Silke Cropp

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When we were touring the country in a £100 Renault 4 twenty five years ago, writing the first Irish Food Guide, one of the most revelatory moments came when we visited Silke Cropp at her farm, just outside Belturbet, in County Cavan. To this day, we have never forgotten the sight of happy, greedy pigs scrapping with each other to get their snouts in the bowl of whey, their frantic cries of satisfied happiness.
But it was the totality of Ms Cropp's farm, its political and social fabric, that astonished us.
Cheeses were made, from raw milk. Chickens and ducks laid eggs, there was goat's milk for sale, and kid meat and pork meat. The cottage had come straight from a children's fairy tale, the outhouses from a kid's picture book. There were youngsters, and then there was Ms Cropp's “job” as an art teacher. How she did all she did astonished us.
Twenty five years later, and every time we meet Silke Cropp we say to each other: “How does she do all the things she does?” She is a stalwart of the best farmer's markets. Her children run respected food businesses themselves. Her production of cheeses from various milks is as effervescent and creative as ever – in fact, make that more creative then ever, for we think her Cavanbert cheese is one of the great artistic achievements of Irish artisan food.
To understand Silke Cropp, you have to understand what it is to be an artist. Artists create, every day, in every way. Give them milk, they make cheese. Give them a farm, they make Arcadia. Give them a field, they make hay. In Silke Cropp's world, everything is potential, everything is possibility, waiting to be transformed by that artistic temperament. No one does that artistic transformation better than Silke Cropp, an artist of the living world.
 

Corleggy, Belturbet, County Cavan
+ 353 49 9522930
www.corleggycheeses.com