Western Morning News Clip January 27th 2012
It’s not just about the pigs! Border Terrier Jack is a special little chap!
“I am Andrew Freemantle the owner of Jack the dog. In the Western Morning News (Jan. 17th) a reader, Peggy Cheney wrote a letter in about him, offering to start a fan club because he had such a happy face.
I can tell Peggy and anyone else who is interested, that Jack has lived at Kenniford Farm since 1997 when he was born, so he his 16 this year, which is 100 in dog years!
Whenever we have the press on the farm he is always interested in what’s going on, which is why he tends to get photographed a lot. He loves coming with me in the tractor and has spent hours keeping me company as I work in the fields.
He has also travelled all over the Westcountry, going to farm sales. Despite his age he still likes to go for long walks every day, but as I write this his is fast asleep snoring by the aga.
He is an excellent example of why Border Terriers are so popular. They have a long life expectancy, are very loyal, reasonably obedient, good with kids, and are very easy to look after.
I often recommend Borders to people who see him when they visit our farm shop. So thank you Peggy for noticing what a special little chap he is!”
Kenniford Farm entered the Taste of the West Awards last year and won 2 Gold awards for our Hickory Smoked Sausages and Smoked Back Bacon and three Silver Awards for our very popular Carrot Cake, Sliced Ham and Smoked Streaky Bacon.
Two businesses based near Exeter have been shortlisted in the year’s BBC food and Farming Awards.
Kenniford Farm’s hog roast van is in the running for the Best Takeway Award, while Darts Farm has been shortlisted for the Best Local Food Retailer award.
The prestigious awards are now in their 11th year and will be broadcast in a special edition of BBC Radio 4′s the Food Programme on Friday, November 26th. All the finalists have been nominated by the public.
The winners will be announced at the awards ceremony on Wednesday, November 24, at the BBC Good Food Show, in Birmingham’s NEC.
The event, hosted by Sheila Dillon, presenter of the Food Programme, will feature chefs Raymond Blanc and Mark Hix and Blur bassist cum cheese maker, Alex James.
Express & Echo
November 17 2010
Two stars from the Westcountry featured prominently in last week’s Nuffield Winter Conference in Edinburgh.
This is the annual event when new Nuffield Scholars can report on their research and how they have spent their time and the scholarship money.
The two locals were Julian Ellis, from Crows-an-Wra, near Lands End, and Andrew Freemantle, from Clyst St Mary, near Exeter.
Julian, a well-known and highly amusing public speaker from his YFC days – he had his audiences rolling in the aisles at the Oxford Farming Conference a few years ago explaining why he hadn’t had a haircut – took as his subject “Farming by the cycles of the moon”.
A dairy farmer, he set out to investigate the impact of the moon on crops and animals, visiting on his study tour four European countries, plus Canada.
He concluded, “The moon’s influence may be small, but it is significant enough that every farmer should understand its influence on soil, plants and the water-table, especially if they are farming organically.”
Well-known pig farmer, Andrew, took as his subject “Closer to the consumer”.
His research travels were far more domestic, taking him to the BBC Good Food Show in Birmingham and the Cirencester Conference, where he was impressed by a lecture from Guy Watson, of Riverside Organics, Totnes, with his 27,000 vegetables boxes per week and special cookery classes.
He concluded that our agriculture should recognise getting closer to the consumer improved the bottom line, should tell “the great story” about what it does, and farmers should co-operate to provide visitor facilities.
Western Morning News
November 10 2010
When Andrew Freemantle won the title of Young Farmer of the Year four years ago, he little realised he would take another national championship.
Now the 39-year-old entrepreneur from Clyst St Mary, near Exeter, has been named National Pig Farmer of the Year.
“Twelve entered the competition and there was a shortlist of three,” said Mr Freemantle. “The other two came from East Anglia and Aberdeen. The three judges came down by train and had a look at the farm, and also at our catering trailer that we have in the car park of the Mole Valley Farmers outlet at Cullompton.
“We have other trailers at South Molton and Newton Abbot, providing roast meals, an innovation that has gone very well.
“We must have impressed them to win the title. I was absolutely ecstatic when their decision was announced.”
Harnessing high welfare standards and a strong regional identity to market fresh pork helped generate a £900,000 turnover from Mr Freemantle’s 70-acre holding at Kenniford Farm, where he serves processing, retail and catering clients with pork from a 280-sow herd.
High welfare is a cornerstone of the indoor system. Visitors can watch as in-pig sows have free access to a paddock area and there are free-range farrowing pens.
“I’ve always believed in having high welfare and it’s served me well,” said Mr Freemantle, whose farm has RSPCA Freedom Food and LEAF certifications.
He explained: “I started out selling weaners in 1993 and built up slowly until the pig price crash in the late 1990s. That spurred me to open a farm shop on a shoestring, and despite foot-and-mouth disease closing it temporarily, we’ve built up a strong following locally.”
Maximising returns for all pigs sold is a vital part of the success story. “We try to make the most of every pig we have,” he said.
A growing hog-roast service, which travelled to 240 events last year, uses overweight or oversize pigs that would be penalised by processors. The catering vans at the MVF stores help address the issue of carcass balance, using up less-favoured cuts of pork. “I’ve tried to make the most of any opportunity that’s opened itself,” he said.
Looking back over the past 15 years, he remembered: “Things used to be so much easier then. There was a reasonable living to be made out of pigs before the supermarkets became a lot more aggressive in their pricing. Now you have five big buyers and thousands of small producers.
“The problem is you can’t store this stuff – you have to sell it, and the supermarkets know that only too well. It puts the producer in a very weak negotiating situation and you can feel very isolated.
“If you’re getting a fair price for your pig meat then the consumer will be getting a much better deal, and a whole lot more money is available to be ploughed back into the farming business.”
Dealing direct with the public meant the trade was being retained in the Westcountry, and if enough people were trading similarly real prosperity could be generated.
Mr Freemantle said: “We may not be able to produce cars in this country any longer, and we seem to import absolutely everything – but in farming we can regain some of the edge, if we are allowed to.”
High praise for his achievement came from his feed supplier, Jonathan French, of BOCM Pauls, who helped mentor the pig enterprise from the start. Back then there were three times as many pig farmers than there are now and farmers were being positively encouraged to enter the sector, he said.
The advice then was that the Freemantles’ former dairy buildings did not lend themselves for conversion to pig-finishing accommodation, and that breeding would be more suitable. Pigs production had always been something younger farmers could enter easily, and there was the advent in the outdoor pig concept. The enterprise took off and through sheer hard work, and more than a little lateral thought has now achieved supreme recognition.
Mr French said: “Pig farming has never been in a better position to give someone a real opportunity to make a success of farming. At the moment the expertise of pig farmers in the South West is phenomenal, which is why it is proving such a success and why there’s been such an investment in the sector.”
He said that over the past 20 years his firm had organised working parties to travel to Denmark, France and Ireland to study successful pig farming, but now it could be witnessed in abundance right here in the South West of England.
“When it comes to output performance we have people in the business now who are absolutely stunning,” he said. “And the consumers are learning that it is better to purchase pig meat from home sources, where you may be sure there are proper regulations, than from Romania or Brazil, where the meat buyer will have no control over the production or welfare of animals.
“Andrew is a huge ambassador for the industry, and because he is so well known, winning this top award is of massive benefit to the pig industry in the South West.”
The business has six full-time and many part-time staff.
Publication: thisiswesternmorningnews.co.uk
Publication date: 13 November 2008
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