Oils
Rapeseed Oil
Chili Oil
Dressings
Classic Vinaigrette
Balsamic Dressing
Honey & Mustard
Chili & CuminAbout Me
I grew up on my family farm in Northamptonshire where we grow a range of crops such as oilseed rape, wheat, barley and beans. As well as these, we also have a heard of cattle and a small flock of sheep. Currently I am at Harper Adams University in Shropshire, where I study Agri-food Marketing and Business. I have just completed my first year there and whilst home for summer I wanted to find a job that would be good experience but also doing something I am passionate about. Having always been interested in the farm to fork process, or in this case the field to bottle process, where better to apply than Farrington Oils.
What have I been doing?
On my first couple of days I was thrown in at the deep end as I was working on the stand at the BBC Good Food Show in Birmingham, where I promoted and sold the Farrington’s Mellow Yellow range to the public. We were roasting potatoes in our cold pressed rapeseed oil in an oven on the stand for people to sample. This was to demonstrate how crispy the oil makes the potatoes thanks to its high smoke point. With over 220,000 people attending the show it meant our stand always had people around it, either tasting, asking questions, and the majority of the time, purchasing. Although they were 2 long days, leaving Bottom Farm at 6am and returning back at 9pm, it was a really enjoyable experience.
Another hands on task I was given was conducting a tasting at Morrisons in St Ives; here I had my own stand, positioned at the end of the salad aisle. The shoppers were able to taste any of the Farrington’s Mellow Yellow range by dipping freshly baked bread in the oils and dressings, and breadsticks in the mayonnaises. After tasting the products, many customers choose to purchase them, with some even buying 3 or 4 dressings at a time! Lots of people were interested in hearing about the locality of the oil and its health benefits.
In the office I started off by organising the store locator from the website, making sure they were all set out correctly, and all the information was up to date. I have also been working with food bloggers to encourage them to try our Farrington’s Mellow Yellow dressings. I had to make up and package the dressings, before sending them off to the bloggers who are going to review the products on their social media pages.
Another project that I was set was to research different packaging and postage options for the oils and dressings. This was an interesting task to do as I had to contact different companies to get more detailed information and quotes for products that I was looking at. I also had to work out the costing of different ideas and decide weather or not it would be viable and if so how would the business benefit from it. Whilst carrying out these tasks I have also been monitoring the Farrington’s Mellow Yellow social media pages, this includes liking, commenting, replying to or retweeting our followers. I also posted some pictures on Instagram of different meals that can be made using our rapeseed oil, adding in a link to our website so our followers could find the recipe. I have been trying to keep everything up to date by changing letter templates from the old logo to the new one and updating customer’s information. I have also helped to do a stock take and upload it onto the system, this is to check that there is the correct amount of the correct batch, and if there isn’t, then I had to work out why not and where the bottles may have gone.
Finally, I have also been working with the production team. In here I have been folding lots of different sized trays for the bottles to be packed into. I have also been folding swing tags for the rapeseed oil bottles, which advertise our range of dressings. Another task that I enjoyed was helping to pick and pack different orders to go out to customers, this is because of the importance of ensuring the correct type and amount of stock are going to the correct person.
Overall I have really enjoyed my time working at Farrington Oils; I have learnt so much that I will be able to take with me, not only back to university but also in future jobs. I have been involved in the whole process from watching the dressings being made along the whole production line to marketing and selling the finished bottles at shows. It has been great experience that has helped me to decide what path I would like to take in my future career.
I have been asked in the past what we do in the winter months. People comment, saying “Surely as an arable farmer, you plant the crops in the autumn, go away on holiday and come back the following summer ready to harvest them?” Nice thought, but I’m afraid the reality is a little different.
Admittedly, on an arable farm, where we only grow crops and do not have any livestock to look after, the winter months are quiet and it can be an opportunity to relax on a holiday if you wish. However, I have always found it the time of year for research, planning and projects, of which we have done many over the years. Back around the millennium, I remember spending many winter months researching the viability of creating a cold pressed rapeseed oil business on our farm, as a diversification project on something I found very interesting and to hopefully bring a little extra income to the family business. Looking back, I think this was time very well spent.
Of course winter is an ideal time for us to service all the farm machinery in preparation for the coming spring and summer months when we will want it to work long and hard without too many breakdowns. We have done many building projects over the years, both for new machinery ideas and for buildings on the farm. Some examples have been building a new trailer, or creating a water bowser. In the past, when I was a young boy and even before I was born, my Father and Grandfather were at their happiest creating new weird and wonderful machines in the farm workshop. Two of the most extravagant examples included a six-wheel drive tractor, converted from a World War II army fire engine. I remember going across the fields with them on this machine, before it finally over heated and was retired in the nettles. Their most famous project was when they took two normal tractors, replaced the standard engines with more powerful versions, before removing the front axils off both tractors and joining them together to make an articulated four-wheel drive machine, driven by one person from the back tractor. This was certainly cutting-edge engineering in its day, that was later copied and refined by machinery manufacturers in future years.
We have restored our beautiful traditional barns and converted them from redundant old farm buildings into offices, including our farm office today. New modern grain stores have been designed and built to cope with storing and drying the grain at the speed the modern combine harvester brings the crops in. Over the years, we have built all of the factory and some of the machinery inside it for Farrington Oils. Some of these projects seem to start as winter job ideas, but tend to stretch through other months of the year and before long take on a whole life of their own. The most recent being the latest expansion of Farrington Oils to create a new toilet and changing facilities, as well as extra space to mix our salad dressings and store ingredients. We have even made a little development kitchen in which Eli is currently very busy with her trusted jam jar creating some possible exciting new dressing recipes. This whole project started in April last year, we had a few weeks break for harvest to take place, before finally finishing the project just before Christmas.
Marvin planting saplings in Jan 2018
The other main type of project we have done during winter over the years is planting trees and hedges. We have literally planted thousands of trees and several kilometres of hedges since 1987 when my Father planted the first couple of spinneys on the farm. They are now well established, adding beauty and wildlife habitats to the landscape. This year we have been at it again. Marvin spent the time before Christmas with the chainsaw, thinning out dead wood from a copse area and old hedge, in readiness to replant with new young saplings in the first weeks of January. He has now created a few hundred more metres of hedgerow – Father and I have helped him with the spade to get some of the 2,000 hedge and tree plants put into the soil. We will have to weed around the young saplings for the first two years, after that they will hopefully grow and thrive, adding more beauty and wildlife habitat for many years to come. Additionally, we have a pile of wood ready to cut up for the fire to keep us warm at home next year.
Spinney on Bottom Farm that was planted in 1987, photo taken Feb 2018.
Although winter on Bottom Farm may not be spent on a combine harvester or tractor, it certainly is far from quiet!
Summer has finally arrived, the harvest is in full swing and we are busier than ever on Bottom Farm! Welcome to our summer newsletter, where we are in the press, on the box and more…..
In the Press…
We hosted a very successful press day in May, where, in spite of the rain, we enjoyed Mellow Yellow drizzled barbequed asparagus cooked for us by Adam Gray (Head Chef at Rhodes Twenty Four in London). This has resulted in some excellent coverage in magazines such as Delicious, Countryfile and Good Housekeeping.
On the Box…
ITV viewers in the Anglia region will be able to catch us on “Country Lives” on Friday 22 August at 8pm and in the Meridian region on Sunday 31st August at 6pm to see Duncan give a tour of the farm and some background on Farrington Oils Ltd.
Show Time…. We continue to show at both the trade and retail fairs and we have really noticed in the retail shows how familiar people are with Mellow Yellow as a brand and how aware they are of the many health benefits of cold-pressed rapeseed oil – many have stopped using olive oil in favour of Mellow Yellow.
Thank you to those of you who dropped in on Duncan at the Speciality & Fine Food Fair in Harrogate in June. We also had a good show at the CLA Game Fair in July at Blenheim, where this time the sun shone as it should!
Award winning Dressings!
The dressings have been flying off the shelves. Although people do associate them with salads and warmer weather, it is well worth remembering that they are also delicious with steamed veg, as well as smoked fish and cheeses.
SALSA… No, thankfully we haven’t all taken up latin-american dancing but we are very pleased to have attained our SALSA (Safe And Local Supplier Approval) accreditation which means that you can be confident in the high standards to which our oil and dressings are produced.
Further Information
For orders and further information, please do not hesitate to call us on 01933 622809; email info@farrington-oils.co.uk ; or one of our brilliant wholesale suppliers, who are always happy to hear from you:
Essential Trading Co-op; F.A.Wyatt & Co Ltd.(Ireland); Hider Food Imports; Goodness Foods; Michael Bance (Leicestershire), Richards Catering Supplies (Cornwall), T & J Fine Foods (Stamford).
In the headlines again…
Hold the front page! We’ll be featured in the spring / early summer issues of some top notch magazines.
Kiwi chef Peter Gordon (of The Providores and Tapa Room in London) is writing a piece to appear in the June edition of Delicious magazine. He visited us during harvest and cooked a fabulous and healthy meal of mussels, a hot salad, and blueberry muffins in our kitchen. Naturally, he used Mellow Yellow for every course.
Other magazines will include House & Garden Magazine and BBC Good Food Magazine.
Watch us on…
We are filming again soon, to appear in a new series of Country Lives. This series will be broadcast in the Anglia and Meridian areas, and although no date is confirmed yet, it should be later in the spring.
Award winning Dressings!
The dressings are selling well. With all this press coverage and (we hope) good weather just around the corner, perhaps it would be a good time to make sure you’re well stocked.
Mellow Yellow in the Emerald Isle.
Mellow Yellow has been available in a few outlets for a couple of years. Now following a recent visit, and forthcoming press coverage, the number of Irish customers is increasing. Duncan will attend a trade show in Dublin later this year, to build on this success.
Further Information
For orders and further information, please do not hesitate to call us on 01933 622809; email info@farrington-oils.co.uk ; or one of our brilliant wholesale suppliers, who are always happy to hear from you:
The Cress Company (Scotland); Essential Trading Co-op; F.A.Wyatt & Co Ltd.(Ireland); Hider Food Imports; Goodness Foods; Michael Bance (Leicestershire); Olives et Al.
We’re pleased to announce that Farrington’s Mellow Yellow has just won Silver in the Best UK Food category of the Daily Telegraph’s 2007 Taste of Britain awards.
Duncan and Eli collected the award last week at a ceremony held at Highgrove, The Prince of Wales’ family home. They were treated to a splendid buffet lunch featuring many of the award winners, and Duncan particularly liked the Doddington dairy heather honey ice cream.
The salad dressings arrive shortly…
The first 1,000 bottles of our award winning salad dressing (Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Blackberry Vinegar Dressing and Farrington’s Mellow Yellow Blackberry Vinegar Dressing) will be available by the end of October. We are now taking orders! Each dressing comes in a 250 ml bottle, 6 to a case, and the minimum order will be for two cases (which could be one of each dressing). Prices are:
Trade price £2.63 per bottle, which is £15.78 per case. This price includes delivery. The recommended retail price is £3.50 per bottle.
Please note that the salad dressings are currently only available from us at present!
Nigella Lawson. Our latest convert?
An observant viewer of BBC 2’s ‘Nigella Express’, (who was, unusually, not interested in either the presenter or the recipe) spotted a bottle of Mellow Yellow in Nigella Lawson’s kitchen recently. This sighting has since been confirmed by other viewers.
We assume she uses Mellow Yellow, and it’s not just there for decorative effect.
Farrington Oils on TV…
A few weeks ago a film crew visited us here at Bottom Farm and spent a couple of days filming the production process and some of the personalities. The programme is part of the ‘Country Lives’ series on ITV Central and will be shown on Thursday 25 October at 7.30pm. We understand that it will be repeated at a later date.