Good afternoon,
Have you been watching Clarkson’s Farm? I didn’t used to be a fan of the man but I love that by sticking a couple of cameras to his tractor and taking us along for the bumpy ride, he is helping viewers understand more about the countryside and food production - whilst making Amazon Prime’s most watched show in the UK. Kudos Jeremy.
We shouldn’t give JC all the credit - Gerald, Lisa & Charlie are very watchable characters and the relationship he has with Kaleb, his long suffering farming contractor, is entertaining. This season, Jeremy & Kaleb compete to see who will make the most money - Kaleb on the arable land and Jeremy on the non-farming enterprises.
And this made us think about our own farm and its various diversifications. Trenchmore Farm grows apples and beef. We add value by turning apples into cider, butchering beef for restaurants, welcoming you to the yard shop & cider tap every Saturday, laying the table for our monthly supper clubs and clearing the yard for our quarterly food & drink markets. There’s hope & scope for plenty more too, but we don’t currently have the bandwidth or capital for it all just yet.
We take great pride in seeing you enjoy the farm and produce, but the main reason we and other farms diversify is to subsidise our food production. We’re losing the farming subsidies and gaining a system that will effectively pay us a quarter of the previous one - and that’s for Trenchmore, a farm that already does a lot of the required nature-friendly activities.
We’re also soon to welcome tariff-free trade with countries who produce food with different standards and lower costs, and this last 6 months of rain has resulted in crop failures here and across the country.
So, it’s great to see Clarkson & his motley crew expose the ridiculousness of farming, (whilst earning a thick wedge from Prime) and that the government’s recent relaxation on agricultural planning regulations show that we need to support farmers if we want them to grow food. And ideally, that food should be produced in ways that promote biodiversity, soil health, human health and community engagement.
We are all doing our damnedest, and we are mighty grateful, as always, for your ongoing support to Trenchmore and other British farms. Even Clarkson’s Diddly Squat Farm.
Next week Henry Porter is taking over the Trenchmore Table.
He has sent me a veggie menu that sounds almost as delicious as the beef one, and serves marinated bbq’d broccolini instead of the hanger steak. You can book either menu online.
We still have a couple of tables available if you’d like to join us. We’d love to have you.
The Trenchmore Table - 7th June
Our fridge is full of steak - tomahawks, sirloins, chuck rib eye, denver, rump, flat iron & bavette. Plus short ribs, roasting joints, mince & diced beef.
The boys are serving burgers and I will be pouring & sipping Cyder Cider in the yard tomorrow.
Come say hey, 11am - 4pm.