Big cheese of the Far North

It won the Gold Medal Champion Sheep Cheese and she was named Cheesemaker of the Year – only the second woman to win the title. Reporter Peter Burke called recently at her Far North farm.

Winsam Farm at Okaihau, between Kerikeri and Kaikohe, is home to Cathy Oakley and Rod Clarke and the two dogs -- Winston and Samara -- they brought back to NZ in 2001 from Canada where they had been living. Rod jokes that their Winston is bigger and a bit more intelligent than the other well known Winston in Northland.

UK-born Cathy met Rod in Canada; returning to NZ they had a dairy farm at Waiuku, later deciding to farm goats, the start of Cathy’s foray into cheesemaking. But they decided to move to Okaihau and, as you do, they brought along the house too, relocating it, some goats and a few milking ewes.

The house is a beautiful two storey building sited on the side of a hill with stunning views to the east. They own 16ha and lease a further 115ha where they run their 150 East Friesian milking ewes.

The move to sheep and cheese making was determined largely by their location, says Cathy.

“When we moved up here we looked into goats, but being so far north it was too far away for the milk to be picked up. Whangarei was the furthest north they would go for pick-up and we would have had to have 400-500 goats which was impossible given the size of our property.

“At the time we thought it may be more sensible to have the sheep because we could also sell the lambs for meat and have the milk for cheese. It was also a time when the sheep milking was just starting to be a little bit more interesting,” she says.

During her days with the goats, Cathy had developed an interest in cheesemaking and this continued with the sheep. She read books, searched the internet and attended a course in cheesemaking. The first cheeses were made in the kitchen of their home but as the praise for Cathy’s cheese grew, she and Rod realised that to make a living from sheep cheese they needed better facilities.

So four years ago Rod managed to buy a second-hand goat milking plant which they installed in their shed, but the challenge was finding suitable vats to store the milk.

“We couldn’t find anything suitable in NZ and couldn’t find anything used anywhere in the world including the US. I did find some vats there but the power system was different which means the refrigeration motors would have burned out quickly. Eventually I found a company in Greece called Milkplan and I got two 300L refrigerated milk tanks from them for a quarter of the cost of a NZ unit. They were great to deal with and as a result I am now their distributor for their sheep and goat milking equipment in NZ,” he says.

The other focus for Rod has been the genetics of the flock. They started off with pure-bred East Friesians plus a flock of Border Leicesters and bred up the progeny to pure-bred status at the same time as buying in more pure-bred East Friesians.

“I am looking at the genetics that are coming in as embryos. I am reluctant to buy from the South Island because it has been proven they don’t shift well up into the north in particular. So I figure if we get embryos they will be born here and that will work better.”

As the new equipment and stock arrived on Winsam Farm, Cathy was busy concentrating on her cheese making. To call her a perfectionist and her own best critic is an understatement. Cathy gave some of her cheese away, but sells some to a delicatessen in Auckland called The Dairy.

Cathy’s modesty about her cheesemaking skills were given a boost when Jean Mansfield, a home cheese maker, teacher, mentor and cheese judge visited their farm as part of a tour of NZ. Mansfield and her husband David stayed on the farm and saw firsthand their operation. But according to Rod, when Jean and David tasted the farmhouse cheese they said it was a winner and that Cathy should enter it in the cheese awards.

The Farmhouse cheese produced by Cathy Oakley is based on the Welsh Caerphilly which is a semi-hard, white cheese that originated in the area around the town of Caerphilly, Wales. It is thought to have been created to provide food for the local coal miners. The unique flavour of the Farmhouse cheese probably comes from the plantain and mixed grasses and the rich volcanic soils of Winsam Farm.

As well as pressure from Jean Mansfield, Cathy’s friends and those buying her cheese were adamant she should enter the competition.

“For the last three years they kept saying how good it was, so in the end I decided to enter, as much a confidence booster for myself as to get feedback. I entered two cheeses, the Farmhouse and Cheddar which won a bronze medal. We also produce a Tomme, Piquant and Feta,” she says.

The day before the awards were announced, Cathy received a call from the awards’ public relations company asking if she would be attending. She said no, it was too far. Finally the PR person relented and told her she was the winner, but she was not to tell anyone else, including husband Rod. Ironically he was in Palmerston North that week attending the annual sheep milking conference.

For Cathy and Rod it is an unbelievable accolade considering the cheese was marked 100% by all 34 judges – a unique occurrence.

Their win has created huge interest in the small sheepmilking community, in the wider cheesemaking industry and especially in the Far North.