The county that fuelled the war effort

Jul 8 2008 by Emma Pinch, Liverpool Daily Post

BOB KITCHING owns Leagram Organic Dairy and sells his cheese at farmers markets in Southport and Maghull, and also into Liverpool through cheese merchants.

Originally a butcher who changed careers to please his vegetarian wife, he joined Dairy Crest and, fascinated by the cheese-making process, built his own dairy out of two cow sheds in Chipping Vale. Last week, he took his cheeses to 23 markets, including the Cheshire Show.

“What I liked was being in at every stage of the process, from pasteurising the milk to selling it,” he says. “As soon as I started, people asked me to make goats cheese so I did, then it was buffalo.” A woman in Devon wanted Marmite; another wanted damson, then it was ginger, fried onion, roasted garlic – so he complied. He now produces about 60 variations.

Everything is by hand from the laborious three-hour pasteurising to dragging the whey and pressing into individual moulds.

“I love the fact you’ve got a living bacteria that you are creating into cheese, and depending on which one will be Wensleydale or Cheddar,” he says. “You have 15 minutes to make it into a cheese before it changes. It’s a real craft.”

Selling it, too, he gets a sense of what each region prefers.

“In Southport they like fruity flavours, but in Maghull they like strong cheese. In Manchester, they like the savoury flavours.

“I get a buzz when people tell me ‘that’s how cheese used to be’.”

RICHARD ALKER, a former banker from Chorley, grows vast quantities of chillies of almost 50 varieties. Beer, mustard, chutney and handmade chocolates are infused with the hot capsicum, and he sells at Lark Lane farmers market and Wirral market and Claremont Farm Shop, on the Wirral.

On a night out he would eat a hot Thai dish followed by local beer. Ten years ago, he pressed the seeds out of a chilli and grew one on the window ledge at his parents’ home.

“I wanted to grow more but realised I couldn’t do it there, so I got my own place with a little glass house. Soon that wasn’t big enough so I sold it and bought a polytunnel on a field in Chorley. I was freezing them, preserving them and got people making chutneys and jam and wondered what else I could do with them.

“I love beer and I love chillies – together, they were a match made in heaven.” He went into business with Hopstar brewery to create a beer infused with a ”very hot but fruity chilli”, producing the first one two years ago. “Folk who like chillies always want it hotter. Mine is a little like ginger beer, with a gentle heat after you swallow.”

THE GRICE FAMILY, Frieda, mum Cathy, dad Bill and brother David, run The Farm, in Burscough, and have done since 1973. They supply Hope Street, Lark Lane, Woolton and New Ferry farmers markets with their fresh veg, free range eggs and mouthwatering range of pickles, jams and chutneys from their 120 acres of land and 700 free range hens.

They’ve also converted a barn into a cafe and B&B, opened last month by Will Sergeant, of Echo and the Bunnymen, who has been a loyal customer for years.

They’ve won many awards for the quality of their produce, grown in the peat-black soil of Lancashire’s drained marshland, and jars of fresh straw- berry jam, rhubarb chutney, sweet pumpkin relish and own lemon curd relish line the shelves and soft home-made scones are served with tea.

“We’ve always had a shop, and we couldn’t be everywhere so we just put out an honesty box, although we’ve taken on staff now,” says Frieda.

“Our potatoes, fennel and Romany cauliflower are specialities. It’s a great spot for cycling and walking, and we’ve got seven bookings already for the new B&B.”

emma.pinch@dailypost.co.uk

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