaurants on the estate, um, we've actually got some some buffalo veal tartare on the menu in the botanical rooms at the moment, and it's fantastic, it's tender, it's soft, it's full of flavour, it's it's beautiful, beautiful meat at that age. But then we have our older animals, we've got our two-year-olds that we do send away for beef as well. But a lot of that does go for mints, so we mince a lot of it, and it makes the most incredible smash burgers.

Arthur Cole 23:28

Karen, have we reached the end of the buffalo story? Or is there more innovation to come?

SPEAKER_00 23:36

There's certainly innovation for us. We we've got a really exciting project on the go at the moment. Um, we're actually building a new farm for them down on our main estate called Slake Farm, and that's the culmination of a five-year project down there, um, which will bring both our buffalo and beef enterprises into one yard, and we're we're building a really cool rotary parlour for them. So it's almost like a donut that spins around and they step on and it never stops, and they step on and they do a full rotation, um, and then they step off at the other end. So we're we're looking to move into that this autumn, and innovation's constant with us. So we're also looking at a robotic feeding system there. So over 600 cows and buffalo will be fed by a feeding robot that fills itself up and it goes out and feeds them all day. So, really, really interesting that. Another piece of innovation we've recently brought in as well with our buffalo is something called a bolus. Um, but it's an electronic bolus and it's almost like a reader, and it's this small electronic, almost pebble size that we that we put inside them, it goes into their mouth and sits in their stomach, so it sits in their rumen, and because it's heavy, it doesn't shift through their different rumens, it doesn't pass through like it's like food would. And what it does is it feeds back information via a receiver, it pings the receiver in the shed, and we can open it on our app. And what it's telling us is it's telling us all about their activity. So it's telling us how much water they've drunk that day, it's telling us how active they are moving around, um, it's telling us whether they're bullying, so whether they're whether they're cycling, whether they they they're ready to inseminate again, because we do do some artificial insemination with semen, or whether they're ready for the bull to be introduced with them. It also pings us a signal when they're about to calve, so it gives us about 24 hours' notice, and then we'll get a ping and notification on our phone, and we know that that buffalo is going to carve in the next 24 hours, so we can keep a special eye on her.

Arthur Cole 25:31

And why are you applying this high tech to the farm?

SPEAKER_00 25:35

I think the the British agricultural industry at the moment is really on its knees, sadly. Um, we're under a lot of pressure financially, margins are very, very slim, the milk prices are uh a real low at the moment, um, are coming off a three-year high, and everything in farming has to be measured on efficiencies, particularly myself. It's something I specialise in, it's something I I really enjoy, is getting stuck into efficiencies on a farm. So any small wins, any small margins we can gain along the way are wins for us. It's bringing down that cost of production on a litre of milk is so important and managing our overheads. And anything that can give us that advantage, be it technology, be it labour saving via robots, um, is just a huge win for us.

Arthur Cole 26:19

When we're recording this, this is March 2026, and the subsidies farmers ends this year. What is this gonna mean for other producers of buffalo that have a considerable head of buffalo like yours, about 160, but but not a vast factory farm. What does 2026 mean for the small to mid-size farmers?

SPEAKER_00 26:45

Yeah, absolutely. It's it's it's harder than ever, Arthur. Um, particularly there's very few buffalo farms in the UK. Um, it's getting harder to produce buffalo milk efficiently and cost effectively. And it's the same across the whole dairy industry. Um, sadly, you know, we're faced with with a climate where it doesn't favour to be the small family farm anymore. The government have made it very clear they don't want small family farms, they would favour bigger farms, bigger factory farms. In their eyes, a bigger farm is a greener farm. And so with the with the removal of subsidies, they've now put caps on the sustainable farming incentive. You know, it's putting more and more pressure onto the smaller family farms. Um, the introduction of the farming tax, the family farm tax this year has been another real kick in the teeth for the industry. So it really shows how important the small efficiencies are. We're really trying to get the most out of each buffalo whilst maintaining animal welfare at the highest standards. The British farmers have some of the highest animal welfare standards in the world. Um we really are second to none, and we need support from both the public and the government to support our industry and promote us on both a local and global scale.

Arthur Cole 27:59

The cost of living is we know we're in a crisis on that, um, and we can see the price of food going up. You're lucky you've got a guaranteed market. We're going to be going over and seeing the creamery shortly. Is the cost of food too low?

SPEAKER_00 28:17

Uh controversially, I think so, yes, absolutely. When you look at us compared to the rest of Europe, I think the UK has the lowest cost of food value, we have the lowest spend per capita on food per family head. Absolutely, it's too low. I think we seem to have lost the appreciation for food and locally produced food in the UK. Um, it just seems a lot of people see it just growing on the supermarket trees as such, on the supermarket shelves, and they don't appreciate where it's come from. It's it's so important. You wake up in the morning, you need a farmer to feed you, you go to work, you need a farmer to provide that lunch to put the food on the table, and you need a farmer when you come home in the evening. Sadly, we're losing that appreciation. So everything about what we do at the Newton Somerset is is part of that education process. Um, we're not just trying to produce the best food, the finest food. We're we're trying to show the true story from from farm to fork or farm to creamery in this case. Um, and we're trying to educate the public on that on that on that story as we go.

Arthur Cole 29:23

So, Cameron, we've seen the the milking going on. So, from the teat through the tubes, what happens on this journey?

SPEAKER_00 30:37

Yeah, so it heads into our bulk tank in our tank room where it's stored, it's refrigerated, it's brought down to temperature because obviously it'll come out of the buffalo at a nice warm temperature. So we we bring it down, we chill it, um, and then once a day we we're loading it into our tanker, which you can just see behind the truck there, our small tanker, and we'll take the the four or five hundred litres down to the creamery, um, which is just a short 10-minute drive away ready to be to be processed.

Arthur Cole 31:03

So, no pasteurization needed here.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Absolutely not. So, um it's really important um when when when making uh top quality buffalo mozzarella um that you don't pasteurise the milk. That milk is special. We don't want to be heating it up, um, we want it in its raw format, um, we don't want to lose any of that flavour. Um it is delivered down to down to the creamery, ready for action down there.

Arthur Cole 31:28

Cameron Nee, manager of the farm at the Newt, thank you for showing us around the buffalo herd.

SPEAKER_00 31:34

No, thank you. It's been an absolute pleasure.

Arthur Cole 31:37

Well, we're gonna head off now to the creamery and follow the next part of the journey of the buffalo milk. So we've just arrived at the creamery and there's Margarita. Hi Margarita!

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 31:54

Hey Azar, welcome! Listen, it's a bit of a kerfuffle. You need to get some boots on and a coat and a hairnet, and then you can come and follow me.

Arthur Cole 32:03

Alright, let's get suited and booted. Catch you inside.

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 32:09

Yeah, suits you well, the hairnet. So now we're going into the make room. Okay, so there's a big door here, and we go in there, it's nice and warm, and it's sometimes a bit noisy, but it smells amazing. Okay.

Arthur Cole 32:23

Come on, follow me. Thank you. Oh, already picking up. Great, I mean this is definitely cheese making it is.

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 32:33

Gee's making it is.

Arthur Cole 32:34

So we've walked in, there is some vast silver vats with what looks like an automated rotary paddle going on, and we've got glass on the other side of it, and as we look through the glass, we can see the stairs coming down from the station side at Castle Carey Station, coming down and then into the creamery restaurant. We are on this side of the double-glazed or triple-glazed glass. Margaretha, what is going on here?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 33:04

Okay, so today we are making my famous powder, and we are making halumi, which we call satin brew, which is an amazing buffalo version of it, which is amazing on the barbecue to cook with. Um, so those big vets you're talking about, they're actually really manual. They look really fancy, but they're not at all. So we put the milk in and then uh we start creating the the curd. And everything you can see instead of doing it now, she's has got her hands in the vet, she's feeling the curd, she's feeling the warmth of the milk and the wheel. So it looks very automated, but it isn't. It's very, very hands-on. What we're doing with the cheese making is we are collecting the solids that are in the milk, so the proteins, the fat, and that's what makes the cheese. So if you make cheese, you put in milk into the fat and you heat it up to a certain degree. Depends so much on what cheese you're making, what temperature you use. Then you put cultures in which have enzymes that start eating the lactic, the sugars in the milk. And then you put some rennet in it. And rennet is an enzyme that is that you can find in the fourth stomach of any suckling animal. So kid goat or lamb or a calf, and that curdles the milk. It's a very, very old system. So we put the rennet in, which makes like a gel out of it, sets the whole thing, and so it sets all the becomes like a gel. And then we cut the curd when it's set. So if you make a gauda or a cheddar or a mozzarella or a brie, they all have different sizes that you cut the curd in. Right. Right? And what happens is the if the bigger you leave the curd, the more liquid stays in the cheese, and the smaller you make the curd, the drier it becomes, the more liquid leaves. So what you're seeing in there, in this beautiful vet, is whey, and it's six 36 degrees, it's beautiful, it's like blood temperature.

Arthur Cole 35:11

Right. And what do people traditionally use whey for?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 35:15

You can make uh like the Italians would make uh ricotta out of it because there's still quite a lot of protein in it. So if you would boil it up and you put some acid in it, like some lemon or some lactic acid, all the proteins will go oooh, and they come all together, and you get the beautiful ricotta. But traditionally here in England, we would give it to the pigs, and then you get your lovely uh whey-fed pigs. So pigs could live on just hay, apples, and whey. They don't need anything else.

Arthur Cole 35:46

So, what's the difference between cow milk and buffalo milk?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 35:52

Okay, so buffalo milk is like the richest milk you can find, right? So it's very high in fat. We're talking seven and a half, eight percent fat. It's very high in protein, four and a half, four point eight percent. So cow's milk, if you're lucky, you have four and a half, five percent fat, unless you have a Jersey cow, right? And protein is around three. So there's much more solids in the milk. It also comes with a much richer assortment of vitamins. So it's a very healthy milk, it's a very uh nutritious milk. The interesting thing is that buffalo are still very close to nature, so they were only domesticated a thousand years ago, which means that they haven't adapted to our human systems yet. It takes a long, long time, right? So when I have a buffalo that goes into a patch of wild garlic the next day, I can smell it in the milk. Or sometimes I have to get cross with the farmers because when I put my hand in the milk and it comes out, it's like if I've got um cream on my hands, it's like like uh hand cream because it's so fatty. And then I'll phone them up and I use some choice words and go, like, what is going on with the milk? And they go like, ah, sorry. We bedded them up with straw yesterday and they ate their whole bed. So then it translates straight away into the milk. So it's very reactive milk, if you know what I mean. But at the same time, they don't give as much milk as cows. So cows can give 25, 30, 40 liters of milk a day. Um, our buffalo between six and ten liters, and that is really good for buffalo. I mean, our buffalo are so spoiled and so happy, most buffaloes give three, four liters of milk. So you in that compact four, three, four liters of milk, you get a lot of protein and a lot of fat, which means if you make one kilo of cow's milk cheese, hard cheese, like chauda, you need ten liters. With a buffalo, I need only six. So it gives much more cheese.

Arthur Cole 38:03

And from the herd that we've seen today, are you getting enough milk to do what you want? Because surely there are other people who are after this rich buffalo milk, not just you.

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 38:15

No, it's mine. It's completely it's my milk. So I am so lucky, Arthur. I'm so spoiled. So I get this amazing milk, and the farmers are just such great guys, so it's really nice to communicate with them and talk to them. So I get to make mozzarella, which is our main cheese here. Of course, the mozzarella and the buffalo is like marriage made in heaven, but I have enough milk to diversify. So, as chauda is in my blood, we need to make a chauda, which we do. We make a halloumi style, which we call satin brew, and the milk is amazing for that. It's not my favorite cheese to make, it's a really boring cheese to make because it doesn't need much skill. Then we make the yogurts and the cream hung up, the cream cheese and stuff like that. And then I've developed a cheese that I would call like a mountain cheese because it is a recipe that is created in the mountains of Spain, so it's like a manchego style, and it translates beautifully into this cheese. So it's like a bit drier, and it's got all these lactic flavors in it. We we do it in a basket, so it's got a weave pattern on the outside, and then we rub it with Babylon Storin olive oil, so it's like it's like the whole thing, it's really nice. And next week I'm gonna start making a blue, a buffalo blue.

Arthur Cole 39:38

Wow, yeah, buffalo blue, yeah. So, so just take us through that quickly. What is going on with blue cheese? It can't just be that it's gone off. What's happening? It's gone off.

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 39:51

Oh, that's terrible. Um, so the story of blue cheese, there was a little boy in the Alps in France that his mum he was herding the goats, or the sheep actually, and his mom gave him a piece of cheese and some bread, and it was really hot. They went into a cave to shade from the sun, and then his sheep were laying down, and he saw this very pretty girl running around. So he left his bread and his cheese and he went after the little girl. Two months later he came to that same cave, and the bread has gone moldy and the cheese has gone blue. So they discovered that bread mold, if you put it in cheese, you can create blue cheese. So you can't eat blue bread because it's very poisonous, but you can eat blue cheese.

Arthur Cole 40:38

Amazing that that something that, as you said, would have been toxic in one host being the bread is delicious and not at all toxic in the other.

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 40:52

Yeah, fascinating, no? So not gone off.

Arthur Cole 41:01

Looking down on this process, we have a lady in a very elegant striped white dress, white gloves, um, a large-brimmed, wide-brimmed purple hat and a blue umbrella with tassels on it.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Yeah.

Arthur Cole 41:19

Well, she doesn't have many facial features because she's a mannequin in a glass box. What's that all about up there?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 41:26

Well, this building was built in 1912, the year that the Titanic sank. And the famous film The Titanic, where Kate Winsler was the leading lady, well, she wore that dress when she went on the Titanic. So I think this is a replica, but obviously the real dress is somewhere here in the archives. But she looks at us every day. I hope she's smiling. I don't know, but I think so. I hope she likes cheese.

Arthur Cole 42:04

Oh, oh wow, that smells amazing. So we've just stepped inside the cheese maturing cave, and there are rows upon rows of amazing looking rounds of cheese. Margaretha, what do we got?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 42:21

So these are traditional chaudas, but because buffalo milk is so different from cow's milk, you need to translate it into the buffalo milk, which is quite challenging because it's so fatty, right? So we have cheeses, but the thing is, I'd love to keep them for eight, nine, ten months before I sell them. But they're quite popular, so they they go quicker than I would like them to go. So we've got different sizes. So the the traditional size is about three to four kilos, and then we've got the proper 12 kilo sizes, which are heavy, but they're so they need to be turned every day. So we've got some really strong ladies in the creamery. Um, and then on this, so this is all goudas, all these shiny ones. Um, and then on the other side we have that mountain cheese that I was talking about, and we're actually calling it Yarlton Slate. Oh, yes. So Yarleton, the the sort of traditional way people speak to uh name Yarlington, Yarlton, and the slates is where the farm is built on. So this is the mountain style cheese, which we have in small truckles, which are like a kilo, and then the bigger truckles that are like three kilos, they mature much quicker, so they are ready in six, eight weeks, uh, and really, really nice, lactic, beautiful tasting cheese. The chauda is much a warmer tasting cheese, much there's much more uh hazelnut caramel notes, but the the the Manchego style, the mountain cheese is like really fresh, crumbly, yeah, very nice.

Arthur Cole 43:54

We've also got here some of these houders, which I assume are maturing. There's a real colour difference. We've got these almost alabaster white rounds, and then one that seems to be getting slightly darker, looks like a light peach almost colour, and then these glossy looking pale ones, and then these dark, almost orange coloured outers. What's going on here?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 44:24

So, as you can see on every on every cheese we've got a batch coat. So this one was made on the 364th day last year. So that's that's a nice sort of like average color. Then this one was made on the 58th day of this year. So that's made like a week ago. So it's much lighter. So they start out really light, and then the more they mature, they get a darker color. And then when they really look the sorry, the one down there, they are like eight months old, so they get really nice rustic dark colors. So that they they just mature and they will tell you with their color how old they are.

Arthur Cole 45:05

And is this a wax coating around them?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 45:07

No, it is a traditional sound so it's a plastic coating, they call it, which means that it is a sort of it's nearly like wood glue. But what happens with it, it's used in Holland for a long, long time. It keeps the moisture in and the f and any mold out. So the you see the the Jarlton slates, they're quite moldy looking, right? Because they have only oil on them. So there's a lot of things out here that will gravitate and go like I'm gonna sit on you. Here they won't have the chance because they're coated in this stuff.

Arthur Cole 45:42

It's an amazing smell, it's it looks great. And you're putting these out now. I mean, we're soon gonna be going into the creamery restaurant.

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 45:52

Where else can we find so they they go to different uh cheap. Shops, they are in our shops obviously, and then the chefs just do fantastic stuff with them. So that's really for me very exciting to see where you know what they make out of them. But can you also feel the temperature in here?

Arthur Cole 46:12

Yes, it's quite cool.

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 46:14

Yeah, compared to the cheese making room. Yeah, so it's about 13 degrees, and it's about 75-80% humidity. So if you would go to a cave or if you dig underground, you'll get that same temperature and humidity. So that's what we're trying to create, and um people can see it happening, which is really lovely.

Arthur Cole 46:41

So Margaret, what got you into this world of cheese? And and how did you bring it to Somerset?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 46:49

Well, I I was born in a family with doctors, but my grandmother was a cheesemaker, and I spent many happy summers making cheese with her. Then I, when I grew up, I felt I needed to do a profession where you'd help people because it was in the family. But after 15 years of practicing as a mental health psychologist, I realized that my place was in the creamery. So I was very lucky to be able to make cheese again. And I've been making cheese for the last 20 years, and I'm always very lucky that I go. People asked me to come and develop cheeses and develop set up creameries, and um I fell with my nose in the butter when the newt invited me to come and do it here.

Arthur Cole 47:37

What would you say is the future of cheesemaking in Britain?

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 47:44

There are a lot of fantastic small artisan cheesemakers that have a real passion for the craft. Um, but we also need to feed the nation, right? So there is a place for the big factory-style cheesemakers that never see the milk or touch the milk, the cheese just the milk comes in and the cheese comes out, sort of thing. But I think England is a place where people will appreciate for a long, long time to come the beauty of real cheese. So there's a place for both, but we need to keep it alive and we need to teach people. Young people need to come into the craft and get the bug of the joy of making cheese. Because honestly, every year, every Monday morning, I'm super excited because I get a beautiful vat of milk and I can make something out of it. So we need people that want that and that find that joy in it because it's it's an amazing thing to do.

Arthur Cole 48:46

So I'm looking through these curved glass walls onto the restaurant, and I can see plates of your cheese coming out and being devoured by the diners. I think I'm gonna go order myself a plate.

Margaretha van Damm (Creamery) 48:59

Oh, please do, yeah. Let me know what you think. Because the mozzarella at the moment, it's absolutely stunning. It's very fresh in this restaurant, right? I get it the day after I've made it, and the milkiness, I'm really proud of it actually. Because I'm not Italian, but it's coming very close to Italian. So um, yeah, I have some. Honestly, the chef, Zach the Chef here makes phenomenal stuff with my cheese. I'm really, really excited about that.

Arthur Cole 49:25

Yeah. Great, Margaretta! We're gonna go and eat your cheese. Fantastic! I'm sitting down now to enjoy this lovely creamy bit of mozzarella. And it's a lot easier to imagine the story of that craft as it has to pass through four stomachs of a buffer. Into a milking collar, into a churn, into a creamer, and now my face. Subscribe, tune in from the update every month. See you next time.