Riverford farm shop

Food Rules, and Eater's Manual, by Michael Pollan

2010-07-19T10:58:00.004+01:00

Food visionary or naive do-gooder?
Michael Pollan (MP) is someone I have a lot of time for. His books (‘In Defence of Food’ and ‘The Omnivore’s Dilemma’) both make good reading and a lot of sense and he brought a healthy degree of sanity to the ‘Bladerunneresque’ madness of Food Inc. A simple, defining set of commonsense rules on what to, and not to, eat would seem to be a good idea. It is a good idea. Generally speaking, my main criticism is that he comes close to being a one trick pony. It is a good trick and leads into a labyrinth of tangential, more complicated, tricks. Specifically, I wonder whether his message won’t have a reactionary impact and rules such as don’t eat anything your grandmother wouldn’t recognise as food are quite the thing for the ‘now’ generation. There isn’t much in the way of grey - the message is in black and white and highly processed food is out. For me that is fine - pot noodles have never got passed the threshold into the temple that is my body. For my two teenage sons who, if they can’t have red meat, will head straight for the most highly processed item in the shop, I think MP is banging his head against a brick wall.

The message is ‘Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.’ I like it because it fits in with the Riverford ethos which, broadly speaking, is ‘buy fresh and don’t muck about with it’. OK, I’m a butcher but that doesn’t mean that there has to be a steak at the centre of every plate. You can see why butchers are a dying breed because that is the world most of them live in. Meat has its place, both in farming and cooking but it isn’t, nor should it be, at the centre, and the mainstay, of our diet. All together MP lays down sixty-four rules the last of which is ‘break the previous sixty-three occasionally’. The sixty-three are all worth saying, ranging from ‘the whiter the bread, the sooner you’ll be dead’ to ‘eat less’ and ‘at a table’. For £2.50 on Amazon, you can’t go wrong. I’m going to buy all our shop staff a copy for a bit of bedtime reading. But therein lies the problem: the converted will learn a few things and continue to feel righteous but will it swell their ranks? I don’t think so. What will? I don’t know - obese people dropping dead in the streets maybe? At the moment there is enormous pressure on young people to be thin and fit but unfortunately, until we grow up and start breeding, no one makes the link with healthy eating. There lies the challenge...

Riverford-cream-teas-to-go

2010-07-14T13:39:00.002+01:00

Enjoy them in your own home - they're box packed and ready to go (Cream Teas to go at £3.65 for 2 scones, Riverford Organic Clotted Cream and
Riverford Organic Jam) - or sit down un the café at kitley to enjoy with a cup before (or after!) doing your shopping...

Cheers...

2010-07-12T09:08:00.002+01:00

Celebrate victory for the good guys, Iniesta, Xavi and Villa, the three musketeers of Spanish football, with a glass of ‘3 Macabeos’. A stunningly fresh Catalonian white made from Macabeo grapes from three different vineyards. Like the Spanish football team it is a holistic triumph. Olé!
Ben

Best get to Riverford Staverton or Kitley for your BBQ treats

2010-07-09T09:53:00.002+01:00

en place - the chef's term for having it all ready in advance - that's what the butchers at Riverford have done for you. Meats in marinade or spice rubs, huge selection of sausages, meatballs, and burgers and even kebabs ready to go. Take some salads too and there's little left for you to worry about except chilling the drinks - oh, and using the BBQ tongs of course.

Riverford Farm Shop just got better...

2010-07-05T16:18:00.003+01:00

OK so we're not quite finished yet, some more baskets of fab local produce and some big bold signs will make it all look a whole lot more inviting - but get inside and you'll see the difference already.

The original Riverford Farm Shop at Staverton just got bigger and now we have space to show off all that local and organic produce. As you enter you're met with the astonishing posies supplied by Penny - a profusion of the most unusual blossoms mixed with garden herbs and wild flowers that even put a smile on Mr Watson's face! The shop is much easier to get around and the butchers' counter has got bigger too. The light, airy barn extension houses a riot of colourful fruit and vegetables together with those amazing local salads. By the newly located check-outs we also have a chilled cabinet of 'riverford to go' salads, lunch packs, soups , easy meals, snacks and drinks - it's what Riverford farm Shop is all about; honest, unadulterated, flavoursome food made from local and organic ingredients.

Time to get our blog back on track - we'd love to hear what you want from us, and what you think of what we've done so far. Check out Riverford at Kitley too - it's not only there to supply you with lots of lovely produce, you can meet with friends and enjoy the café and on a good day you'll find a barbecue going too!

Up yours - Mr F S Agency

2009-08-04T10:45:00.001+01:00

Well I might have been a little optimistic about the sizzling summer and barbecues but life goes on and it is still pretty good - unless you work for the Met Office or in the organic food sector. What can only be described as a turbulent twelve months, followed by the Food Standards Agencies report followed by what seems like every journalist in the country having a dig at the organic sector seems a little like kicking a man when he is down.
The mistake the Soil Association has made has been to try to be all things to all men and because it has encompassed so many issues it has punched way above its weight. The ‘organic umbrella’ has covered many things that are, at best, tenuously linked. All it can really do is ensure that, at the end of the chain, the product offered to you is as untainted as possible. It can’t guarantee fair trade, low food miles or an Elixir for life. The Soil Association does have stringent controls on stocking rates (animal not nylon) to insure that ground isn’t over fertilised and to the best of my knowledge, hydroponics are banned but it really can’t stop farmers growing organic vegetables as part of an intensive, monoculture system. So this is what they will do, mimicking wherever possible, conventional methods to produce the uniform, tasteless rubbish the supermarkets tell us customers want.
Organics simply doesn’t work like this as the £36 million loss posted by the UK operation of Wholefood Market shows. I would like to think that Riverford customers, and many others, have always been a little more savvy than to swallow the prima facie organic message hook, line and sinker. They have always been prepared to dig a little deeper to find good food. If this is the case , in a perverse sort of way, it points to the strength of the organic movement rather than the weakness. If we have always taken it with a pinch of salt how the hell has it done so well?

What makes a good farm shop?

2009-07-17T14:38:00.001+01:00

The real farm shop that sells produce grown, reared and processed on site is a rarity. Many aren’t even on farms. Most might sell a few vegetables or pieces of meat or cheese from the farm but, almost invariably, the vast majority is bought in from what remains of the independent wholesale supply chain. Every farm shop seems to sell the same frozen fruit and vegetables, drinks, biscuits and crisps. Often you would be unable to tell the difference between farm shops in Devon and Durham. They are destinations rather than serious food shops.
Before food processing became large scale and centralised it was much more common for farmers to add value on site and sell on, either to local shops and wholesalers or through their own shops and market stalls in towns. Butchers with their own farms were commonplace. This, with the motor car, would make for a sensible grounding for farm retailing. Sadly until recently it had all but died out. Now that a degree of on-farm processing has returned we have also become more aware of carbon emissions and food miles. Should we really be getting in our cars and driving out to a farm shop to buy a few vegetables or a lb of mince? It isn’t as though Riverford Farm Shop is staffed by surplus members of the farmer’s family. I live in Totnes and drive out there every day.
So I reckon farm shops should be in town – where the people are. It is inevitable that they sell a reasonably comprehensive range of groceries but they should prioritise local, seasonal and fresh. Because most farms specialise in only one or two lines a cooperative venture of concessions seems a good way forward. One farmer/processor might do the vegetables, another the meat, another the dairy, another the bakery etc. It wouldn’t be a farmers market because there needs to be a continuity of message. It needs to be treated as a routine food shop rather than a destination and it needs to be open and fully stocked all the time.
I reckon Woolworths would make a great farm shop. What do you think? Every decent sized town should have one.

Welcome

2009-06-26T09:02:00.003+01:00

Welcome to the Riverford Farm Shop blog. You might well ask ‘what’s the point?’ and I can’t deny it is a valid question. At its most mundane retailing is a fairly one dimensional activity with goods going one way and money going in the other direction. I would like to think there is a little more to it. A good food shop is more than a refuelling stop with education, social and communal functions all coming into play. Websites are brilliant for many reasons but high points in the interaction stakes isn’t one of them. In fact they can be a little soul destroying with so little instant feedback. To keep up the good work we need a bit more feedback than that six jars of pasta sauce has been sold from shelf D in Aisle 9.
So the blog seems a good way of changing things. Most of the postings will be product related but feel free to comment on anything.