We got some great news yesterday, we made it to the top five (from about 700 nominations in Scotland!) from Scotland for the UKTV Food Hero award!! The cameras are coming in late August and we will ‘battle’ it out with the other four ‘heros’ to decide who will go forward to represent Scotland in the UK final.
Follow this link to see who else has got through http://uktv.co.uk/food/stepbystep/aid/604592
Thank you to everyone that voted for us and especially those that wrote such kind comments about us, it provides all of the staff, Kirsteen and me with the energy we need to keep going. All of my staff have done a great job over the past year, especially over the past month when we have been extremely busy.
We still have a lot of PYO (and ready picked) fruit on the go – strawberries (move down the field to the later planted variety, they are so tasty!!), raspberries (again walk down to the ones in the bottom field), gooseberries (nice and sweet now), redcurrants and blackcurrants(later variety just getting going now).
David has been busy with the veggies, we now have our own courgettes, radish and a great variety of mixed salad leaves which taste great with our fruit vinegar drizzled over it. The salad leaves are picked fresh every day and is used in our cafe as well as being sold in the shop. Once you have tasted the wonderful mix of flavours you will never touch a bagged salad from the supermarket again. Peas will be on the go from the middle of next week.
I am heading south next week to have a look at some big PYO farms around London, hopefully I will get a lot of great ideas to help improve our offering at Craigie’s for next year.
Hope you can make it out to ‘PYO’ this weekend, the sun is going to shine all weekend!!?
That’s the first year just under our belt and what a year! Just before we were a year old we opened our second shop (ok it was closed four days later!). We were given the opportunity to set up a replica of our shop at the Highland Show by the company that built our shop, Algo. The position was A1, right at the side of the main ring with the likes of M&S, Sainsbury’s and Tesco!!! We had a pretty manic week the week before but the staff all came up trumps and we got through it.
June has turned out to be a very busy month, the open weekend at the start was a great success and it has just been nonstop since. We also got a great write up in the Herald a couple of weeks ago which was a great boost to our staff and myself.
We are now approaching the PYO (pick your own) season. Just to give you a rough idea of the season (weather dependant) see below –
Strawberries 28th June until mid August £3.00/kg
Raspberries 5th July until late September £3.50/kg
Gooseberries 28th June until early August £3.50/kg
Black and red currants mid July until early August £3.50/kg
Coming later – Tayberries, brambles, Victoria Plums, sun flowers and some vegetables.
I will keep you updated via my e-blog.
We are starting our summer hours as of this weekend (28th June) we will be open seven days a week from 9am until 6pm. Last food orders and entry to the PYO fields at 5pm.
David has been busy growing vegetables in the tunnels and field, the salad leaves are just about ready, why not pop down the veg tunnel the next time you are in and see what is growing.
We are expecting the arrival of another 50 chooks next week, their new hut is in place awaiting them. It will take them a few weeks to start laying but we should soon have a better supply of our own fresh eggs.
Thank you to whoever it was that nominated us as a local food hero! Please vote for us at www.uktvfood.co.uk voting closes on the 14th July.
Hope to see you up soon.
PS Amber our lab had a litter of pups just under three weeks ago now. She had 3 yellow bitches and 5 black dogs, let me know if you are interested in one.
It certainly felt a bit more like summer today, it must be the first time we have not had that cold easterly wind for a while, just hope the warmer weather lasts!
We are busy getting ready for our Open Farm Weekend, we had a trial run on Wednesday night to see how things would go so fingers crossed all goes well! The guided walks and ‘experts’ will all be happening between 11am and 3pm on this Saturday and Sunday. Events detailed below, (you will get the map on the day!) There is no entry charge and no charge for any of the events. We will be testing you to see if you have been paying attention, if you have been you could win £50.
We will not have our normal menu running this weekend we have a special barbeque and lots of great salads on the go, (Anne and her kitchen staff will be busy tomorrow). Breakfast will be as normal up until 11.30 on both days.
Judith (Shop Manageress) has managed to get lots of samples from our suppliers so you will be able to taste and sample a lot more that usual! We also have a few of our suppliers coming along to meet you at various times over the weekend.
The strawberries are not quite ready yet, hopefully we will have our own ones in the shop from next weekend (7th/8th June), pick your own fruit will not start until the end of June.
Sorry if I am keeping the blog a bit short tonight but I must get prepared for a busy weekend.
Hope to see you up at the farm, we are really looking forward to showing you around the farm.
Hi, I am John the farmer at Craigie’s. I would like to welcome you here today and I hope you have a great time. This is our first Open Farm event, so you comments will be appreciated!
This is a working farm so please, please keep your children under control at all times, do not enter roped off areas.
We have the following activities for you to take part in:
In the shop we have lots of tasting of our fine produce, pop in and have a chat with our staff.
Our normal menu has been replaced this weekend by a special barbeque option. £6.95 (£3.50 for kids) gets you a plate heaped with our salads and with a choice of barbecued meats (vegetarian option available).
Do not forget to enter our quiz; you could win a voucher worth £50!
Just a short blog this week.
We have started harvesting our asparagus, it has now been in the ground for two years so we can harvest around 25% of the crop this year. We plan to pick up until the middle of the month, by this time the Scottish asparagus from Angus will be in full flow.
Asparagus is one of the few crops that still has a really short season so you have to make the most of it whilst it is available. (OK you can get asparagus from Chile all year round but it just does not taste the same!)
We will be picking the asparagus every morning so make sure you are in early to get the best pick!
We are preparing for a Farm Open weekend on the 31st May and 1st June, so if you have ever wanted to see what we get up to on the farm this will be the ideal time. We are planning tractor and trailer rides, guided walks, animal talks, big shinny new machinery (we will have the biggest combine harvester made here!) and a selection of vintage machinery from the past. Not forgetting the shop and cafe, we will have a lot of suppliers in letting you sample their products and talking about them along with a special food offering from our own kitchen!
Just hope this weather keeps up!!
Well it is getting a little warmer, just. It was nice to see the deck area just about full on Sunday, hopefully we will get more days like that over the summer!
Mango and Chutney (the pigs) are now outdoors, you should have seen them when they first got out, they were running, ducking, rolling all over the place. You could say that they are as happy as pigs in s**t! We are still waiting to hear back from the SSPCA about a suitable date to hand over their cheque and present the name the pig prize.
We now have an fab new ice cream counter packed with some of the most popular flavours from Stewart Tower Farm Dairy. The ice cream is so fresh it was still grass a couple of days ago!! We are expecting this counter to be a big hit, so be patient with the staff until they get in to full scooping mode. Neil and Linsey from Stewart Towers are going to be taking some of our fruit in the summer to put in the ice-cream and they are also going to make us dairy free fruit ices. Our joiner is going to make us up a nice counter for the corner where the counter is.
The first of the Scottish tomatoes will be in on Saturday. As per usual we will be getting a fresh delivery every week from Jim and Liz Craig who grow tomatoes in their Carluke glasshouse.
Our strawberries are coming on now, the first of the flowers are just appearing so we should have our first fruit in about a month or so, depending on the weather! To help pollinate the flowers we have brought in hives of bumble bees in to each of the tunnels, this helps give us nicely shaped big strawberries. Over the next few weeks Iain will be busy planting plants for our later harvest.
The big bags of Tyrrells Potato Crisps are on offer at the moment, two bags for only £2.50.
Our cafe is now an internet cafe! We have wireless broadband available for our customers, free of charge. The password is ‘coffee99’
We were pleased to welcome a new member of staff onto our team today, Lee has started in the kitchen and he brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to the kitchen. Most recently Lee was the Chef at Marynka’s in Linlithgow!
By the way, the road is open again!! I cannot guarantee for how long?!
Hope to see you soon.
I am getting better, my ‘monthly’ blog is back to being monthly!!
We have finished judging the ‘name the piglets’ competition, the winning names are ‘Chutney’ and ‘Mango’ ( I promise they will never be served with!). Well done James McAlpine (aged 4), I will be in touch over the next couple of days to arrange the handing over of your prize, a piggy hamper (no, there is no bacon in it). We also raised £175 for the SSPCA!
If you have been in this month you will probably have noticed a new face, Judith started at the beginning of April and is our new shop manageress. She has been proving a great hit with our customers (and staff) already, I hope you make her feel welcome and say ‘hi’ the next time you are up. Judith, like Kirsteen and I, want to hear your comments (good and bad).
The road is open!! Eventually Burnshot Road is now open all nicely tarred (except for the bits that are breaking up already!!). We have even been promised that the farm road will get repaired in the next week (we are not getting a white line down the middle of the road yet!). At least you should not have a big long detour via Dalmeny or have to dodge barriers to get to us.
On the farm, all of the spring barley has now been sown, we are waiting for things to dry up before getting on with planting the spuds. Eventually we got the poly tunnels covered, we have been trying to cover them for the past 6 weeks. Hopefully we will get some nice warm spring weather and the plants might catch up.
Hope to see you up soon.
Yet again I must start with an apology! My monthly blog is turning into a bi monthly blog, sorry.
I can assure you that I have not been idle. We have had a really good February and start to March, Mothers day was our busiest day in the café since we opened. Hopefully when we get to Easter we will get some decent weather and get the use of the deck area.
We have been hitting the press again, and they have not been telling ‘porky pies’! If you get the Evening News you may have been following the story of some Kune Kune crossed Potbelly piglets that were rescued by the SSPCA. The long and short of it is that we have re house two of the piglets and to raise some money for the SSPCA we are running a wee competition to name the two boys. Entry forms are in the shop and we ask for a donation of a pound. So bring the kids along and meet the two porkers and help us get them named. (If they have a name our kitchen will not be allowed to use them for breakfast!!)
I really wish Hugh (double barrelled surname) would speak to the free range poultry farmers before he starts knocking intensive poultry production! Roger and Sue have been struggling to supply us with their wonderful free range chicken to sell. This is the first week since the TV programs that I have got my complete order from Gartmorn, so hopefully we should have some chicken on the shelf for our Sunday customers this weekend!
We have added a new cheese to our counter. Jim and Annie Shanks are dairy farmers near Minto (in the Borders), they have just started producing a Scottish Brie. I think it is really good but why believe me, come in and sample it yourself. They do a large ‘Borders Brie’ that we cut for you and they do a small pre packed ‘Roxburgh Roondie’.
We have been adding a lot of new lines in our shop over the past month – Chocolate Tree Chocolate from Gifford, lots more olives, Curry sauces, tasty snacks, venison salamis, the list goes on.
What’s happening on the farm? Not as much as I would like!! The winds have really been holding us up getting tunnels covered. We need a dead calm morning (usually 4am is the best time), ten able bodies and a lot of cursing and shouting. When we get all these ingredients we can cover the tunnels without too many problems. We have one early block of strawberries covered so we should be picking them by the end of May. We need to get another block of strawberries covered and a block of raspberries covered as well, if not we will not get them picked in time to replant them with a late crop.
We are also waiting for the ground to dry up so that we can get some barley sown.
Clarence filled in some of the pot holes on our road yesterday!! I measured one of the pot holes and it was 12” deep, 2ft wide by 3ft long!!
Hope to see you up soon.
I hope you have all recovered from ‘Blue Monday’! I was feeling all right until Mum came in and told me that it was the most depressing day of the year, combined with the horrible sleety rain and the arrival of my Christmas Visa bill!
Still I soon forgot about all that when I realised what all is going on this week. We are launching our breakfast menu this week, after all it is Farm House Breakfast Week. On Wednesday and Thursday we have some pupils from Kirkliston Primary School coming up to gather eggs then prepare some scrambled eggs and fresh bread in the kitchen. Richard Lochhead (Scottish Rural Minister) popping in on Thursday to lend a hand and sample the kids cooking.
We are now serving breakfast every morning from 9am until 11.30am, hope you can pop in to sample it soon (comments welcome!)
Do not forget that Friday is Burns Night, we have a good supply of really tasty haggis coming in from Reivers on Thursday. There are also the haggis pies from Simple Simon (they are just so good).
Free range chicken and eggs have been getting a lot of press at the moment, we have certainly noticed a big increase in our egg sales. Unfortunately, Roger and Sue from Gartmorn (our poultry suppliers) clean the farm right out every year after Christmas and stock up with a new batch of chicks which will not be ready until mid February ish. Still good things are worth waiting for!
There is not a lot happening out on the farm at the moment, Stefan is working away between showers lacing the raspberry canes up, during the showers he is on painting jobs inside. Iain my fruit manager is away recharging his batteries for a month in sunny climates, I feel that something is wrong here as Kirsteen, the kids and I are off to Peebles for a couple of nights in the midterm! Who said the boss got it easy!!
On Monday 28th January we have a special offer on, get a free tray bake with every tea or coffee purchased.
Our kitchen are turning out a lot more home baking, bread, quiches etc for take a way, if you want anything made specially drop me an email or speak to Anne Baird the next time you are in. If you are entertaining she will even prepare you something in your own dish so you can pass it off as your ‘home made’! Honest I will not tell.
Hope to see you up for breakfast.
The chooks have moved!! Much to the amusement of those having a coffee in the café on Monday Iain tried to move the hens to their new patch ‘Pied Piper’ style, it worked for 10 yards or so then the 50 hens went all directions!!
We have moved them to the pick your own strawberry patch for the winter. Why? A small bug called Vine Weevil is a big problem in strawberries, there are two methods of control –
We are getting very musical up at Craigie’s this week!
On Thursday Frank Cooper and partner are coming up to play a selection of Christmas Carols and tunes on their Dulcimers between 11am and 2pm on Thursday 13th December. They will have their CD on sale priced at £6 with proceeds in aid of St Peters Church.
On Sunday 16th between 2.30 and 4pm the Royal High School Choir will be singing Christmas Carols in aid of Sargent Scotland. We will be serving Warm Mulled Juice and Festive nibbles free of charge (donations for Sargent Scotland welcome!!)
If you want a special cut of meat for Christmas or New Year I will need your orders by Sunday 16th if you want to be guaranteed to get it. We have a couple of turkeys left at the 8-10kg range and a few in the 4-6kg range left. We also have a couple of geese and ducks left to sell as well.
We are expecting a large number of orders to be collected on the Sunday and Monday before Christmas, at the moment there are only a few orders going out on Saturday 22nd.
If you have an order to collect please email me with your surname, telephone number, the day you wish to collect and the preferred time slot you want to collect your order (9am-12pm, 12pm-3pm or 3pm-5pm).
I have attached our Christmas hours.
The Christmas Trail will still be open this weekend, fingers crossed the weather will be better than the last two weekends! It will still be free and there will still be a free goodie bag for all those that take part.
The tasting weekend went so well last weekend we have decided to get really reeking this weekend. No we are not having a Young Farmers party! The Really Garlicky Company and Arnaud (our Onion Johnny) will both be in the shop between 12 and 4 on Saturday. Arnaud will be demonstrating the art of tying strings of onions and telling you about his farm in France. The Garlicky Co will be handing out samples of their products and telling you about themselves.
On Sunday we will have samples of the Summer Isles smoked salmon, all of our cheeses, some wines and beer (after 12.30), biscuits, oatcakes etc all out for you to sample.
Since it was really wet and yuck last weekend we will be having the Christmas themed nature trail this weekend, as usual it is free and since its Christmas every kid that cracks the code will get a free goodie bag specially made by our kitchen girls. Remember your wellies!
The bronze turkeys and goose fat are now sold out. We still have some white turkeys left, however the bigger birds are getting fewer by the day.
We have a great selection of cheese in the deli counter, if you want to be guaranteed the best cheese board at Christmas get your order in now. Stilton and port always go well, but I heard a great idea the other day – buy a half stilton, pour a little port over it, leave a couple of days, pour a little more port over it, repeat this up until Christmas then enjoy!
Last Saturday we started stocking Brenda’s Jersey Cow cream and butter, it has proved to be a real hit. Especially the handmade butter, once you’ve had some spread on our homemade bread you will never have a slice of Sunblest and Anchor Spread again! Her clotted cream goes a treat with our scones and rasp jam.
On the farm we have been busy ploughing up the fields so that any frost can help us prepare a nice seed bed for sowing barley in the spring. Iain (my fruit manager) is getting a bit of peace and quiet as the last of our students finished up last week when we stopped picking strawberries. However he is preparing for the first ones to arrive in January, we will start preparing tunnels for planting raspberries which will hopefully start fruiting about the end of May (6 weeks earlier than our usual season).
After having our own strawberries in the shop every day for the last 190 days we are now finished for the season!! That is a record for us, will we have Dutch or Spanish strawberries in the shop over the winter? You have got to be joking, it will just be about 175 days before our own are ready again, I would rather wait than eat turnips from Spain!
I am afraid that my head is a bit bigger than normal this week! Last week we were named as one of the top five farm shops by The Scotsman and we have also made it into Peter Irvine’s latest edition of Scotland the Best!! Peter gave us a ‘tick’ which rates us as ‘Amongst the very best in Scotland’. His new book (to be launched in December 2007) is now on sale in our shop, it’s a great book and is a must buy it even if it is just to see what Peter wrote about us! I was chuffed to bits when I read it ;-)
The turkeys are literally flying out of the door this year, we are almost sold out of some of the weight ranges. We are having a tasting weekend in the shop this weekend (1st and 2nd December) – turkey, chipolatas, beer, wine, cheese, mince pies and lots more, we will be open as normal from 9am until 5pm.
As well has the tasting this weekend we will have a festive twist on the Nature Trail, its free, it’s fun and every kid taking part will get a tasty Christmas goodie bag made in our own kitchen!
If you have placed your turkey order on line and you have not had an acknowledgement from me please get in touch with me to check that I have your order.
We have some new lines going on the shelves this weekend– The Simple Simon Christmas Pies, Tea Pigs Tea, Chocolate Desert Shells, Ella’s Kitchen smoothies and baby food (the carrot, apple and parsnip ‘baby food’ is yummy, we will happily provide stickers to stick over the ‘baby food’ bit!!), Amaretti biscuits, Cheesey Oatcakes, and a number of products from Stichill Jersey Cows including butter and cream!
This week’s special offer!! Print a copy of this email out, come to the Café between 2pm and 4.30pm from Monday 3rd to Friday 7th December 2007, present us with a copy of this email, buy a coffee or a tea and get a free tray bake or a slice of cake with every tea/coffee.
I hope to see you up at Craigie’s this weekend, you will find me beside the beer sampling!
It’s not often that I get to spend a day doing almost nothing and remain guilt free. But the grey sky when I woke up on my Thursday off, was just the excuse I needed. Still full from supper the night before. We’d eaten lasagne, which benefited enormously from a few large bits of tallegio laid on top, once it was already smothered in cheese and white sauce (which I failed to get quite thick enough, much to my distress). It was followed by a pavlova, made with Craigie’s strawberries, which was far too good to leave for the next day.
By lunchtime however it was time to begin again. It was delicious, though haphazard. We ate some Mature Dunlop with the windfall chutney from the Jam kitchen. The two were delicious together, though I think the sharp plum chutney would’ve been even better, whereas the windfall would be just the accompaniment to a piece of Bishop Kennedy, or Caerphilly. We also ate a hastily assembled bean chilli, cannelini beans and tomatos with cumin and coriander. Nothing snazzy, and rather incoherent; quite the best kind of lunch.
In the afternoon we explored Tollcross, our new neighbourhood. The weather remained petulant, and the delis we intended to visit were perfect shelters as the rain came down in fits and starts. We bought a hot and sticky chutney from the African deli over the road. With plans for crispy chicken wings at supper, it was hard to resist. For the rest of the afternoon, I loafed, thinking about supper. Before long I couldn’t wait any longer.
I put oil into a couple of roasting tins (neither quite large enough for all six) and put several handfuls of flour along with generous amounts of salt and pepper into a plastic bag, though I’m told a paper one does the job better. Then, one by one, the chicken wings went into the bag to be shaken until well coated with flour and put into the pan, (we had six wings, probably too many, but I could’ve eaten more). I had to add more flour and seasoning to the bag as I went on. They went into a hot oven, about 220 C. A few minutes later my girlfriend Rachel’s consultation of the internet led me to put a little butter on top of each wing. This is certainly not a meal to eat too often. About twenty minutes later it was time to turn the chicken over, it was already beginning to brown.
Rachel made rice to her American mother’s recipe. She melted about a tablespoon of butter, in a pan with a decent lid, we think you’re supposed to fry onion in it too but we forgot; it was delicious without. Then she added a cup of American rice and stirred it until it began to go translucent, about a minute, at which point she added a cup and a half of water and brought it up to the boil before covering it, and turning the heat down. Ten minutes later it was time to turn off the rice, but leave it covered. The chicken was coming on nicely, so I chopped a carrot and cooked it in a little butter, adding an onion and the rest of the beans from lunch, just because they were hanging around, normally I don’t bother. I turned down the heat and covered the carrots, stirring them every now and then, checking that they didn’t burn. Cooking carrots this way, rather than in water means that they stay much sweeter, and don’t go soft so readily. They stayed on the stove until the chicken came out, about ten minutes later, though I suppose that includes preparation and so on, but use your judgement.
After forty minutes in the oven the chicken was deep golden brown, crispy all over, and ready to eat. I put it all onto a plate, and used one of the chicken tins to make an unglamorous gravy with just water flour salt and pepper, thick and anaesthetic it was just the right accompaniment for this trencher’s feast. We ate keenly; the hot sticky chutney that we’d bought earlier that day was just the thing. A simple and delicious meal, utterly unglamorous, but so good. I think one could probably make it more genteel by cutting the wings into three and discarding the wing tips before cooking, with something to dip them in it would make a good starter. Or served with the rice and carrots, with a little aplomb it’d make a good supper for guests. If you’re feeling summery, a challenge at the moment, the wings would be lovely alongside a decent salad; though best not serve it up to people you need to impress, as this is a difficult meal to eat without making a mess, although it might just be me.
Four years of extremely hard work could not have ended on a better note.
Our first day trading in our new building went extremely well, with all credit going to our staff who coped with the first day extremely well.
I am over the moon with our new deli and café. Algo, the main building contractor, have made a fabulous job of the building work, I would recommend them to any one. There are so many people that have been involved with the ‘growing’ of this new building I can not name everyone individually, but thanks to you all!!
Gin and her kitchen staff have started to turn out some mouth watering dishes. The home baking is to die for; I can see the lbs starting to pile on already!!
Kirsteen stocked the shop up until it was bursting with the best and freshest of local produce, it must have been good, the shelves were nearly bare by the end of the day!!
The new deli counters have been stocked with salads from our own kitchen, from the best of local meats (and a couple of not so local ones) and of course a carefully selected cheese board. The cheeses were selected by our very own Audrey (who is French) and Pierre (also French) from Clarks. The fact that we have 5 Scottish Cheeses in our selection just shows you how good they must be if they were selected by two French people!!