The farm
A farm shop is the end of a long chain that starts in the field, and ours has the field, the flock, the herd, the orchard and a kitchen at the end of it. Each of the six has a page with what it costs and how it works.
01
A converted barn with the vegetables on trestles down the middle as they come out of the field, our eggs, milk and cheese from the Llantrithyd dairy, bread from the Cowbridge bakery, honey from the hives in the orchard, jams and chutneys from the farmhouse kitchen, and a shelf of what six other Vale farms grow. The field number is on every ticket.
Our potatoes £1.
02
A box of what is in the field this week: small for one or two at £14, medium for three or four at £22, large for a family at £32. Build it on the boxes page, which lists exactly what goes in this week and adds eggs, bread and milk if you tick them, with the total before you order. Collect from the shop or delivered within eight miles on Thursday and Friday for £3.50, free over £30.
Small £14, medium £22, large £32.
03
Lamb from the flock of four hundred ewes on the hill above the shop and beef from the Hereford cross herd in the bottom fields, slaughtered at the abattoir in Maesteg, hung in the cold room here for a fortnight for the lamb and four weeks for the beef, and cut on the block at the back of the shop by Dafydd. Pork and bacon from the farm at Pendoylan; our own sausages on Fridays.
Leg of lamb £18.
04
The old dairy is the café: thirty seats inside under the beams and twenty in the orchard. The farm breakfast at £9.50 is our eggs and the Pendoylan bacon and sausage; lunch from noon is a soup, a pie and a plate of the day from whatever is on the trestles, at £11; cakes from the farmhouse kitchen; coffee from a Cardiff roaster. Open daily nine to four; dogs and boots welcome.
The farm breakfast £9.
05
Three acres of strawberries in the field by the lane, open to pick from the first week of June until the end of July, ten till six, with raspberries from the middle of July. A punnet from the shed for a £2 deposit, weighed on the way out at £6.50 a kilo. The pick-your-own page reads the clock and says whether the field is open today, and the farm gate has a sign that says the same.
Strawberries £6.
06
Trees from the plantation on the top field, cut the week they are sold, from 25 November: Nordmann firs from £35 for five feet, netted and carried to the car. Free-range bronze turkeys from the family near Usk, ordered by 12 December and collected on the 23rd or 24th. Hampers built from the shelves from £45, delivered within eight miles. Mulled apple in the café and the sheep in the barn.
Nordmann trees £35 for five feet, £48 for six, £65 for seven; bronze turkeys £13.
The farm itself
Eight fields in rotation behind the shop: potatoes, roots, brassicas, alliums, salad and beans, a polytunnel for the tomatoes and the early salad, and a fallow year with clover every fifth. No sprays on the vegetables; the field number is on the crate.
Four hundred Welsh Mule ewes on the eighty acres of hill above the yard, lambing in March in the big shed, which is when the children come to the gate. The lambs go to Maesteg, twenty minutes away, and come back to the butchery.
Forty Hereford cross cattle on the bottom fields by the Nant Carfan, grass in summer and our own hay and silage in winter, finished slowly at about thirty months. Two a month to the butchery; the rest of the year is grass.
Sixty apple trees, the hens, the hives and the café's tables in the orchard; three acres of strawberries by the lane; and the Christmas trees on the top field, planted in 2012 and cut the week they are sold.
Small, medium or large with this week's contents listed, eggs, bread and milk if you want them, and the total before you order. By Tuesday noon; collected from Thursday or delivered Thursday and Friday within eight miles, £3.50, free over £30. No subscription.
