At the gloriously named Make Me Rich farm near Morpeth, home to the Northumberland Cheese Company, you can watch white-capped and white-wellied cheese-makers get nicely stuck in to making some of the company’s sixteen different cheeses.

The story began twenty-odd years ago, further north in Redesdale in Northumberland, where Mark Robertson began making cheese from his small herd of Friesland sheep. He’d seen the future of hill-farming, and it was less than rosy. Small-scale, artisan cheese-makers, however, were an oddity back then and it was tough to get his Redesdale sheep’s cheese noticed.

Hard work, determination to produce a quality product, small-scale methods and a move to the new farm has paid off.