‘It’s going back to how it used to be, supplying local people with local produce’
f you don’t fancy the queues at supermarkets, then pay a visit to the many farm shops that we are fortunate enough to have around our county. One such farm shop is Charlie’s Farm off the A29 in Bury near Pulborough.
Charlie is today’s farmer, his grandad use to milk by hand having moved to the farm in 1919, and so had his dad with Charlie who started working on the farm at the age of seven.
“I guess I missed out on the social life, the wild parties as we always worked on the farm,” said Charlie.
Charlie and Sarah Hughes are married and although Charlie came from a family of farmers and Sarah didn’t, but they obviously make a winning combination of talents, having won a number of awards including the Sussex Farmer of the Year in the Sussex Food and Drink Awards.
And ‘Charlie’ has become the brand name for the Southview Farm shop; Charlie’s parents operated a farm shop
Iwhere they sold the raw milk and chicken eggs to Bury locals as his dad had 15,000 chickens at one time. Charlie has cattle, only homegrown quality cattle now, which feature in the butchery as well as being milked by robots.
The pork comes from a local producer.
The milking machines resemble large robots, each one costing some £100,000, milking taking place throughout the night, as each cow has an electronic collar, which tells the machine if the cow needs milking.
The cows are enticed to come to the machine by food, the milk goes straight into large jars where it is automatically checked for quality.
From the jars to milk bottles and Charlie’s mum and wife make the ice cream and yogurt with natural flavouring.
The shop is a lovely, spacious, fresh, friendly, well displayed with a touch of rustic; hosting 60 local producers, all-adding value to the suppliers and the farm.
A mobile fish stall run by Andrew Johnson visits the shop on a Thursday from 11am to 2pm with fish going from sea to plate in less than 24 hours.
You can simply email the shop, ‘click and collect’, what you require in the way of meat, fish, bread, wine, beer, fruit, vegetables and of course milk with no long queues.
When I spoke to Charlie a while ago, he said that the sausages came from one of his old Brinsbury College tutors who now has a pig farm in Storrington.
Charlie felt that farming has gone a full circle, and often attends Brinsbury or has student spend time with hands on experience on his farm.
“It’s actually going back to how it used to be with supplying local people with local quality produce locally,” said Charlie.
Check out the website and drop Charlie an email with your order or lookup your local farm shop and taste the difference.