Saturday 11th September was the Frome and District Agricultural Society Show. This year we not only entered into the awards, but for the first time in a couple of years we had our own stand at the show so people could come and taste our cheese for themselves – which was great fun!
Peter Derbyshire our Dairy General Manager and I manned the stand from 8.30am until about 1pm, when we actually ran out of cheese to sample -which is surely a good sign!
We were situated in the Cheese Pavilion next to Hecks Cider and the tribute act, the Mangled Wurzels. Needless to say, being sandwiched between live music and some of Somerset’s finest cider, made for a very lively and entertaining weekend!
We sampled Extra Mature and Mature Cheddar, Mature Lighter Cheese and Mature Half Fat cheese. It was really interesting to see people taste the four cheeses, so that they understood the difference between them all. We had some great feedback on all four – so thanks to everyone who came to see us.
In terms of the awards we had quite a haul! We won a Gold, Silver and Bronze for our Half Fat Mild Cheese, Bronze for Lighter (Reduced Fat) Mild Cheese, Bronze for Mild Cheddar and a Bronze award for Whey Butter and Double Cream. Huge thanks go to the whole team at Cricketer Farm for all the hard work, but also to our Westcountry dairy farmers; without them we wouldn’t have any cheese let alone so many awards!
The Cheese Show and Award season is over now for another year. We have one last award – our Chairman Angus Wielkopolski has been shortlisted for an award at the Farmers’ Weekly, Dairy Farmer of the Year 2010 Awards. Angus has been recognised for the work he does at St Helen’s Farm, our sister company. At the farm in Yorkshire they produce delicious fresh goats’ milk, some of which gets sent to Somerset for us to turn into goats’ cheese.
We’ve all got our fingers crossed for you Angus.
Jo .
