A collaborative lunch at The Kraal at Joostenberg, starring cheeses from neighbouring Dalewood Fromage, provides the perfect platform to talk about (and taste) regenerative farming in action.
Grazing their Jersey cows on biodynamically grown pastures and carefully bred for optimum health, Rob and Petrina Visser care about and focus on the well-being of their herd.
I remember the first time I tasted “real” cheese. In our house cheese was a Trump-coloured block that was mainly grated over macaroni to give it some taste. We were poor. I was still at school and one day a friend and I decided to sail to Robben Island in a homemade boat with horrifying consequences, but that is another story. Once on the island beach she said, “Hey, I’ve got something.” It was a tin of Camembert, a tin. The cheese was the colour of pinchbeck and it tasted furtive, as sin or sex might taste.
It was only years later living in London that I would taste it again: Camembert, Brie, a cheese, the name I forget, that was like crunching caterpillars. Yep, I was a cheese eater, I loved its completeness. One slice and a piece of bread and you had a meal.