Karen and Ross Deeth – Granite Belt Dairy

Granite Belt Dairy, in Thulimbah (near Stanthorpe) is a small non-certified organic dairy and cheese producer, owned by Karen and Ross Deeth. Their herd of around thirty Jersey cows (joined by some Dexter and Black Angus) can be found munching away in the paddocks behind their farmhouse cheese store.

Ross keeps the girls happy in paddocks rich with grasses and clovers. After the girls are coaxed into the milking station with just a little grain, the milk is pasteurised. Being a small-scale pasteurisation process, the milk is heated around 7°C lower than it would be in an industrialised pasteurisation process. This means more of the milk’s structure and taste stays intact, which is a perfect scenario for Karen’s cheese making.

On the Food Connect farm tour to the Granite Belt Dairy, we sampled: Feta (made from cows’ milk); Snowfall (a double brie style); Thulimbah Matured (a gouda style); Rosco’s Rough Red (a firm washed rind); Brass Monkey Blue (a stilton style); and Stanthorpe Matured (a cheddar style). We will be talking more to Karen about the possibility of making butter, cream, crème fraiche, yoghurt and hard cheeses for us further down the track.

Karen’s cheeses are impressive. As well as their homage to the classic cheese styles we all know, their tastes evoke various combinations of rich pastures, granite dense hills, happy cows, hard honest work and loving dairy farmers. They are testament to both Karen’s careful attention to her craft and Ross’ thoughtful approach to farming. In fact, their whole approach is a far cry from the corporate produced cheeses which line the supermarket shelves.

Let’s take some time to explore Ross and Karen’s operation.

Three years ago Karen and Ross moved from Christmas Creek to just near Stanthorpe. Their farm is 130 acres of mainly pasture, which itself is sitting on top of decomposing granite. Soil tests indicated that they had a very good nutrient profile, except for nitrogen. It would have been so easy to throw around artificial fertilisers to provide the nitrogen to encourage grass growth. But Ross and Karen were aware that such practices can destroy all the beneficial micro-organisms in the soil that assist plants in the uptake of a wide range of nutrients. Wishing to avoid these dilemmas, they decided to spray whey on their paddocks, in what could be called ‘closing the loop’, as whey is a by-product of their cheese making. The use of this ‘waste’ product on their paddocks provides both nutrition direct from the whey liquid, and it also feeds beneficial soil organisms*. This is farming that is both thoughtful and clever. It also contributes to a healthier and more nutrient dense cheese as the quality of the raw ingredient (the milk) is heavily dependent on the quality of the grasses that the cows graze. Karen and Ross’s farm is not certified organic. Although they spray no chemicals and use no artificial fertilizers, they do feed some supplementary non-organic grain to their cattle. Ross commented that organic grain is extremely expensive and beyond their means at this time.

Karen and Ross’s farming practices go well beyond careful soil and pasture management. Their herd is predominantly Jersey cows, which are renowned for producing creamy nutrient-rich milk, which in turn is crucial for producing a full-flavoured cheese. And these cows, which all have individual names, are treated well. They are milked once a day in the morning and then spend the rest of the time grazing the paddocks with a large white dog hanging around. Rex is one of those Maremma dogs that some of you may have heard about. He is gentle with his charges, but wild dogs threatening the herd would be in serious strife. With good protection and gentle treatment, their cows tend to be productive for a long time. Ross commented that his life would be complete if he could find an old cow’s home. (Actually, the next farm (Palmer family) we visited down the road from the Granite Belt Dairy had one of Ross’s old girls happily spending her retirement years as a house cow!)

Once the cows are milked each morning, the milk is transferred to a cold stainless steel vat and then every two to three days cheese is made. After the cheese making process is complete the cheeses are then aged in a specially designed cold room. The purpose behind aging cheeses is to improve both flavour and character. What ends up arriving in your cheese order each week is what Ross and Karen call ‘farmhouse cheese’. This is cheese that is hand-made using traditional methods using milk that is from a single herd of cows from one farm.

This approach to farming is radically different to the industrial variety that views agricultural ecosystems as simplified series of inputs to derive certain outputs. In the latter situation, the soil is typically seen as a receptacle that artificial fertilizers are poured into to produce certain outcomes (more grass; more grain). The dairy cow is treated like a machine that needs continual fine tuning so that milk output is relentlessly increased. And, the milk is viewed as a mass produced commodity where volume is paramount and quality is often forgotten. It is sobering to realise that the genesis of a good quality cheese begins in the soil and relies on meticulous attention to every part of the process from this point.

The careful approach to dairy farming and cheese making taken by Karen and Ross ensures a high quality and nutritious food. This is why their cheese can be more expensive than the ‘garden variety’ supermarket cheddar. They have NOT taken short cuts through mistreating their soil or cows in the quest to maximise profits. Their cheeses are also more flavoursome. Their attention to getting the important things right is now paying dividends as their cheese sales are gradually rising. This has led them to employ locals to look after their shop front and they are now considering bringing in another cheese maker to help Karen in her work.

If you are up in the Stanthorpe area, Ross and Karen would love to see you at their cheese shop. They are located on the corner of Amiens Road and Duncan Lane, Thulimbah. They are open 7 days from 10am to 4pm. If you cannot make it up to the Stanthorpe area anytime soon and would like to try out their wonderful cheese, please call us here at the office (Ph. 3216 7777) to make an order.

* Jelen, P. (1979) ‘Industrial whey processing technology: An overview’ in J. Agric. Food Chem. 27 (4), pp. 658 – 651 provides an interesting examination of the benefits of using whey on crops.