Movers, bakers & shakers Suffolk

On the county’s northern fringes, discover micro dairies producing the creamiest milk, bakeries making sourdough from toasted quinoa and breweries crafting golden ale

- CLARE HARGREAVES

‘How much is a pint of milk?’ goes the perennial question lobbed at politicians. The answer, if you shop in a supermarket, is probably just over 40p. But at Fiona Provan’s dairy farm in Somerleyton, an estate village on the marshy border between Suffolk and Norfolk, you’ll pay £1.70. It’s quite a hike but then it’s a very different product: her primrose-hued milk is almost indecently creamy (most of her cows are Jerseys), it’s unpasteurised and, most unusually, it’s from cows that keep their calves. Hence the dairy’s name, The Calf at Foot (the-calf-at-foot-dairy.co.uk).

Braving the muddy, potholed farm track that runs opposite the walled park housing Somerleyton’s Italianate mansion, I watch the cows being summoned by name, one by one, into the milking ‘parlour’ – a fenced-off corner of a vast medieval barn. It’s 8am and nippy, so I huddle close to the cows’ warm bodies. Fiona’s milking assistant, Amy George, takes a quick taste of the milk on her fingers to ensure it’s good, then sets to work as the cow munches from a manger of locally grown hay or lucerne (no industrially grown soya or other grains here). It’s over in minutes as Amy needs to leave enough milk for the cow’s calf as well. For the same reason, there will be no evening milking.

Fiona’s labour-intensive micro dairy will never make her rich. But she believes it’s an ethical compromise for consumers who are unhappy about calves being removed from their mothers at birth. Yes, the milk costs a lot more than that sold in supermarkets but her customers think it’s worth it. “There’s no such thing as cheap milk,” says Fiona.