We make four cheeses. Using artisan techniques but made to a newly developed recipe, Renegade Monk is made from organic, pasteurised cows’ milk, and this was our first. The set curd is then hand-washed in ale every few days as the cheese matures. Maturation takes no more than four weeks.

Rebel Nun is its sister cheese, milder, more blue because we add more pencillium bacterium, and she gets one fewer wash than the Monk.

Cheesemaker, Marcus Fergusson, deliberately created a cheese of a style not traditionally found in Britain – but rather a cheese inspired by a range of Continental cheeses. The resulting cheeses combines the bite of Epoisses and Langres; the creaminess of Brie and Camembert; and the languid blue of Dolcelatte or a young Gorgonzola.

As artisan cheeses, Renegade Monk and Rebel Nun can naturally vary in consistency and temperament.

When the cheese is firmer, the rind tends to be darker but the interior is milder on the palate; when the cheese is soft – and it can be encouraged into liquidity – the rind is pale with a scatter of blue, with a pungent, almost goaty inner core.

Renegade Monk and Rebel Nun should be kept refrigerated but allowed to warm to room temperature for three hours before eating. Renegade Monk will continue to develop in strength and flavour even whilst refrigerated. Cheeses approaching their Use By dates are powerful indeed.

Our third cheese, La Fresca Margarita, is a fresh “queso fresco”, a lemony light cheese that is just as good eaten with honey and figs as with chopped rosemary and chilli. We currently make this to order only, as it is best eaten in its first week or two – but it did win Best British Cheese at the #VirtualCheeseAwards 2021!

Gert Lush is our fourth cheese, a bloomy white-rinded organic cheese. These are covered with a white, downy rind, often a mix of penicillium candidum (soft white-coloured mould) and geotrichum candidum (wriggly cream-coloured fungus). They include cheeses such as camembert and brie – although Gert Lush is neither.

Gert Lush is West Country dialect for “Very lovely”. The Gert part comes from Middle English, girt, or gert, meaning “great”, and “lush” means good, lovely or attractive when used as an adjective.

Feltham’s Farm Gert Lush label is created by artist and musician Jem Panufnik, whose cult following and unique approach to design helps Feltham’s Farm grow its audience worldwide – including the Netherlands, Canada, USA and France, where its cheeses are now sold regularly.

Renegade Monk is a hybrid, combining as the attributes of soft white cheese, blue cheese and rind-washed cheese. Some purists may object to this untraditional combination – hence the Renegade in the name.

While many cheeses are washed in brine, cheeses can also be washed with beer, wine or spirits. This technique dates from the Middle Ages and originated in the Franciscan monasteries of France and Belgium, where the monks were frequently not only cheesemakers but distillers and brewers as well. Washing in alcohol results in a more pungent and complex taste and a creamier consistency than is achieved through brine washing but it also helps to preserve the cheese.

The name is also a nod to the Knights Templar, the original renegade monks following their brutal suppression in 1307. Feltham’s Farm is less than two miles from the village of Templecombe, where a Templar Preceptory was established in 1185. Templecombe was an important administrative centre for the Templars and may even have been a training site for both men and horses before the Crusades. Feltham’s Farm is almost certainly sited on what was once Templar land.

Rebel Nun came about because Marcus was playing with the recipe for the Monk, and really liked the milder more blue cheese.

La Fresca Margarita means “fresh daisy” in Spanish, because this cheese is as fresh as a daisy. A Spanish friend tells us that “fresca’ in front of any female name has connotations of “coquettish” – which of course we love.