Culture Magazine

28 culturecheesemag.com C H E E S E+ 202 2 VO I C I N G S H ere in the States, we speak of third-, fourth-, sometimes even fifth-generation farms. In Devon, England, Mary Quicke runs a 14th generation clothbound cheddar operation, and it would not be a stretch to say that her fate was set by Henry VIII falling in love with Anne Boleyn in 1527. When the Catholic Church refused to grant Henry a divorce from his first wife, he divorced England from the Church, kicking off the English Reformation and triggering the redistribution of England's monastery lands. One of Mary's ancestors was the lucky recipient of some of that land, and the rest is dairy history. On the land, Mary now crafts innovative wheels of an oak-smoked clothbound goat cheese, a Devonshire riff on Red Leicester, an Alpencheddar, and many vintages of her traditional cheddar; she's also developed a cheese education program—called the Academy of Cheese—inspired by the American Cheese Society's Certified Cheese Professional certification. She is a force, but her impressive resume doesn't keep her from putting people completely at ease. When we spoke this spring, she was casually snacking on hot cross buns she'd made for Easter, getting emotional about Brexit, making plans to go surfing in Cornwall, and positively swooning over soil. This interview has been edited for length. Mary Quicke w r i t t e n by L I N N I KR A L culture: I always like to start by asking people how they got into the world of cheese, but on a 14th-generation family farm, that question sort of takes on new meaning! MARY QUICKE: Well, I guess it's what Warren Buffet calls lucky sperm, doesn't he? [Laughs] Yes, that must be it. So, can you tell me how the Quickes got their start on their farm all those years ago in the sixteenth century? MQ: Well, the start came from Henry VIII deciding he wanted to change his marriage plans…he fell out with the Pope, and the way that he got that resolved was to move away from the Catholic church and become a Protestant church, and the way that he sold that to his people, who otherwise might be thinking they might be going to hell, was to give out all the monastery land to the Lords. Then an ancestor of mine 14 generations ago married an heiress from that time. Her father had got some land and a Quicke from the middle of Devon married this lady and got this bundle of land. And there would've been cheese made on the farm, but after about the first World War, we had stopped making cheese. So, in the sixties, you had to apply for a license to make cheese. [My parents] applied for a license and it was six, seven years or later that the license came through. At that point, my father was doing agricultural politics, so it was my mother who, as well as raising six kids, said, "Okay, sure. I've had the training to be an art student, and I've been told that is the training to do anything." So, she built the cheese dairy and ran it. And where are you in that lineup of six kids? MQ: I'm the first daughter, second child. I think that's the kind of bossy position. Was it ever a question for you that you were going to go into cheese? MQ: Well I've got three brothers, so I kind of assumed that one of them would come back to the farm. So, I went off to London and did a degree in English literature and did some radio and sold some news photographs for a living, and married. But I just wanted to come back to the farm. One evening, my husband had gone to bed and my father spoke really movingly about this wonderful mechanism of our farm, the cows eat the crops and the grass, we milk the cows, then make that into cheese and butter, and the whey goes to feed the pigs. And then the manure from everyone goes back to grow the crops and the grass. And I kind of loved that sense of this beautiful perpetual motion machine in this beautiful place. So I said, "Dad, could I come back to the farm?" Thinking, I'm sure he expects one of the boys to, and he said, "Yeah, that would be wonderful, but you have to go and work on another farm, and go to college." And so, I went to work on a cheese farm in Cheshire and went to agricultural college. Were any of your brothers ever interested? MQ: Well, how come it's gone through 14 generations on this bit of land, is that thing of primogeniture, where the oldest child, usually a boy, gets the land. So [my eldest brother] trained as a doctor, but he now runs the woodlands. About half of the land area here is woodlands, it was kind of rewilded in the 1880s, if you like "rewilded." So, the woods are a really beautiful part of the farm. We're looking at being carbon neutral and it really helps that we've got those woodlands. Not yet, by 2030, is what our target is. What is the typical workday like for you? I heard that you surf! MQ: I have to say, what I find about surfing is that, you need courage, strength, and stamina to surf. And as I age, I notice that these are fading and I'm becoming a beginner again. I've gone back to a beginner's board again. But I've got no pride. Do you know what I mean? I just love being out in the ocean, you know? Definitely. Have you been doing it since you were in college? Did you start young? MQ: My dad took up surfing when nobody surfed, or nobody in this country surfed. So, we surfed when I was 12, I think, and we surfed on these enormous, like, ten-foot-six boards with no leash. So, if you fell off your board, you just had to kind of catch it. When you're not surfing, what is your typical day like working on the farm? MQ: Well I used to milk cows and drive tractors and make cheese. But now I might be tasting

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