Category: Our Craft

Down in the back of the cold room we keep a crock of kefir grains, small pale things that look like cauliflower and behave like a tiny village. We call them the Culture Club. They eat the milk, and they sing a bubbling little song, and we pour off the tangy result into saucers.

Kefir is an old way of keeping milk, and cats who try it often go quiet and thoughtful, as though they have remembered something. It is gentle on the tummy, and slightly sour, like a very nice memory.

The grains were given to us by a neighbor named Mr. Pelham, who inherited them from his aunt. We feed them daily. We treat them as members of the family, because they are.

Behind the cold room, down seven stone steps, there is a small cave where our cheeses sleep. The walls drip. The air is cool and a little earthy, and in the dim light you can hear the wheels settling, like a congregation at rest.

We keep forty wheels there at present. The oldest is a wheel of hard goat cheese named Reginald, aged fourteen months and growing dignified. Each wheel is turned by hand every second day, and rubbed with a cloth dipped in brine. A cheese, Ottoline says, likes to be remembered.

We will open Reginald in November, with a small ceremony. Bring a hat. Bring a saucer.

Our butter is made in a wooden churn older than the barn. The paddle is turned by hand, and it takes about 55 minutes of steady turning before the cream breaks and the little golden grains gather. It is a thing you cannot rush.

The butter is washed in cold spring water, patted with wooden paddles, and shaped into a small curl with a spoon that belonged to Ottoline’s grandmother. Each curl is a little different. Each one is, I believe, a tiny sculpture of the afternoon.

We add a pinch of sea salt, just enough to wake the flavor. Then we wrap them in waxed paper and tie them with string, like presents. They are presents.

Cream, as far as anybody can tell, was discovered by accident, probably by a cat who sat very patiently by a pail. The milk stood still, and the richest part drifted to the top like a little cloud, and the cat said, in her own way, ‘Ah.’

For centuries farm folk skimmed it with shallow wooden spoons. They let the pans rest overnight in cellars cool as a church. In our dairy we still do it this way, in the stone cold room with the blue slate shelves, and we skim by hand at first light.

It takes eleven hours to rest, and it takes about eleven seconds to finish the saucer. This seems fair.

Many people ask why we pour into saucers instead of bowls. It is a fair question, and the answer lives in your whiskers. A bowl is deep and narrow, and a cat must press her face down into the dark. A saucer is wide and low, so the whiskers rest free and the milk meets the tongue like a small calm lake.

Our saucers are made by a potter named Hollis who lives down the lane. Each is seven inches across, glazed in cream with a blue rim, and fired in a kiln that Hollis calls Old Faithful, although it has twice caught fire.

Every pint we pour comes in a saucer. We call this the Standard.