It’s a sunny Thursday when I arrive at the farm, early enough in the summer that the warm weather is still a novelty. The space smells of a heady fusion of hay from the bales I’m sat on, wildflowers from the table and smoke from the cooking pit, from which Peter is soon brandishing a platter of farm sausages, the perfect accompaniment to the giant pot of tea that Henri soon appears with.
I’ve been to a lot of vegetable farms over the past five years, most of them ranging from 0.5 - 5 acres in size. But when I heard about Plowright Organic and that they were growing on 30 acres of land, my ears pricked up and I figured it was time for a visit.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent a lot of time on farms; I’ve got used to the way things work, the way they operate. But occasionally, I stumble across somewhere different, somewhere a bit special. Model Farm falls firmly into that category. They tick a lot of the boxes with their organic and pasture reared certifications, but I was itching to visit and see the farm for myself.
Step two in my locavore Christmas adventure was to source the vegetables to go with my duck. I get a weekly vegetable half share from my local CSA, the wonderful Sims Hill. But I realised this wasn’t going to be enough to feed myself and my parents, and leave me with vegetables for the rest of the holiday period, and so decided to supplement this with a seasonal box from another local producer, the Community Farm.
Growing up, my sister loved milk. She’d drink glass upon glass of the stuff, but I was always pretty indifferent. That was, until I lived on a farm with a Jersey cow in Canada. The taste of fresh milk, rich and creamy, sweet from the summer grass changed everything. Milk stopped being this tasteless white substance that came in a carton, and became something delicious and nutritious, produced by the lovely but rather temperamental Ellie-Mae.
When the lovely folk at Source suggested Trethowan’s Dairy as a subject for the exhibition I was putting together there, it crossed my mind that I might be featuring too many cheese producers on the website. After a moment’s thought, I discounted that thought, because obviously there’s no such thing as too much cheese…
I love cheese. On toast, with crackers, a sneaky sliver on its own; I love it all. When I came back to the UK, one of the most exciting foodie things was the availability and affordability of artisan cheese here. At a local food festival in the autumn, I picked up a Bath Soft Cheese, and was instantly hooked on the creamy, soft cheese within. So when I realised how close the farm was, and with Christmas approaching (a perfect time for a cheese board!) I decided a visit was most definitely in order.
