Blog

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.