Gamoneu cheese: landscape, culture and gastronomy in Picos de Europa

Peasants, landscape, nature and PDO Gamoneu cheese in the Picos de Europa

Experience focused on peasant life, traditional livestock farming and its relationship with Asturian landscapes, culture and nature.

The anthropized landscape of the Cantabrian coast, and particularly of the Picos de Europa area, is the heritage of a traditional activity that has its roots in a remote past, preserving a tangible and intangible heritage of unquestionable richness: a rich ecosystem and a cultural network, which are currently in a balance of uncertain future.

The activity is developed in collaboration with local producers of organic Gamoneu cheese.

It is a landscape reading in the approach to an organic farm that carries out its work in a traditional way: the management of a mixed livestock herd that incorporates cattle, sheep and goats, in addition to maintaining a diversified economy of peasant type that also includes pigs, poultry and others; with a production with organic certification oriented both to self-consumption as well as for sale.

The management of the herds involves the use and maintenance of collectively owned (communal) forests, which complements the family ownership of the farm and the surrounding land.

The production of certified organic Gamoneu cheese, in addition to the Gamoneu Protected Designation of Origin (P.D.O.), is carried out in a micro-cheese factory located on the farm itself.

The visit consists of:

1.- Approach and reading of the landscape: a mosaic that integrates cultivated areas, mowing meadows, communal use mountains, composed in turn of forest areas, meadows and wild areas of great environmental value.

2.- Visit of the Farm: different elements and areas where the work is organized. Buildings, enclosures, crops, milking parlor, micro-cheese factory, smokehouse, etc.

3.- Tasting of farm products: being cheese the main sale of the farm, depending on the season, visitors could taste other products of the farm. The possibility of direct purchase will also be offered.

4.- On the way back, reading of the landscape and observation of spaces and species associated with the traditional livestock practice according to the time of the year.

*As a complement to this morning visit, which involves a visit to a farm in the valley, a visit to the high pass could also be offered in the afternoon.