The Cheeses of the Pays d'Auge

 The little village of Camembert is 9 km from our farm and today Lisa and I went to visit the village and where the reception of their wedding is going to be next July. Camembert cheese is now made all over the world but the story goes that it was in 1791 a Normandy farmer, Marie Harel, invented the cheese and sold it in the local market of Vimoutiers. She had been given the idea of giving the soft, white local cheese a distinctive crust by a priest from the cheese area of Brie, where she had taken refuge during the French Revolution. The circular shape and wooden box were all characteristics that came later but her influence made an impact on other local villages and their cheese making techniques. The Livarot cheese, where I live, is one of the few cheeses that must be made within the locality of Livarot - appellation controlee -  and although similar to Camembert cheese it is much smellier and needs 4 litres of milk to make one cheese in comparison to 1 litre for a Camembert. There is a cheese factory now in Livarot but the cheeses are still prepared mostly by hand involving local reeds to be wrapped round 5 times each cheese and placed in the wooden box giving its name of "the colonel". Both Gen and Patrick spent a couple of summers working at the factory so can  testify to the painstaking work needed to cut the reed and then wrap it round the cheeses! There are still a few farms that continue to make the cheeses but with all the EEC regulations it is increasingly more difficult for them to conform and the use of unpasteurised milk makes it even harder to export abroad. However on the positive side the cheese industry in our little area of the Pays d'Auge is booming and Livarot cheese can be bought world wide.

Livarot Cheese

The Cheese Factory - Le Graindorge

    








 On Saturday I was invited to a concert of  the choir I used to belong to as they have been together for 20 years. It was very strange as many of the same people were still there. There were some who had died, some who looked older, a few new faces but on the whole nothing much had changed including the repertoire! It was lovely to see them and they all remember when I came to choir with baby Genevieve strapped to me and how she never made a sound as I was discreetly breast feeding her under my t-shirt! In the future I will continue my blog from time to time but the weekly posts may well go down to fortnightly!!

Sunset at the farm