Artisan Cheese-Making Classes

Lucy began her working life hanging round the local dairy farm in her Cornish village at the age of 10, when the farmer took her love of cows seriously and used her to help bring in the cows on filthy cold wet dark mornings from the nearby paddocks for milking. She was paid for this privilege (and for the hours of standing by the milk separator collecting the cream for turning into Cornish clotted cream) in skimmed milk which otherwise would have been thrown over the wall into a steady stream of souring skimmed milk that wended its way across the fields to the beach.

It was the beginning of a beautiful romance with cows and milk that has lasted half a lifetime, despite a career that took her far from those gentle and generous beasts into theatre, film and television design.
Lucy now lives on a small-holding outside Mittagong in NSW, practising permaculture with her husband, children and a beautiful Jersey cow (Polly-Esther) who provides the family’s drinking milk and enough to make a phenomenal quantity of cheese besides.

After many years of making cheese during which friends would ask to come along and learn (and of course take some of the goodies home at the end of it), one especially canny friend suggested Lucy start teaching classes for the general public.

And so here it is, 8 years later: Artisan Cheese Making Classes in the Southern Highlands, run by an enthusiast not just for cows and the farming life, but for excellent food and learning those old skills. The courses are run at McVitty's Winery on the Wombeyan Caves Rd outside Mittagong, and on the farm – a picturesque and ramshackle collection of buildings and paddocks on the edge of the Nattai National Park near Mittagong, home to cows, dogs, pigs, chooks, ducks and a constantly changing collection of wounded or orphaned wildlife in licensed rehabilitation. It’s a beautiful place to spend the day and it’s a beautiful way to spend the day.