9:38am Monday 14th January 2008
Daisy, Petal and Rosie are hard working girls that turn up to work every day of the year for one farmers' market producer, so he can produce one of the region's best-tasting products. What's more, they all start work at half past four in the morning - with their 177 colleagues.
The girls are, of course, Friesian cows, who are tended to every day by a herdsman on Simon Weaver's Kirkham Farm, deep in the heart of the Cotswolds.
Simon's family has been in the dairy business since 1570 - so, if you buy one of his delicious cheeses, you know you're in safe hands.
The exact recipes for his individual cheeses are a closely guarded secret - but they are entirely natural and contain just pasteurised milk, rennet and the appropriate cultures. No preservatives or artificial additives are needed, and they don't mess with their milk by standardising it. This means that the cheeses vary in taste and texture, depending upon which meadow the cows graze and the time of year.
After the milk has travelled the five metres from the milking shed to the creamery, the cheesemaking begins in earnest at 6.30am.
Frank Green, creamery manager at Simon Weaver Organics, said: "Our cheese is made fresh each day. We milk the cows, the milk is pasteurised and we begin the cheese-making process. We only use our own organic milk."
The skilled cheesemakers, headed by Carol Weaver, Simon's wife, then work quickly within a four-hour period to produce a batch of 1,200 cheeses from the 1,500 litres of milk the girls have generated. The process requires careful timing and intense concentration, and the cheesemakers prefer not to be disturbed during this time, so mobile phones are always left in a pile outside the creamery door.
All this hard work produces three terrific cheeses: Organic Cotswold Brie, Organic Cotswold Blue-Veined Brie and Organic Cotswold Herb Brie.
In 2005, Simon's Organic Cotswold Brie won a gold medal and was awarded the Best Organic Product category at the Taste of the West Food and Drink Awards. This was followed by a silver in 2006 and a bronze in 2007.
In 2006, the Organic Cotswold Blue-Veined Brie won Best Organic Product at the World Cheese Awards.
You'll find Simon Weaver Organic at today's Bromsgrove Farmers' Market, from 9am to 5pm.
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