Smiles all round as Pennine hill farm family says cheese

Pick the odd one out: Wensleydale, Cheshire, Gloucester, Calder Valley.

The first three of course are the names of British cheeses renowned around the world.

If Sandra Evans and Carl Warburton get their way the Calder Valley in West Yorkshire will soon rank alongside them.

Word is spreading about the cheese they produce in an old stone barn high in the Yorkshire Pennines. Their operation is an off-shoot of a dairy farm run by Sandra’s family across the valley from the striking monument Stoodley Pike.

Pextenement Farm is one of two neighbouring farmhouses the family has. The other is High East Lee Farm, home to Sandra’s parents Ronald and Christine Sutcliffe .

The two farmhouses are separated by 200 yards of lush, green field, one of several which feed the family’s dairy herd. The farmhouses are off a track which winds steeply through woodlands and fields from the Halifax-Burnley road below, between Hebden Bridge and Todmorden.

Sandra’s grandfather Garnet Sutcliffe started tenant farming there in 1924. His two sons Ronald and Norman later took over. Norman died this year, aged 79.

Sandra, 48, was born at High East Lee Farm.

After leaving school she went to work for what was the Halifax Building Society and left to return to working on the farm in 1998.

“The farm was being run by my dad, my uncle and my brother,” said Sandra. “Dad and my uncle were getting quite old and a bit poorly. I took redundancy and came back to help.”

“In 2000 we turned the farm organic. It’s dairy and has always been cattle. At that time we had about 60 and we still have 60 milkers.”

Carl, 43, was born nearby at Walsden and after leaving school went into computers and spent 22 years at HBOS as an IT specialist.

He also played cornet with Todmorden Bass Band, which is how the couple met. Sandra said: “My friend played in the band and I used to go to concerts with her. Tod is a small place. You all really know each other.”

Now they’ve been together for 22 years and live in a cottage at the valley bottom, just outside Todmorden.

Carl had the cheese-making inspiration while still working in IT and began with experiments at home. “It was complete curiosity at first, says Carl. “After buying a book, I was interested to see how it worked. Then I started looking into the details of production and realised it was a viable business idea.”

He started with a Heath-Robinson system of pots, pans and a basic cheesemaking kit. “The kit came with a pamphlet. I wanted to see if it would work. It did.”

The experiment led to Carl’s departure from the world of IT. They converted a section of the barn at Pextenement Farm, meeting the rigorous hygiene and health regulations required and formed the Pextenement Cheese Company in 2008. They sold their first cheese a year later.

It’s very much a hands-on family operation. Sandra and her brother Alan Sutcliffe, 45, milk the cows. Carl makes the cheeses and Sandra does the wrapping and business administration.

Most weekends find Carl and Sandra at farmers’ markets across the region.

They will often be accompanied by one of Alan’s three offspring, twins Tom and Beth, 14, and Hannah aged 12. The cheesery also supplies a number of retail outlets.

The mainstay of running the farm and dairy herd is Sandra’s brother, Alan. His wife Justine, 38, a primary school teacher, and dad Ronald and his wife Christine, both in their 70s, also do their bit.

The farm comprises 160 acres, half owned by the family and half rented.

Alan and Justine and the children live in a house attached to Pextenement farm, which is empty and in need of restoration.

The farm’s dairy cows are being cross-bred to find the perfect, high-fat milk producer. Alan said: “It was originally old-fashioned, traditional British Friesians. Now we’re cross-breeding with Meuse Rhine Issel which is multiple purpose.

“They’re tough and hardy, and the milk is renowned for cheesemaking for its high solids content.”

They produce 20,000 litres of milk a month. Cheesemaking uses 1,600 to 1,800 litres a month, to make about 140kg of cheese.

The rest of the milk goes to the Organic Milk Suppliers’ Co-operative OMSCO. The farm was registered organic in 2000.

Alan hauls the milk a short distance to the cheesery, just across one field, but still has to meet transportation regulations which treat the journey of a few dozen yards as if it was a trek the length of the country.

“It travels less than the distance the cows walk to get milked, but you wouldn’t believe the amount of paperwork it takes just to move the milk that distance,” he said.

Carl describes the product of the cheesey magic he works. “Pexommier is a camembert, ready in 14 days. We also create a brie which is ready in six weeks.

“East Lee Soft is ready in one day. We’re also making a Cheddar called Pike’s Delight after Stoodley Pike. We’re maturing that for six to nine months and it will be ready soon.

“Devil’s Rock Blue is named after that rock up there,” he says, pointing to a local landmark. “We do a cooking cheese Pexo Blanco – there’s a South American cheese called Quaso Blanco, which doesn’t melt when you cook it.”

Alan said: “It’s quite a large range for a small cheesemaker in two years.”

Sandra puts in about 40 hours a week on the farm, and a further nine or 10 helping run the cheese business. Carl works 60 hours a week and Alan, as a traditional Yorkshire hill-farmer – well, that needs no explanation.

While the farm is registered organic, and organic milk is used to make the cheese, the cheesery does not yet have organic status.

That’s deliberate. Carl and Sandra are waiting for the first batch of their more mature Cheddar cheese to come to market before applying for organic status for all their products, rather than doing it piecemeal.

It will be ready soon.

The setting for the farming and cheesemaking operation is idyllic, at least on a crisp, bright autumn day looking out over the Calder Valley and its Pennine hillsides.

The scenery is spectacular, although in the middle of a hard Pennine winter it may have a different feel.

But that’s not likely to deter Carl and Sandra and the family.

Linking the pigs and life of old

“Pex” may derive from pig farming.

There’s a Pex House and Pex Hill further up the valley.

The tenement part of the name derives from a time when the farm buildings housed a number of families – 10 families in 1901 according to the census.

Pexommier was awarded silver medal for a new class of white cheese in the British Cheese Awards in Cardiff.

Pextenement Cheese Company can be contacted on 07725 517934.

The website is at www.pextenement.co.uk