We are non traditional organic cheesemakers based in the Blackmore Vale South Somerset – best known for Renegade Monk, our multi award winning, organic, ale-washed artisan cheese made with a local cow’s milk – it won Supreme Champion at the #VirtualCheeseAwards 2020– but that’s not the whole story.
We aim to be as sustainable as possible, running our smallholding on 40KW of solar panels, ground source heat pumps, and using our Oxford Sandy & Black pigs to eat our waste whey. We raise trees (1500 planted since 2015), sheep – and three children – and we are now fully organic with the Soil Association.
We support local food shops such as Durslade Farm Shop, Kimber’s Farm Shop, Truckle Truck, Udder Farm Shop, Teal’s Farm Shop, Bill the Butcher’s in Bruton, Fine Cheese in Bath and local food networks such as Somerset Food Trail, and Lucas Hollweg and Lucie Reader’s On the Spoon.
We welcome people from across the globe to work with us on the land through the ecotourism organisation WWOOF. And if you don’t want to work, our holiday cottage and cabin are available 365 days a year for farm stays, weekending and minibreaks.
We are intrepid food explorers seeking new culinary experiences, and our products and our farm stay express our openness to diversity, cultural curiosity and experimental values. We like doings things a little bit differently.
NEWS : In 2023 Wells Food Festival on Sunday 8 October won us Best Cheese in Show with our La Fresca Margarita . Having been up since 6am every day that week, we were delighted – there’s nothing like a judge saying “Well Done!” and presenting you with a certificate to give you an endorphin hit, and make it all worthwhile…
Feltham’s Farm is an organic farm. We aspire to be as sustainable and eco-friendly as possible. We are fully organic as of February 2021, but for the past six years our animals have only been fed organic food and we don’t spray or artificially fertilise our land. We make our own hay to use as both feed and bedding for our animals rather than buying in hay and straw of unknown provenance. We have planted over 1,500 native species trees in the last three years to promote biodiversity, provide shade for our animals and to soak up water from our marshland, whilst also creating a couple of fens to bring in specialist marshland birds. It’s a lot of work but we wouldn’t have it any other way.
We currently make four organic cheeses – Renegade Monk, Rebel Nun, La Fresca Margarita, and Gert Lush. Renegade Monk is a multi award winning soft blue cheese, washed in organic ale from Stroud Brewery. Using artisan techniques to a newly developed recipe, the Monk is labour intensive, requiring washing every few days, and is mature after four weeks. Rebel Nun is the sister cheese to the Monk, and is perceived as being milder and creamier than the Monk. La Fresca Margarita is inspired by our travels in Latin America, and comes plain or salted, tasting as good with honey and figs as it does on the side with salad or tortilla and won Best British Cheese at the #VirtualCheeseAwards2021.
Sustainability matters to us, so our Cheese barn is powered by ground source heating and solar panels, rainwater is harvested from the roof to give to our animals and we deliver our cheeses by electric van.
Our two-bedroom organic cabin is available to let throughout the year. It sleeps four adults and comes with all the mod cons you’d expect, including WiFi, polished concrete floor and a table tennis table. Next door is a smaller two-bedroom cottage, which is great if you are two families wishing to be together but accommodate separately. With all the activity on the farm (feeding sheep, pigs, chickens) and in the cheese room, it’s the perfect place to stay for a weekend or longer and is an ideal base from which to explore the West Country. Bristol and the Jurassic Coast are within an hour’s drive and London is just two hours away (we’re also well-served by Templecombe train station). Heating and electricity all comes from ground source and solar panels, so you can relax confident you are not destroying the planet, and we have a 25m x 25m rainwater swimming pond which is perfect for the really hot weather…