Most mornings start before the valley is awake. I load kids and buckets into the car and the day begins. After the school run into town, there’s a stop at our local dairy farm, where fresh, unpasteurised milk is drawn at sunrise. It’s perfectly fresh when it arrives back at Silver Lily.

Mel has the factory ready. Coffee is poured and consumed as we discuss the days cheese adventures. The vats are cleaned and waiting.

Every batch begins with raw milk from a local dairy where the cows have names and not numbers. We don’t pasteurise — not because we’re against it, but because we prefer to work with the milk as it is. We work with the milk as it is, allowing season, pasture and weather to shape the result. We work in modest batches, allowing the milk to speak and the process to unfold without rushing it.

This is Mel’s venture and her passion.

After years of sailing and tasting cheeses across the Mediterranean and Europe, we returned home with handwritten recipes and a determination to recreate the ones we loved most. Since then, she has been refining them — slowly, patiently — guided by instinct and experience.

Mel has studied with the Academy of Cheese (yes it is a real thing...) and, in a former life, trained as a biomedical scientist. She understands the science behind cultures, moulds, textures, and flavour development — but just as importantly, she knows when to trust her gut. The cheese we make on any given day is often chosen by feel, temperature, humidity, mood or even the milk itself. It’s science meeting intuition.

The scale remains small on purpose. For Mel, it has to stay something she enjoys making — not a production target.