Nut Knowles Farm, located in East Sussex, has been producing goats cheese for over 40 years and can be found at every Wallington Farmers’ Market. They offer an extensive range of artisan cheeses from soft to hard; mild to pungent; with herbs, spices or garlic; mature, young, smoked, with cranberries, even with strawberries and a blue cheese!
Lyn and Jennifer Jenner started their business ‘by accident’, as their barking dogs’ daily greeting of the milkman disturbed neighbours. Someone suggested they should take a goat for their milk and as goats are not solitary animals they ended up with more goats and subsequently more milk. With the surplus milk they started to make their own goats cheese. With extensive experimenting and research they developed a range of cheeses and started selling at farmers’ markets in the South East. After a few years, this became so successful that Lyn was able to give up his day job to focus solely on the goats cheese making business. Now they do 15 markets per week.
Having the goats and making the cheese is more than a full time job as the goats need to be milked twice a day. Two years ago they made an interesting move by selling all the goats and buying their milk, so they only had to focus on the cheese making side of the process and left keeping and milking the goats to another farmer. In recent years, goats cheese has become more popular and Lyn and Jennifer started supplying large supermarket chains as well. Increased demand also meant more competition, but they have been able to remain successful by expanding their range and continuing to deliver a high quality product.
