So as anyone who has been following our journey will know, these have been hard times for us as a small food producer. In March at lockdown we lost 50% of our business when our poor restaurant customers were forced to close. But with not a lot of options, we decided we would try selling online, and within 24 hours set up an online shop and started to sell our sheep’s yogurt online. This has gone surprisingly well, although it hasn’t in anyway replaced the sales, we have lost to restaurants.
So we’ve been doing two things: 1) Working on trying to improve the website every week and 2) Thinking about how else we could make revenue from the site, and that’s where the idea of the cheese board was born.
I began to search online for Irish wooden cheese boards and was really surprised at how difficult it was to find something that wasn’t mass produced.
Just by chance I happened upon the site of the lovely Fiona Scott who makes wooden and resin boards. I got in touch to see if she would be interested in making us a bespoke batch of boards and the rest is history. Fiona was in her words “shocked and delighted” to hear from us. Now she is so busy making boards for Velvet Cloud that she cant take on any more work between now and Christmas!. So hopefully if the boards sell well there will be a good news story for two small businesses.
If you purchasing one of our boards you know you are not only receiving a piece of simple, unique yet beautiful Irish craftmanship, but you are also supporting not one but two micro businesses in this very challenging times.
A bit about Irish Beech Wood
Irish beech has unique properties, although hard it will not blunt knives. Unlike oak, beech leeches no tannins to taint food, especially cheese. It has natural anti-bacterial properties unlike mass produced cheese boards that are treated with chemicals to stop bacteria growth. All boards are finished with a food grade mineral oil that is tasteless and odourless.
The beech wood used in our boards, comes from sustainable sources, we only use wood from storm felled trees or dangerous trees that must be felled.
Looking After Your Cheese Board
Boards should be washed in hot soapy water, never put in dishwasher. Naturally wood becomes dry with use so condition with a food grade oil such as grape seed or tung oil or beeswax. Don’t use walnut oil as it can go rancid. Condition approximately once a month.
