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.
Working in local food for the past year, I’ve learnt a lot about the wider challenges in the agricultural sector. One of the most pressing is the subject of land access, especially for new entrants to farming. With agricultural land prices trebling in the last decade, it makes starting a new enterprise out of reach for many people.
Charcuterie. Originally devised as a way to preserve meat before we all had fridges tucked away in the corner of our kitchen, this method of preparation has become an art unto itself. Late last year I stumbled across Somerset Charcuterie at a local food festival, and was delighted to discover that they sourced their ingredients locally. I figured it was time that I found out more about this art.
For many people, one of the key parts of the Christmas period is food. Huge roast dinners with all the trimmings, towering plates of mince pies, and abundant cheese boards all feature heavily in my 32 years of Christmas memories, not to mention the days upon days of preparation leading up to the event. With my current locavore focus, I suggested that as part of my present to my parents this year, I’d source the ingredients from local farms. I don't eat a lot of meat, so it's important to me to know where the meat I eat is from, and how it was raised. With this in mind, I set about tracking down exactly where my duck was coming from.
