CHEESE PLEASE

This is a long shot, but I am looking for some advice from some of your more mature readers in the Buchan area.

Very many years ago I enjoyed a homemade farm cheese which was a hard cheese, stored for many weeks or possibly months high up on a board in the couple’s neep shed (probably to keep it away from the mice)!

The cheese was made in the milk house, placed in a small circular wooden box and put under a heavy granite stone outside the back door of the farmhouse. (The farmhouse is actually Hareshowe – my late uncle’s farm – which is now one of the attractions at Aden Country Park in Mintlaw. It was moved there stone by stone in 1990. The photo shows my late mother and grandfather on the farm circa 1940). This stone was slowly lowered on to the cheese box, applying a lot of pressure to squeeze out all moisture before it was wrapped in muslin and stored.

I wonder if any of your readers would remember such a process, and would there be any recipes or help available? I would dearly like to try and make some.

Sandy Duncan

Darlington, formerly New Deer, Aberdeenshire