Press releases / What the press have to say about us.

On food and farmers - John Humphreys, Shooting Times & Country Magazine 25 January 2007.

...More power to younger farmers bold enough to branch out. Up in Northamptonshire I threw a lip over a pint of "Village Bike" bitter, special not only for its name, but because it was brewed by a local farmer who would not accept the insult he was offered for his malting barley. Another grows herbs, some run their own farm shops or use farmers' markets to sell quails' eggs, mushrooms, asparagus, fruit, organic beef and lamb. This Christmas, instead of our usual ham we got one from another enterprising young farmer and it was a cracker. "Farmer Guy" has been at it since the early seventies and he deals in his own old-fashioned country hams, cured in the traditional way. You can buy a half or whole one in a variety of dressings. The simple recipe is an old one and a well-kept secret. It involves the finest sea salt from Essex along with Kentish apples and honey, for his farm is at Upstreet, near Canterbury. The pigs are free-range, happy pigs. To me the venture seems entirely laudable and the way farming ought to be going. It was a superb reminder of how meat used to taste when we had our own pig in the garden, succulent and full of flavour. I have placed a repeat order for 2007.

Praise where it is due and how good it would be if all Shooting Times readers supported the real thing and shopped less in the hypermarkets where I think they have forgotten how real food should taste. I preach to the converted perhaps, and one of my New Year's resolutions is to buy even more of it even though it might cost a few pence more. Mob-handed we could make a difference, remind ourselves about real food and support enterprising farmers who in turn make our sport possible, and at the same time loosen the stranglehold of the food giants.