In the past I often holidayed to the UK; trips were generally a mix of business and pleasure. As I travelled from one town to another, I was drawn to the ‘Farm Shop’ signs. Driving down a lane in the middle of the countryside, I was always completely amazed at the size of the farm shops, the stock they carried and the number of visitors at them. I loved the idea of producing food and people calling to the farm to buy it – a connection between me, the farmer, and the customer.
I decided to give the farm shop a go in 2019. We had been selling our eggs from an honesty box outside for many years so I invested in a fridge, and stocked it with chickens, chicken portions and chicken liver – and with sausages, rashers and pork when we had them.
I knew with our location we wouldn’t have a passing trade and because our produce is only organic, we would be of interest to a small, but growing, number of customers, so to man the shop daily wouldn’t be practical.
Therefore we set it up as a self service honesty shop, where everything is priced, or weighed and priced per kg and the customers serve themselves.
We avoid packaging as much as possible, so if someone for example, just wants one carrot and an onion, then that’s what they can buy. Customers are encouraged to bring their own shopping bags but we do provide paper bags also.
I always grew some organic vegetables for our own use but now I’ve expanded so there will be a wider range of home grown organic vegetables available this year along with the imported fruit and other produce.
We want to provide a wider range of products also as we feel that when customers take the time to come and visit the farm shop, that it would be good to provide a wider range of organic products to choose from.
So at present, in addition to our existing stock of organic meat, fruit and vegetables, we have now added a number of dry goods including pasta, spaghetti, tea, coffee, cookies, sugar, chocolate, sauces, oils, apple juice and condiments as well as tissues, kitchen towel and some cleaning products. We also have a fridge with different cheeses, olives, kombuchas and kefir yogurts. We are sourcing new organic products regularly and our aim is to develop it into a one stop organic shop!
When visiting the shop we would encourage our customers to leave suggestions of other organic products that they might wish to buy.
Thanks to all for your continued support.
Happy and safe shopping!
