Paul Wilson is telling me about their new chilli garlic halloumi and how
it’s ‘fantastic over summer served with a green paw-paw salad’ – and
my imagination is fired. It’s a rare thing for this hinterland business,
around for some 17 years now, Paul and Kerry at the helm, to introduce
a new cheese as ‘we try to stay focused on traditionally hand-made
cheeses.’ And their stable of twelve – best sellers the Nashua Washed
rind and Tintenbar Triple Cream – include both cow and goat’s milk
cheeses.
It’s a glorious environment out there, ‘a real working farm’ as Paul
describes it, the animals roaming freely, the goats feeding on weeds –
prickly fig, lantana – which informs the gorgeous flavours of their cheese
(plus, Paul told me once, they make great lawn-mowers). This is
regenerative farming at its best, using the farm as an ecosystem, relying
on the region’s high rainfall and fertile volcanic soils for growing the
grass. What’s more, there’s a café where ‘families can see, enjoy and
understand…how food is produced so they aren’t tempted to go down
internet bullshit rabbit-holes of misinformation…’
And indeed appreciate the vast difference between heavily
industrialised, mass-produced cheeses and these precious artisanal
hand-made cheeses like Paul’s and Kerry’s. In the Studd sibling’s
recently published book ‘The Best Things In Life Are Cheese’, they talk
about how ‘the introduction of sophisticated and dependable
cheesemaking technologies, fast and reliable transport, refrigeration
and globalisation marked the beginning of the end for most small
producers.’
But not all. And we must support the survivors. ‘When people buy
something from us’, Paul says, ‘we hope they understand they are
supporting a better way to produce food over industrial food production
systems, which are destroying the planet’s life support systems and our
health.’
Nimbin Valley Dairy are at Mullumbimby every Friday from 7 – 11 am
