Christmas day on the croft

The cats are on the hay bales

the mice are fast asleep

The dogs are in the byre

eyeing up the sheep

it's Christmas on the croft

all good will and peace




the crofter he's in a mood

the drinkers are just ice

the tractor will not start

after swearing at it twice

nothing in the mart

reached the reserve price




there is no agricultural rep

knocking at the door

no accountants letters in the post

or tax breaks to explore

with this Christmas day reflection

peace is restored once more

this years present request

Baffled by present requests

Santa went to see

the scenic meandering rivers

flowing to the sea

full of raw sewage

and a hint of dysentery




they all want water filters

to purify and clean

and tablets to sanitise

knowing where the water's been

and the strongest coffee

with fortified caffeine

Santa of the croft

The night before Christmas

when the croft is asleep

laden with a heavy sack

around the beds he'll creep

filling socks with presents

that no one will keep




the year was long an arduous

full of woe and fears

so he'll be liberal with the baler twine

and brand new dagging shears

although they wanted bicycles

with a multitude of gears




there will be gifts for the artist

that loves to paint each day

they have got a brush and hoof oil

and a can of purple spray

to spray the feet of livestock

in a most artistic way




the deliveries are completed

the last place he'll pop in

the mister scruffy farm office

miss neat and tidy calls a sin

to admire the fruits of hedgerows

in some fortified sloe gin

Christmas goats

If you wake at midnight

hear the cloven hooves fly

don't draw back the curtains

let them pass you by

for they are just the Christmas goats

with a twinkle in their eye

looking for a handy tree

to nibble bye and bye




they will bring you presents

more that you can yearn

there is butter a making

from the milk within the churn

and there is cheese aplenty

from the Christmas fern

and probiotic yogurt

giving microbes a good turn

Ward Cheeses

Jack Ward was a mixed farmer. He rented a farm in the Yorkshire Dales, Married Pat the girl from the farm next door, and had two children Alan and Joe. The milk went to the milk Marketing board, the wool to the wool board, the lambs to market. Money arrive regularly by cheque, work was hard. He was not poor but definitely not rich, life was good. Alan went to agricultural college, Joe to university studying bacteriology. Life was good.

When qualified Alan returned to the farm, met a girl at the Young farmers, and married. Joe met Mary who was doing business studies at university and married the year everything changed.




Pat's dad died, and they took on the tenancy of his farm. Sorting out the loft they came across old hand written books on cheese making and recipes from generations of cheese makers.

Britain decided they had too much milk, disbanded the milk marketing board and paid farmers a pittance for their milk.

The Ward family decided to use their milk to make cheese. Joe and Mary moved into his Grandfathers house, converted the out buildings into a cheese room, packaging, and storage room.

Alan expanded the milking parlour and did the milking. Jack run the stock and farms.

When all other farmers went out of native breeds and into heavy yielding Holstein. Jack bought the Ayrshires, Short Horn and Guernsey. He sold the milk to Joe, Joe sold the whey back to Jack for his pigs. After much practice trials and failures Joe found and developed 6 recipes for cheese that had local appeal and customers..




Joe entered the Melton Mowbray cheese contest, and set off with Mary (heavily pregnant ) for the show. It snowed. They arrived just in time to enter the cheeses and tried to find a place to stay as the hotel they intended to stay at was cut off by snow drifts. A local artisan cheesemaker having no room in the house offered them the cheese plant to stay in. It was better than it sounded, the place was heated although no milk got through. There was an office with seating that was converted into beds. There was a small kitchen for tea making. Mary gave birth that night to Peter. Peter was placed in the cheese vat which was a steady 36 degrees just like an incubator.




Next day three judges from the show turned up to present the prizes. Out of the six cheeses entered three won first the others were second narrowly beaten by an established cheese consortium.

With the cheques came a bottle of Suntory Gold whiskey from the Japanese sponsor, French brandy from Rem Martin, and a bottle of Merlot from a wine sponsor . Shepherds and farmers popped in regularly to check all was OK, as the family was well known in farming circles.




Two years later Mary gave birth to Paul. The cheese sold well, and life was good. The Cheese consortium was not happy as at all future shows Ward cheeses beat them, and they wanted revenge.

They first tried to buy them out, But Joe refused. They then started a smear campaign to reduce sales. That didn't work as Yorkshire folk look after their own. Then they brought in the lawyers.




It was too much for Jack, who had a heart attack with the stress, six months after Pat died of breast cancer. The land owners decided to revoke the tenancy. Alan packed up farming and set up a trendy Tapas bar in Spain, selling fish and chips, and John Smiths bitter, to British holiday makers, on holiday, to get away from it all. Joe and Mary headed North where smallholdings were cheaper.

They found a deserted 50 acre dairy farm near the Cheviot hills. Within weeks they were back in production with a much reduced herd. Life was good.




When old enough Peter and Paul set up with their own smallholdings Peter with a herd of Goats and Paul with sheep. They all made cheese, based on the original recipes but modified for the milk of the animal they used. Life was good, sales boomed.

The big Cheese consortium soon found the dreaded competition was back. They could not bribe the land owner to kick them off, as Joe Ward owned the land. They could not smear or intimidate them as Northern folk know what's good and are loyal. They decided to go for the politicians.

With the help of a few brown envelopes they convinced the politicians that a shortage of cheese would occur, if stricter rules on small dairies were not brought in. Farm visits and snap inspections followed.




Paul had done a course in marketing, was head of publicity and showing the unwelcome visitors round the farms. After a few months the inspectors realised that they were being used, Their visits became friendly and more like fire side chats. They visit weekly for tea and coffee and to buy cheese . A café was built overlooking the cheese room and leased out to a couple that wanted to sell organic products locally. The farm shop was the next logical step.




Peter had attended the Schumacher college , and was evangelical about small is beautiful. He studied the modern method of supermarket, just in time, and exposed the flaws in newspapers and periodicals, being a natural cartoonist his criticisms were devastating. He established a web site for would be reporters and satirists, and produced the , How To, range of books. Ward publishing soon followed employing locally, and run by a reporter and editor from a local paper, bought out and closed by a national company.

life was good.




Joe was killed on the A1 In a traffic accident. He was hit by an HGV driving on the wrong side of the road at the Belford crossroad. It was good Friday the A&E department 50 miles away was full of drunks. He was alive when they arrived at the hospital , but the 3 hour wait in the ambulance did for him. He didn't stand a chance, in an overworked hospital with staff shortages. The national papers became aware of the accident and went on the offensive blaming Joe for the accident as he tried to stop much needed deliveries of cheese to the supermarket chain. The Wards hit back locally. The Sun newspaper sale plummeted, helped by the Liverpool football supporters action group.




Small producers selling locally to local shops was the only way forward for the Wards. They had enough customers, regular and returning. Shops outside their delivery range wanted their cheese and tried to persuade the Wards to expand. They did not, instead they produced a free web guide on how to set up a small dairy. Everything a smallholder needs to know from getting a Holding number to EU health and safety regulations, and risk assessments. They published the recipes of how to make their cheese. A web site was established for shops that wanted Ward style cheese, and who was up and running in the area. Shops and producers came together exchanged ideas and requests for help.

Life is good,

Ward cheeses are ever popular . At Christmas a good time for cheese sales , many customers head out to the local shops for Ward cheeses.

Today , up and down the country people are singing the praises of the Ward Cheeses

Don't these people talk to each other?

soft and semi-soft goats cheese has 1% to 1.5 % salt which means they do not keep well. They are very popular with Restaurants. Café, Deli's and Pubs. Come the lock down, all these closed, and the market removed. The big cheese makers had a choice add a few hundred E numbers so the cheese can last a nuclear winter or switch to hard cheese, which has a very long shelf life. The price of hard cheese is at an all time low but better than nothing. In the shops you may have noticed the price going up because of lockdown!




Now we are almost back to normal, the big producers are left with a choice, risk a switch to a market that may no longer exist or carry on as they are with the reliable market for the Hard cheese. Hence soft Goats cheese is as rare as an honest politician.




With the knowledge that it is incredible difficult to source soft cheese, all the celebrity chefs are going overboard with soft goat cheese recipes on the food channels. Some include Goat cheese and spinach cannelloni, goats cheese and beetroot lasagne, goats cheese and basil parcels, spinakopita, and crusty goat cheese and potato pasties, all served with a bucket of garlic and a forest of coriander.




The audience tempted by what they see are on the hunt for the fabled soft goat cheese. A quick google search finds a nutter in the North still producing some. This is obviously for my regular customers.




Surprisingly I have no intention of expanding, even if I could. The idea of a mega dairy shipping cheese halfway across the country to a depot, to then be shipped out to every part of the UK and Beyond is madness. There should be a small producer near a town producing cheese locally. Thousands of small producers not One mega industrial unit. Small is beautiful, and what the planet needs

Kiss The Ground

my crofting valentine

Be my crofting valentine

your delicate hands so refined

to the kidding shed if you'd be so kind

and explore the goats behind

to deliver live kids once entwined

my valentine




you wear a pocketed apron like a wife

with the baler twine and opinel knife

iodine fingers smelling rife

fully embracing the farming life

my reluctant valentine




late at night when all is still

with a thermos flask against the chill

a lull in kidding and nothing ill

longing dreams of a breakfast grill

your coffee cup I will refill

if you'll be my valentine

had enough

I've had enough of picturesque

what normal folks call snow

I've had enough of solid pipe

where water use to flow




I've had enough of frozen water butts

centimetres thick

that broke the hammer handle

and shattered a concrete brick




I've had enough of icy paths

and wellies with no tread

this cruel world I've had enough

I'm going back to bed

a phone

in my pocket is my phone
But I never touch a key
it has a massive memory
the latest technology
it can tell me where I am
pinpoint accuracy
is it right to use something
twice as smart as me?