5 Frères Camembert is the recent fruit of an old family history added to the siblings’ desire to produce a farmer camembert independently. The farm, located in the village of Bermonville in Normandy, was created in the 1950s by the 5 brothers’ grandparents and was then taken over in the 1980s by their parents. It was in 2016 that the 5 brothers (Charles, Pierre, Victor, Côme and Martin) decided together to process part of the milk to make camembert.
In this operation, each brother has its field, according to his affinities and skills.
Alix and Laurent, the parents, support their sons in the various activities.
Charles is responsible for the transformation of milk into camembert, Pierre is responsible for the production of milk and herd monitoring, Victor is in charge of the production of vegetal crop, Côme at this stage is a versatile employee on the farm and Martin will soon complete his agricultural studies. 4 committed and skilled employees complete the team.
On the farm, as is typical in the environment of our agricultural region, we produce wheat, flax, beets, rapeseed, carrots, potatoes, alfalfa, hay and corn. On the farm we have 4 employees, one for breeding and 3 new hires for the processing of milk, who were previously unemployed and who live a few kilometres from the farm.
Our herd lives in a very comfortable stable which we refurbished 5 years ago. With a thick mattress for each cow and a mulching of grass once a day. Our herd grazes in the fields 8 months of the year. Outside our cows mainly graze on grass. We supplement the grass supply that we cut daily on our plots near the farm. This guarantees a diet of high nutritional quality. In the winter, the cows stay warm in the barn.
We don’t have any irrigation system, it is only thanks to the rainfall that we can produce.
Regarding crop production, we are gradually developing organic farming (2 crops this year, 3 next year).
To promote biodiversity, hedges and trees are regularly planted. This year we just invested in a micro-anaerobic digestion system to recover the biogas produced by the cows, which supplies a boiler to be used to heat the cheese dairy. The projects we are developing aim to increase the economic, social and environmental sustainability of the farm.
If we ever have unsold camemberts, we ship them through a network of solidary grocery stores so that the cheeses aren’t wasted.