"Let yourself be inspired by the women who preceded you!" 

Globetrotter

Leaving farming for a year, Lucie trained in the dairy processing industry, but she soon missed the farm. "I then decided to do some replacement work on dairy farms in Haute Savoie, the land of tomme and reblochon, famous French cheeses. Many farms there have an average of forty cows and transform all their milk into cheese. This way, I stayed in dairy transformation, which I loved, while being in contact with cows again."

However, Lucie was not done travelling, exploring and meeting new people. And so, when a job opportunity in the United States presented itself, she did not hesitate. Soon, she was off to work on a vegetable farm in the US. A complete change of scenery. "I grew up in dairy and I needed to take a step back from it. If you don't get out of your comfort zone every now and then, you miss things. What I needed at the time was to meet people from all walks of life. When you're in farming and dairy, you tend to keep to your own little circle. I wanted to break free of that. So for six months, I met lots of people and learned to speak English fluently."

Back in France, Lucie decided one last time to go abroad. She travelled to Iceland to make ice cream on a farm. "It was a thirty-cow farm with a tea room and a restaurant where they served hamburgers made with meat from their own animals. I was in the ice-cream-making section during the June-September season, when the farm welcomed a lot of tourists."

Lucie, who loves international encounters, had plenty of them during her adventures. Gradually, she set her sights on her native region and decided to return home, with one idea in mind: to start her own business.

Back to the roots

"It was time to build something that was mine. I had considered the Rhône-Alpes region and Savoie before deciding to return to the family farm, but start-up costs there are huge. My parents were dairy farmers, so it was easy for me since the herd was there. Plus, I would have the freedom to make the cheeses I wanted there instead of being bound to the French "Appellation d'Origine Controlée", or Protected Label of Origin (PDO), a label that protects heirloom products and binds you to a certain fabrication process. I knew how to make cheese. All I had to do was adapt it to our system, our herd and our milk."

Inspired by the cheeses she used to make in the Alps, such as tommes, raclettes and Abondance, Lucie started her cheese dairy four years ago. "I work with five-kilo (11 pounds, red.) wheels for raclettes and seven to eight-kilo (15-17 pounds, red.) wheels for large, semi-cooked curd cheeses. It's with the latter that I make "Coeur de Démée", a cheese that won a national award last year." For the names of her cheeses, Lucie draws inspiration from her region. The Démée, for example, is the river that flows through her village. Other cheeses produced at the dairy include the "tomme tourangelle" and "clos madame". Always happy to experiment, Lucie is always trying new things, such as a tomme with espelette pepper. "I already knew the recipes, but I adapted them to our milk, because although it transforms well, I had to tweak some things."

If Lucie also has experience in making ice-cream, her true passion is cheese. "Cheese is a living thing. Just think of all the different kinds of cheese you can make with just milk as the raw material! It's essential for me to use raw milk: it's a raw product that is alive and is good for the flora. The transformation process is almost like magic. You take milk, you add the rennet and it changes from a liquid to a solid state. And then, depending on the thickness, how it's cut, how long it's stirred, how it's moulded... you can turn it into so many different cheeses. Then there's the ripening: letting the rind grow naturally, rubbing, rubbing with salt water, adjusting the rubbing time... there are lots of things to consider, and that's what I find exciting every time, even if it's not always easy. In short yes, I love cheese!"

The milk for Lucie's cheeses comes from her parents' sixty Holstein cows. Lucie's father, who specializes in artificial insemination and genetics, experiments with crossbreeding, but the basis of the herd are the well-known dairy cows. "It's a breed that's often maligned these days, and wrongly so I think. Holsein cows produce a balanced milk, not too fatty, for cheese-making. Contrary to popular belief, you don't want a too fatty milk to make cheese. Fatty milk produces a hard cheeses with holes in it that is just not pretty. Besides, the breed is one thing to consider in a whole chain of criteria for good milk. Feed can play a crucial part in milk composition. We manage to get great milk, perfect for maturing cheeses. It's true that Holsteins produce a lot of milk, but there's a whole system behind that. My father prefers to select cows that don't necessarily have huge production but that give a good milk balance. Our cows also go out to pasture from spring to autumn."

At Lucie's farm, no animals are bought. All the animals are born on the farm thanks to her father's expertise. The aim is to be as autonomous and independent as possible. Lucie's father is also trying to respond to climate change by making his herd more resistant. "We started crossing with Montbéliardes, and now we're doing trials with Swedish Reds. The aim is to achieve herd hardiness and longevity. We want to try to keep them longer and have cows that are more robust in the face of climate change. One big problem we have is that our years are too heterogeneous in terms of food quality. Breeds like Holsteins, which produce a lot of milk, are very sensitive to such fluctuations. In the event of drought and heat, production drops significantly, and lactation is ruined."

A week at the Fromagerie

The Fromagerie de Lucie processes around 120,000 litres (31.700 gallons, red.) of milk a year, or 2,400 litres (634 gallons, red.) a week. Lucie is in production from Monday to Thursday, with eighty percent of her time spent making mature cheeses such as tommes and raclette. Twenty percent of her time is spent making fresh cheese and whipped cream.

From Thursday to Sunday, Lucie's work is divided between markets and sales. Seventy percent of sales are direct sales. "We have a shop window and we are present at markets from Thursday to Sunday morning. You can also buy cheese at the farm on Thursday evenings, and I have resellers within a fifty-kilometre (31 miles, red.) radius."

Making cheese takes about four hours. Lucie's days start very early in the morning, if she wants to have time to go round the dealers and take care of the administration as well. "On a delivery day, like Tuesdays, I'm at the farm at 4:30 to make cheese. At 8:30 am, I'm off on a delivery run until 1 pm. I take a little nap until 3pm, then go back to the cheese plant to remove the moulds and salt the cheeses. In the afternoons, there's always a bit of administration to do." Since January, Lucie has been supported by Rachel at the Fromagerie, to ease the burden on her schedule. "Rachel turns the tommes and takes care of the cellars: scrubbing the cheeses, removing damp boards, cleaning thoroughly on Tuesdays, preparing orders and small surpluses for markets such as grated cheese, packing the cheeses. I'm so glad she's here to help me!"

Because Lucie has been living at a hectic pace for the past four years, she knows it's important to be careful to get rest too. All her hard work has taught her the importance of pressing pause every now and then. "It's a rhythm of life that I've chosen and that I've imposed on myself, but on the anniversary of the Fromagerie's fourth year, I thought about it. Until then, the objective was to grow in terms of manufacturing and sales. Over the past two years, I've gained confidence, won awards and carved out a place for myself. The aim for this year is to calm the pace. It's been a tough go, but I'm here now. It's time to ride the wave of my previous successes a little. Maintaining sales without forgetting to rest and enjoy myself a little is this year's goal. Every three months, I take a long weekend. Without it, I wouldn't last and I'd risk losing my inspiration. When you're making cheese, you have to be on your toes all the time, because it's a living product, but you're also confined to the cellars and the farm, and you lose touch with the times and market trends. You need to be able to unplug every now and then if you want to keep moving forward."

Finding her place

Lucie has had to fight hard to carve out a place for herself in a region where cow's milk cheese is little-known. "What I do didn't exist here," she says. The Indre et Loire department is famous for its PDO goat cheeses, including the world-famous Saint Maure de Tourraine. "Everyone here makes goat's cheese. I had to make a name for myself, because cow's cheese doesn't have a good reputation in the region, as people associate it with what their grandmothers used to make: a dry, hard, tasteless cheese. I had to work hard to get a reputation, pass out samples and explain where I am coming from."

"When I go on delivery, I always take small samples of 50-100 grams (1.7 - 3.5 oz, red.) with me and when I pass a restaurant, I go inside to introduce myself. It doesn't always work, but those who are open to it are very happy."

Very open to sharing her story and talking about agriculture, Lucie regularly welcomes visitors to her farm. "We have our open farm day in April and it works well, people are curious. We take them on a tour of the farm and cheese dairy. In June, I often welcome schools. I like to take the time to explain what we do on markets and we do a lot of events. It keeps us in touch with people. For group visits, I charge €5 per person with cheese tasting at the end of the visit. It's my way of sharing about agriculture. Last year, I had people from the city (Tours) who knew nothing about agriculture. These people thanked me, telling me that I speak with passion and that they didn't realize that sector was so advanced. I think that's something that is underestimated: agriculture is modern, we're business leaders and we are sensitive to climate change. We may even be the first to feel the consequences! When you see cows grazing in a pasture, know that that pasture is actually a carbon sink. This group didn't realize it, and they were happy to have learned it from me."

"Honestly, if it hadn't been for the cheesery, I wouldn't have thought of myself as a farmer and set up my own farm. It's my business, and it allows me to carve out a place for myself, since I'm the one who developed it. This is a conservative industry, and I don't see many women running farms in my region. Sometimes people judge me, saying that making cheese isn't agriculture and I'm not a real farmer. But making cheese is a way of being autonomous to us: I'm less dependent on a dairy plant that might one day stop buying my milk or on prices that are often far below what farmers deserve to earn. As it is, I transform 120.000 litres into cheese and the rest of my parents’ milk – approximately 500.000 litres (132.086 gallons, red.) – is sold to the dairy plant. My aim is to transform our production without having to grow our herd."

Diversification, a women-owned activity 

While Lucie isn't too concerned about the prejudices surrounding women in agriculture, she does realize that there's still work to be done. "For men, taking over a farm is often the result of an inheritance, or at least a family tradition. For a woman, tough, that doesn't happen that often. People have always seen me on tractors. There's one neighbour who can't stand women on tractors and doesn't do me any favours, but that's just him. What I do notice in general is that nowadays, it's not always that much about gender but about proving you are capable of hard work. A lot has changed already since my mother's generation. When I hear her talk, it's like all she ever did was helping out instead of doing real, meaningful work. That is blatantly untrue, but she and the other women of her generation were never recognised for their participation. Managing all the paperwork, doing the farm bookkeeping and looking after the calves is hard work! Yet they downplay their role, as if it were less important than the work of the men. I always tell my mom that if she wasn't there to do all that work, dad would have to hire someone to do it so that she gets that what she does is just as important as what my dad does."

"I think that's a very important evolution: women today don't want to just help out on the farm. To me, becoming independent as a woman can be achieved through diversification. It's a way of being heard as a woman farmer, a way of talking about our profession and establishing ourselves."