Going With The Flow

Aretha and Nina are grazing serenely in the afternoon sun, while a number of their sisters loll beneath an ancient eucalypt. Their kids, bleating excitedly behind a fence, are being hand fed.

This idyllic rural scene is the result of seven years hard work by former Melbourne dwellers Carla Meurs and Ann-Marie Monda, who name each of their 30 Saanen and British Alpine goats to provide a sense of family history. The Famous Female Singers, the Periodic Table and the Fruit Trees families have all made Sutton Grange Organic Farm, in central Victoria, their home.

Carla and Ann-Marie knew the 80-hectare property was the right place to realise their vision for an integrated holistic farm.

“Having enough land is important for a venture like this, especially for a goat who is a browser and likes to move around,” says Ann-Marie. “As an organic farmer, you’re always thinking about the health of your soil, because that directly relates to the well-being of your animals, pastures and the quality of produce.”

Happily, the land is rich in perennial native grasses that flourish in the sandy granitic soils. When combined with hot summers and cold winters, the result is milk that makes cheeses with a distinct ‘terra’ flavour.

The decision to quit city life and the teaching profession was shaped by apprenticeships in Australia and overseas. Aged in their mid-40s, the pair travelled to Europe in 1993 and gained valuable knowledge on a mixed enterprise traditional Irish farm. They returned after a year and spent nearly four years working on various organic farms, including a stint in Western Australia with renowned cheesemaker Gabrielle Kervella.

The overseas trip taught them to appreciate a European “buy and eat only as needed” approach. At the farmers’ markets Carla and Ann-Marie try to educate their customers about the need to eat the cheese right away.

“There’s still a lot of work to be done in that area,” Carla says. “So many people have had their first taste of goat’s cheese via the supermarket. Those have a completely different taste from a fresh cheese, which may only be three days old.”

They encourage their customers to taste their full range, from the just-made Fromage Frais to the mature Veloute, and offer plenty of ideas on how to use the cheeses. Used as a cream substitute, or mixed with herbs and poached or grilled, or simply added to a salad, there seems to be no end of ways to enjoy them.

“It’s more delicate than cow-based cheeses and has a finer texture,” Ann-Marie says. “Many people can tolerate it better.”

The organic range is popular with chefs and won a gold medal at the recent Australian Specialist Cheesemakers’ Association annual awards.

“‘Wholly Goat’ was our original name but it became ‘Holy Goat’ instead,” Carla says. “We thought at first that people might find it sacrilegious; but when we thought about it, it was an accurate choice because of the way we treat our animals and our reverence for them — how we farm and treat the land with respect.”

This philosophy of working with nature’s rhythms naturally extends to their work.

“You know when the milk changes,” Carla says. “A heavier curd is great for mature cheeses or a springtime flush [when the growth of green feed and the kidding season see greater milk production with a lower protein count] makes a lovely fresh cheese. You know the cheeses intimately, what they smell like.”

The cheeses vary in appearance, some with yellow wiggly rinds, others with a blue mottled exterior, and the pair mention having to take care that certain cheeses don’t meet in the maturing room or “you’ll have changelings on your hands”.

From cheese names like Black Silk and Pandora to the logo depicting two women protecting their goats, everything about the farm has a distinctly female influence. This is hardly surprising for, as Carla and Ann-Marie point out, “Looking after the goats has traditionally been women’s work.”

Their plan is to build a milking herd of 60 and grow herbs to flavour an extended range of cheeses. But in the here and now they recognise the need, as Ann-Marie says, “to find the memorable days: it’s important to treasure those. Our memories are being part of this incredibly beautiful farm, the moon rising, an amazing sunset.”

This article was first published under the title Herd All About It in Australian Country Style, May 2006