We’d like to tell you about our new business moove…

In the search for perfect milk to make our cheese, we have bought our own herd of cows -and we’re already in love with them! These beautiful Ayrshires, who live just down the road from the dairy, have been lovingly cared for by Trevor and Julie Howe of Gadles Farm for decades. When retirement beckoned and Jonathan and Eleanor Hosken were offered the Cornwall Council tenancy, talks with us began. So it’s a big thank you from us to the Howes and the Hoskens, not forgetting our handsome Ayrshires, for helping us secure a consistent supply of the exact milk we need to make our award winning cheese.

With its low melting point, Cornish Yarg is a great choice when it comes to baking with cheese. Scones, soufflés or crumbled into short pastry, Yarg’s mild earthy flavour adds a complex note. When incorporated into the baking process, the rind can be ‘cook’s treat’ but used as a sprinkling, we say keep those nettle leaves in! They add an extra touch, as do the leaves on Wild Garlic Yarg when used as a topping onto home-made pizza. Click Recipes to find out other ways of using Yarg in the kitchen.  

The extended Lynher Dairies family includes many children of school age so we know the rigmarole (and let’s face it, coercion!) that sometimes goes with the return to school after a long summer full of outdoor freedom. One trick is to include slices of Yarg in their packed lunch.

‘What have you got in your lunch today?’

‘Stinging nettles.’

Trust us it’s a winner!

Here are some other nettle facts to wow the crowd:

Nettle leaves can help to keep fruit fresh

Archaeologists love nettles as huge clumps of them sometimes indicate where ancient settlements exist

Nettle leaves were once used to make fabric for clothing  – and not that long ago either. They were used to make German uniforms in the Second World War.

And finally, no – the nettle rind on a Yarg doesn’t sting (but there’s no need for your child to let on immediately!)

Like you need to be told how to enjoy award-winning cheese in the great outdoors! But here are five delicious ways to enjoy Cornish Yarg and Wild Garlic Yarg that you might not have considered:

• A thin slice of Cornish Yarg slipped onto a chargrilled burger for a minute before capping with a home-made bap
•  Toast a slice of sourdough on the barbecue, crumble some Wild Garlic Yarg with finely chopped sage or thyme and melt
• Cubes of Yarg with walnut, apple, green leaves and a light honey dressing
• A foccacia, salami, Cornish Yarg, red onion marmalade and baby leaf sandwich
• Replace the traditional Gruyère with Wild Garlic Yarg in an Alsace style onion tart (and then take on a picnic!)
  

  Cornish Yarg deserves speciality bread

The British Cheese Awards 2019 saw us come home with a Gold for Wild Garlic Yarg, Silver for Kern, and Bronze for Cornish Yarg and Stithians – a very pleasing full house!

Our dairy director Dane Hopkins, who was judging cheddars at the Awards this year, was delighted to see hear the good news first.

“Our team at Lynher work extremely hard with real commitment to making the best cheese we can, so to be rewarded like this is great. Well done, everyone!”

First came the wild garlic leaves and now the nettles! We needed lots more pickers this year so we took to social media to ask if anyone wanted to join us for the annual forage and we were inundated with offers. Hooray (but also, why wouldn’t you want to earn money, help create stunning cheese and be in the great Cornish outdoors at the same time?)

Cornish Yarg and Wild Garlic Yarg are perfect examples of seasonal cheeses. We might make them all year round but their story really starts with their natural rinds. The proliferation of fresh leaves – both nettles and ramsons – that fill the Cornish woodlands and hedgerows in spring are Yarg’s starting point. We gather in tonnes of the very greenest (judging by shape and perfection too). These leaves are then frozen to be used through summer, autumn and winter…and then we pick again.

Fields around the dairy burst with new grass growth too, giving our carefully selected local herds a great start to the seasonal year.

Here’s to renewal, warmth and  lots of fresh air!

Did you know…
• that in the three weeks between March 5th and April 5th
2019, 15 pickers collected 1256kg of wild garlic leaves with which to wrap Cornwall’s famous Yarg cheeses?
• this works out at 70kg of wild garlic leaves a day!
• all the leaves came from one woodland – and we didn’t even leave a dent in it
• the nettle harvest begins in earnest on April 29
• we will have a six week window in which to forage a minimum of 2.6 tons of nettle leaves!
• our picking team will increase from 15 to 52 pickers for this mammoth task

Are you planning a wedding this year? If so, we bet you’ve already had the discussion about cake or cheese tower (don’t stress about it too much, you can always go for both!).

Cornish Yarg and Wild Garlic Yarg both have stunning rinds, which is what the wedding cheese tower is really all about. More often viewed from the side, you will want your guests to be wowed by texture, colour and design. Using both Yargs (in different sizes) works stunningly well. They have contrasting patterns, different shades of green and just as importantly, distinctly different tastes.

Contrast them with a soft cheese with a creamy rind, and, if it’s a big gathering, consider a harder farmhouse cheese with a dark wax outer – don’t forget our World Champion Kern here! We sell it in 4kg truckles so this would be the perfect base.

Please do get in touch if you want to discuss possibilities. We love to talk weddings!

Nettles are extraordinary leaves. Not only do they impart a particularly delicious earthy depth to our fresh young Yargs, but they can also help with:

• muscle pain
• joint pain
• eczema
• arthritis
• hay fever
• anaemia

The list is longer, but you get the gist! So if your resolution is to eat more healthily this year, you could do a lot worse than reaching for the Yarg when you’re after a snack. Home made bread and a smidgeon of butter is allowed too (in our book anyway).

Happy New Year, everyone!