The farm in the North York Moors where you can stay over, make your own cheese and do yoga with goats
Eight years ago a man asked his new wife if she wanted a goat for Christmas.
What, perhaps unexpectedly to most couples, followed was a massive career change, a 300 mile re-location and a hundred more goats.
Now, Suzie and Jonty Birrell-Gray are developing a farm and cheese business in the heart of the North York Moors – and this weekend will see the first of the next round of cheese-making courses taking place at their farm.
It was the couple going on a course themselves years ago that gave them the idea of combining their love of cooking and food production with the goats and trying to get them to become a pedigree.
Suzie Birrell-Gray at Abbey Farm at Rosedale in the North York Moors with some of her goats.
They left behind their house and chartered surveyor and accountant jobs in West Sussex in 2019 and literally turned up on the moors at Rosedale with a van and their animals – 49 goats, 10 ducks, 20 chickens, three horses, four dogs and two cats.
Since then they have developed Abbey Farm and the goat herd with a view to becoming a commercial cheese producer.
Of course, it takes time to build that up, so to supplement income in the meantime they converted a barn into a holiday cottage and added two shepherd’s huts to the offering while they set about the long and arduous journey with Environmental Health and the legislation needed to get cheese production off the ground.
Different recipes have been tried and tested, but that in itself takes weeks, even if to find out it isn’t quite right and so many factors such as the weather, humidity and even thunderstorms can affect the end product.
Some of the goats cheese that is being produced at Abbey Farm, Rosedale by Suzie and Jonty Birrell-Gray.
Jonty said: “It has been extremely hard. The cheese that we are making is 5 on the risk side because it is raw goats milk – high moisture content and moulded cheese. These things make it potentially the most dangerous.”
If they get the rubber stamp later this year, it is hoped…
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