Rosedale Abbey goats cheeses: 'I’m a chartered surveyor by trade - now I'm a dairy farmer, I’ve achieved a lifelong goal'

The cheese’s actual name is Bell End Blue, a blue cheese, and has made quite a debut in the cheesemakers’ world this year, alongside village eponymous Rosedale variety.

“We have t-shirts that read “I can make your Bell End Blue”, says Suzie, about the t-shirts her team wear. “Shall we wear them for the photographer?”

Clearly, Suzie and Jonty are not without a sense of humour and Suzie even popped into Jeremy Clarkson’s new pub The Farmer’s Dog, whilst enroute to another awards ceremony, leaving the cheese with the landmark’s name.

It’s all going in the right direction for Suzie and Jonty who moved to their 10-acre smallholding in Rosedale Abbey from West Sussex with Suzie’s goat herd.

“I’m from Garforth in West Yorkshire but had moved south,” says Suzie. “I always wanted to come back because Yorkshire’s my home. We nearly bought a house in Levisham but when we drove into Rosedale Abbey we both fell in love with it instantly.

“I wanted to bring my goats and came up with 50 in the back of a trailer. It was like the hillbillies moving. What I didn’t envisage was it taking four years to get our goats’ cheeses up and running. We finally received conditional approval on 25 September last year and began production here.

Each individual cheese recipe is devised and developed by Jonty with Suzie milking the Golden Guernsey dairy goats and the cheese then hand made by Suzie and her team in their cheese room.

Keen to see how their cheese stacked up alongside others Suzie entered the two cheeses in the Virtual Cheese Awards.

“You send your cheeses away, and then you sit and watch the experts judge them and talk about them online. They’re the same judges that It was a really big insight for me as to what they look for in what they consider a really good cheese.

“I never thought we’d win, nor win the amount of awards we have in less than twelve months of live production, but in the Virtual Awards we received equal first for our Artisan Goats Cheese (Soft and from own herd) for both Rosedale & Bell End Blue, and I also got new cheesemaker of the year.

“That buoyed me to go to the Great Yorkshire Show where we picked up New Cheesemaker of the Year and New Cheese to the Market (Silver) for the Rosedale. I’d also thought in for a penny, in for a pound, I’ll put some of our raw goat’s milk in – and we got Bronze for Milk from a Single Goat (from Brandy Snap).

“We’ve just recently returned from one of the oldest and most revered cheese shows, the Specialist Cheesemakers Association’s Global Awards, held in Frome last week where Rosedale received Gold for Goats’ Milk Cheese (other than hard pressed) and Bell End Blue got Silver for Raw Milk Soft Cheese and Blue Vein Soft Cheese (UK makers), one of my small team of three of us, Ruth Parker got Novice Cheesemaker (Silver) and I picked up a Silver for New Cheesemaker.

“Ruth joined us in January and Amanda Agar makes up our trio that make the cheeses. Along with Jonty we have group discussions about what’s going on with the cheeses at any time, because the cheese is handmade and any change in temperature, with such as dampness and humidity in the air can affect the cheese.

While Suzie loves making cheese and running the other ventures she and Jonty have going on at Abbey Farm Cottage, that include holiday accommodation in the form of two shepherd’s huts, a cottage, cheese courses and goat yoga, her first love is the animals.

“We currently have a standing herd of about 60 goats with a number of kids on, so get to about 100 at this time of year, then reduce down again.

“We have British Golden Guernseys and a small Boer herd. All our goats are pedigree with the Smock Alley prefix, the name of a field in West Sussex.

“We sell meat to the public direct from the farm, as well as the cheese. Our boys are grown on for meat, with the girls brought on for the milk to make the cheese. I’m currently milking 14 as we didn’t get as many in kid as would have liked this year. Our breeding programme for next year will mean that we will have 30 to milk next year.

“I have a small two-goat milker, milking in a morning that takes about an hour and we’re just about to expand to two goat milkers to milk 4 at once. I currently milk myself and have a weekend helper. We get between 15-20 litres of milk per day and make 9-10 kilos of cheese a week on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays and have raw goats’ milk available on Saturdays. We have no wish to be big, just sustainable.

“I’m a chartered surveyor by trade, but have always loved animals, always wanted to work on a farm, and always wanted to be a farmer. Now I am one, so I’ve achieved a lifelong goal. We also have runner ducks, which appear to be everywhere at the moment having started with three, plus chickens, five dogs and one horse. The chicken and ducks provide very free range eggs that require looking for each day.

TV’s Grantchester stars Robson Green and Tessa Peake Jones spent 4 hours filming at Suzie and Jonty’s Rosedale Goats Cheese for Robson Green’s Weekend Escapes last year.

‘They were fantastic and put us all at ease,” says Suzie.

“We are open from 9 until 1 every day for visitors, we’ve just started going to Goathland Farmers Market, we might be starting at Marske and a number of shops, cafés, restaurants and pubs are stocking both cheeses.

“We might be showing our goats next year too. Heather Hunter who does our weekend milking wants to show them.

Suzie is loving Rosedale Abbey and the whole dale.

“I wake up every morning, look out of the door and think ‘thank God I’m here’. In winter we have snow and I love my snow even though it makes my life really difficult, because it is so beautiful. If you look up to Chimney Bank it looks like the pistes in the Alps.