We had a lovely day with the team behind the #WellsFoodFestival a few weeks back. They had such enthusiasm for their work and we loved that they genuinely wanted to know about our pigs, and chickens and how everything worked together on an organic smallholding. We have had a stall at Wells Food Festival for the past three years. It’s a wonderful food festival which tumbles out of the Bishop’s Palace into the surrounding water meadows. The people who organise it are lovely. They genuinely love food (a good start). They are supportive of local producers. We always get a nice spot, despite the fact we are really quite small artisan cheese producers.
The other food producers are brilliant. We always buy our garlic to plant from the lovely #IsleofWightGarlicFarm which has a stall there. The garlic always grows well, and we seem to be buying more and more #ElephantGarlic just because we love the big cloves. Our lovely cheesemaker Debi has just brought us some extras, as usually we grow all we need, but we’re running out this year. Our middle son always buys his #HennyandJoe Chai mix from that stall (they are the hardest working couple in food production, honestly). Delicious and all made in the West Country, but fusing some of the best of world spices and tastes.
We haven’t done street markets now since lockdown – because there aren’t that many and we only produce two cheeses at the moment. We rely on our great colleague Dan from #SomersetDeli to sell our cheeses now at markets. He does such a great job and is full of enthusiasm and love of life. He now also uses our fab designer #JemPanufnik from #Fingerlickin’ so if you see any similarity between #RenegadeMonk and and #CheesyRider – you are spot on.
So in short the Wells Food Festival is wonderful, and it’s with regret that it’s not happening in our analogue world this year BUT they have done a PIVOT (the key lockdown business term), and so this festival will happen online. So look out for the Wells Food Festival with Charlie Bigham. There’s going to be lots to see, hear, and taste if you check out our new Cheese Reliquary Boxes. We have put these together especially for this event, so that if you want you can order the Cheese Reliquary (at a very reasonable £30 + £5 postage) for an organic Fair-trade T shirt, two cheeses, including the Best British Cheese of 2020 (see VirtualCheeseAwards) and some excellent biscuits from Peter’s Yard. We love this festival!