Raising a toast to farmhouse

Our grandmother Ivy was an innovator, perfecting her own recipe for Cheddar and helping to build the foundations of a family business that still thrives today. Long before food science was formally defined, she was refining methods through instinct, experience and an unwavering commitment to quality.

If you’d asked her, though, she might have said she was simply doing what had always been done: making cheese and butter, just as her own family, her husband Tom’s family and countless dairy farming families before them had done. For Ivy, good food came from care, patience and respect for tradition.

Proud as we are of her award‑winning recipes, we would agree with her up to a point. Her delicious creations were rooted in well‑established methods, passed down through generations. But while the story of Cheddar is widely told, the heritage of farmhouse butter is less well known. That’s why the word “farmhouse” on our label is more than just a name, it’s a signal that this butter is made with a traditional approach, where time and attention to detail matter.

Ivy began making butter soon after she took up cheesemaking. At the time, this was a natural part of farm life, a practical and time‑honoured way of preserving the goodness of milk and ensuring nothing was wasted. Resourceful by nature, Ivy made her butter using the whey cream available to her from the cheesemaking process, applying the same care and judgement she brought to everything she produced.

Over time, she refined a process that focused on balance and restraint: allowing the cream to mature slowly, handling it gently during butter making, and churning patiently rather than rushing the process. Made on the farm in Bruton, the butter was shaped not just by ingredients, but by place too including the hard well water drawn from deep beneath the Somerset soil, which played its part in the finished character.

What mattered most to Ivy wasn’t any single element, but how everything worked together – the quality of the cream, the way it was handled, and the care taken at every stage. The result was a butter with a distinctive richness and smoothness. Some describe it as nutty, others as deeply creamy, but all recognise its depth of flavour.

It’s a butter made for simple pleasures, spread generously on bread or toast, but it’s equally valued by cooks and bakers for the softness and delicacy it brings to food.

As with her cheese, Ivy’s butter stood out from the outset. Her dedication, patience and attention to detail were evident in every churn. She took extra time over the process, ensuring a clean finish and a smooth, non‑greasy texture. Qualities that remain hallmarks of our butter today.

Today, we still make our Farmhouse Butter to Ivy’s original recipe and principles, using fresh cream, while staying true to the careful process she established. It’s this combination of heritage, craft and consistency that defines Farmhouse Butter to this day.