Dairy cows flourish on natural pasture
The romanticised picture of the idyllic dairy farm, with contented cows resting on pastures dotted with clover in bloom, plays itself out on Dalewood farm near Stellenbosch in the Western Cape.
“I want to see my cows chewing the cud,” says Rob Visser, owner of Dalewood Fromage. “That’s when I know they have a good pace of rumination and the microbes and pH levels in the rumen are [optimal].”
Happy, healthy cows with superior genetics, feeding predominantly off pasture, is the winning recipe that Visser has employed on the farm, and ‘winning’ is no exaggeration: he has garnered a host of awards for both his hard and soft cheeses. All Dalewood white mould cheeses have received annual awards from their inception, either in local or international competitions. And most notably, the Huguenot semi-hard signature cheese has twice received super gold status at the World Cheese Awards, and in 2017 was crowned the third-best cheese in the world at the same awards.
While these awards have served to place Dalewood firmly on the cheese world’s map, it was arguably Visser’s first win
