Annette had a dream: to escape the rat race and make cheese

“I was in the rat race,” she says, “and I had these friends who lived in Somerset and I used to see their dairy herd and I thought I would really like to do this, be in the country away from it all, just escape.”

Fast forward almost 20 years and Annette’s life is unrecognisable from the way it was.

These days her commute takes her over the Somerset-Dorset border from Stoford to Up Sydling in the heart of the Dorset Downs. There she rents the Old Dairy on Sydling Farm for her business Woolsery Cheese and spends her days making goats’ cheese, which tastes as natural and lovingly handmade as it is. Woolsery’s hard goats’ cheese won Best Local Cheese at Taste of Dorset this year, while the newest cheese on the block, Wassail, won a silver award at the Taste of the West competition.

Events conspired to help Annette follow her dream of the good life when the Central Electricity Generating Board de-nationalised and became Nuclear Electric, National Power and Powergen.

After her involvement in the process of setting up Nuclear Electric, Annette took voluntary redundancy. “That gave me a bit of money to set up something new,” she says. “I did a lot of research and I listened to a radio programme and I heard there was a shortage of goats’ milk.” In 1990, Annette bought 50 British Saanen kids, which became the foundation stock for her herd.

While she worked her time out in London, her friends in Somerset reared her kids on their farm, since it takes two years before goats are ready to milk.

Annette moved to a farm in Woolfardisworthy in Devon (hence the name Woolsery) and set up the dairy in 1992.

“At first I supplied co-operatives and cheese makers. It takes a while to get the herd pattern organised so you’ve got a constant supply of milk. It started growing and growing, but then people started turning around and saying, ‘we don’t need milk this week.’”

Annette, who didn’t like the waste, decided to make cheese with the left over milk.

First she needed a teacher. “I found Rita Ash who had taught cheesemaking at Bicton College,” says Annette.

“Because in this country there were not many known goats’ cheeses, I just wanted to make a traditionally-made hard cheese, which is a good keeping one. Rita taught me the process in a day.

And then what she did is she said, ‘I’m going to leave you my small-scale equipment; just by varying things in the recipe, it will become your own cheese.’ After, she came out to the farm and we had a tasting session and she said which ones she liked. “When you are making cheese, you have to be very patient,” elaborates Annette. “It slows you right down. You cannot force it; you have to wait for the process to happen. You have to make good records of what you’ve done.”

Annette’s cheesemaking took off. “It got so busy that it became like two full-time jobs. So my friend Tony offered to take the goats on his farm in Somerset to help me concentrate on the cheese.” In 1998 Annette relocated Woolsery Cheese to its current site.

But in 2001, disaster struck: the goats were lost to foot and mouth. “It was very sad because of all the effort that goes into the bloodlines. You get very attached to them because they are characters,” says Annette. “I was extremely fortunate because the landlord here had decided to go into goats.

“I was so lucky that I could go on, that’s when I looked into doing cows’ milk cheese as well. I only make a little bit of cows’ milk cheese and only sell it at farmers’ markets.” Annette now does a range of eight different cheeses including a spreadable, soft cheese, a ‘feta’ (“or a cheese like a feta that I cannot call a feta”), a smoked hard cheese and the latest cheese Wassail. She explains: “Just this year, I went over to Bavaria on a cheese study trip. In Bavaria they wash the cheeses in all sorts of things; I thought cider would be a very British take on it.

"The process with the new one is we wash the rind with cider every few days, which prevents moulds from forming and changes the taste of it. It’s got a very smooth texture and a tangy flavour.” In general, Annette describes her cheeses as ‘Anglicised’... “So you’ve not got this really strong flavour,” she says. Our attitude to goats’ cheese – previously very much a speciality of the continent – has changed over recent years and now no gastropub worth its salt is without a goats’ cheese salad on the menu. Which is good news for Annette: Woolsery sells to shops, farm shops, delis and wholesalers and for the festive period prepares miniature packs and special cloth-wrapped cheeses that will go into the Queen’s shop in Windsor. Annette smiles: “It’s rewarding to think of the cheese I make now ending up on people’s tables at Christmas.” Visit www.woolserycheese.co.uk for more information or to buy cheese.