NIGEL AKEHURST VISITS: GOLDEN CROSS CHEESE
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Husband and wife team Kevin and Alison Blunt, along with their son Matthew, own and run a dairy goat and award-winning cheese business at Greenacres Farm in Golden Cross, East Sussex. The six-acre farm is home to a herd of around 180 British Saanen, Toggenburg and British Alpine goats which are milked twice a day. They are housed in large airy barns and predominantly fed on a diet of hay and grass, spending their days grazing in the main field from March to October. All the milk produced on the farm is used to make their award-winning Golden Cross and Chabis goats’ cheeses. As a soft cheese it’s a fast turnaround, taking 11 days from liquid milk to finished product, explained Kevin. They also make a sheep's cheese, named Flower Marie, with ewe’s milk bought from a dairy in Stratford-Upon-Avon. The story began back in 1984 when the couple bought the six-acre smallholding with little more than a collection of small barns and a caravan. From hand milking a few goats and keeping free range chickens, they have evolved the business to produce around 20 tonnes of cheese a year, selling to 30 wholesalers and retailers across the UK. No mean feat considering neither Kevin nor Alison was born into a farming family and neither planned a farming life.
GETTING THE FARMING BUG
The couple met at university, where Kevin completed a degree in biochemistry and Alison obtained a degree in human biology with a nursing option.
LIQUID MILK
TURNED TO GOLD This month Nigel Akehurst visits the Blunt family at Greenacres Farm in Golden Cross, East Sussex to find out more about their thriving dairy goat and cheese business. Kevin got the farming bug by helping with the harvest on a farm managed by his soon-to-be stepfather during a summer vacation from university. After university he got a job on a dairy farm outside Appleby in Cumbria, finally ending up as a herdsman on a farm near Melton Mowbray before moving to Golden Cross in 1984. As a nurse Alison was able to follow Kevin around the country while he gained valuable experience in stock and dairy. Then on a trip to visit Alison’s parents in Eastbourne, they discovered a six-acre smallholding up for sale with barns and a mobile home. Wearing the rose-tinted glasses of youth, they took the plunge.
STARTING OUT ON THEIR OWN
They started out with about 50 chickens and a handful of goats. Gradually they expanded to 100
> Kevin Blunt
MAY 2021 | WWW.SOUTHEASTFARMER.NET
bird sheds on skids and then managed to buy four old 500-bird battery houses from a neighbouring farm which they converted into free range houses. “We packed for a local wholesaler and sold eggs from the farm gate along with our frozen goats’ milk,” he said. During these ‘early days’ they lived in a caravan for five years, while trying to get planning permission to build a farmhouse, which they eventually achieved in 1989.
MAJOR TURNING POINT
Then fortune struck. A meeting with a Frenchman, Regis Du Sartre, who was selling his goat farming and cheese-making business, was a major turning point. Kevin and Alison were able to buy his goats, milking parlour and cheese-making equipment.
