Archive of 2018

The season is definitely moving well into Autumn now, with colder mornings and the nights drawing in. With the hour changing, the mornings will be lighter but it will be dark by 5 o’clock!

Fine Foods...as ever it has been pretty busy since my last blog. We are now pressing the new crop of rapeseed which is giving us a good yield and beautiful golden oil. Next year’s crop went in at the end of August and is already coming up.

How quickly a month passes with the harvest being early this summer (no surprise there); it’s been very busy on the farm; tractors hauling grain and seed sometimes until the early hours, double trailers of straw arriving, in addition to our daily haulage lorries; all heading for our weighbridge, to be weighed in and out.

As I write this, it is still beautifully hot with the sun streaming in. Talking about beautifully hot brings to mind some exciting news from Fine Foods. Our Chilli Oil has won Silver and our Garlic Oil, Gold at the recent Taste of the West Awards. We are delighted with this news as it means that together with our Smoked Oil (Gold 2017), our trio of flavoured oils have all won awards.

Every year we submit at least two products to the Taste of the West for potential awards. In the past, our Extra Virgin oil has won gold, also our Smoked oil and Garlic oil won silver in 2016. Taste of the West is an organisation that signifies quality and integrity.

June brings with it longer days and this year a considerable amount of sunshine too, starting with the first weekend of the month, where we at Fine Foods were at the Ottery St. Mary Food & Families Festival. A lovely day out with stalls, activities and events taking over the whole town. Many of the residents were involved in some way or another but it also turned into a scorching day with no shade! It would have been great to have the top to our gazebo but unfortunately it was missing from the bag! I was saved by one of the stewards who kindly went off to get me some sun protection but I then had to find someone willing to apply it!

The Farm is busy as ever, as is Fine Foods. The Show season has begun and we have launched ourselves into it with an exceptionally busy May. We have already covered Exeter Food Festival, St. Ives Food & Drinks Festival, Christchurch Food Festival, Spring Tide Summer Festival, as well as our local and regular Farmer’s Markets. We have a very busy summer ahead of us at Fine Foods. By the time the June copy of the Link lands on your doormat, we will have been to River Cottage Spring Fair, Symondsbury, Bath & West and Ottery St. Mary Food & Families Festival. These events give us an opportunity to showcase our products and give customers a chance to meet the team, ask lots of questions and sample our delicious range of award winning products. They are, in fact, our shop window.

After weeks of rain, wind and snow, our beautiful Rapeseed is starting to flower and we are very excited about this years harvest.

It’s been a long time since harvesting our crop of winter oil seed rape last July.  The soil was carefully prepared by Shaun, our Farm Manager, who also planted the tiny black seeds back during August and early September.  The seeds germinate within 4 to 5 days and our rapeseed fields were soon tinged with green, first two leaves, then four and six.  The tiny plants continued to grow stronger and got themselves established, before the weather started to become colder during the late Autumn; and then they hibernated for a while. 

I believe you will really enjoy having a look at what we are doing over at Fussels TV. Having created ourselves a fabulous demonstration kitchen during the building of our new premises it was always a bit of a pipedream to create some video content for you by us.

For this blog post it's actually a Vlog!

On 13 October last year, a group of farmer friends came to the Fine Foods Demo Kitchen for a day to acquire and learn new skills and have lots of fun at the same time. They are the Friday 13th Group. Approximately twice a year (wherever Friday 13th lands) they get together to do a variety of things, sometimes pretty offbeat, sometimes a day’s shooting. I did hear them suggest ballet classes for this spring! Now that would be a lot of fun, having spent a day with these guys! They embrace whatever is planned!

On 13 October last year, a group of farmer friends came to the Fine Foods Demo Kitchen for a day to acquire and learn new skills and have lots of fun at the same time.  They are the Friday 13th Group.  Approximately twice a year (wherever Friday 13th lands) they get together to do a variety of things, sometimes pretty offbeat, sometimes a day’s shooting.  I did hear them suggest ballet classes for this spring!  Now that would be a lot of fun, having spent a day with these guys!  They embrace whatever is planned!

Rough and ready it may be, but here is what we hope to be the first of many episodes on Fussels TV, start now and get perfect later is our mantra on this one.

Recently we conducted a poll on our various Social Media channels, we have identified that we need to introduce some more products to our range this year and we thought it would be a great idea if we asked you what you thought.

2018 is looking to be an exciting year for us here at Fussels Fine Foods.  We are already booked into a number of shows starting with the Exeter Food Festival on May Day Bank Holiday Weekend.  Despite the current weather being rather grim, we are really looking forward to engaging with our customers at these events.  We continue to cover monthly Farmer's Markets, not forgetting the now famous Frome Independent.

To enter the competition, it's as easy as 1,2,3! Visit your local Sainsbury's or Morrisons store.Buy a bottle of our Smoked Rapeseed Oil.Take a selfie in front of the store and post on our Facebook, Twitter or Instagram pages using the hashtag #SmokedOilSelfie.Once you've entered, relax, enjoy the smoked oil and wait to see if you've won.

After the build up to Christmas and the New Year, it is always a relief when January comes along. A time to work on the business, not in the business, a time to plan and consolidate as we approach the next turn of Julian’s page.

Before the Christmas break, it was time to check the crops on the 212 Ha farming operation involving land we own, currently rent and contract farm.

Seeing as this is the first of a series of blogs, what better time to start than right at the beginning of the New Year. So the first thing I would like to do is wish you all a happy New Year, may it be filled with everything you wish for and nothing that you don’t!