Make a note in your diary to visit Cotherstone Farmers’ Market on 29 June 2013 in the village hall. As part of the Barnard Castle Farmers’ Market Roadshow, our aim is to bring locally produced food and drink closer to your own doorstep by visiting communities around Teesdale. Lookout for special stall-holder food talks on the day.

Taste of Teesdale held in the magnificent grounds of the Raby Castle, promises a great day out for the whole family with lots to see and do, not to mention over 40 stalls offering some of the finest regional food, drink and crafts.

Taste of Teesdale offers something different from traditional food festivals – where else would you find ducks being herded by a sheepdog, or cooking demonstrations designed to get children involved. The entire event is based around the family with something for everyone.

Step aboard ‘Farmyard Flyer’ a specially adapted educational double decker bus with large animals on the lower deck and smaller animals above. Children can interact with friendly, tactile animals creating an enjoyable and unique experience. Durham Wildlife Trust and the RSPB will be in the grounds with lots of information on how to join too!

Food and farming displays will take place throughout the day including a butter making demonstration, honey and bees, hand-made walking sticks and a special display by Bluebell Organics on the importance of growing organically, including Barnard Castle’s ‘Veg-Out’ project. Leaside Cheese will be presenting a special cheese making demonstration, while Kiddy Cook will be getting the children involved in the fun Food Train, collecting local ingredients from stallholders for cooking demonstrations

If hand-pulled traditional beer’s your thing, Darwin Brewery will be in the tent selling cask ales and specialist bottled beers. Local chef, Andrew Rowbotham from The Crown at Mickleton will be giving a master class in butchery, while Love Food will host a food lovers cookery demonstration.

There will be lots of hot food to keep you going from Traditional Hog Roast, Burgers & Bangers from Deer & Dexter, hot kipper buns from Swallow Fish and delicious ready to eat samosas from Asharum, not forgetting Raby Castle’s own relaxing tearooms serving delicious hot and cold food.

We hope you can join us

June farmers’ market promises a fantastic array of food stalls selling everything from fresh bread, fudge, jams, vegetables and chutneys to more diverse fayre including Dexter beef, smoked trout, fresh coffee beans, ginger wine and Oxford Sandy & Black Pigs reared in the heart of beautiful Teesdale, We have frequent roadshows touring the dale villages including our next event at Cotherstone Village Hall on Saturday 29 June.

Our farmers’ markets and roadshows offer direct contact and feedback between customers and producers, so you can be confident how the food and drink you buy is produced. Barnard Castle Farmers’ Market also encourages local economic development by increasing employment, encouraging consumers to support local business, and keeping money within the local community. Ticks all the right boxes for everyone.

At long last, a drift of white on a hill side is more lightly to be Blackthorn blossom rather than the pestilent snow.

Whilst tending my orchard and I have noticed a rapid; oh, all right, a steady surge of new growth on all of my fruit. Spring may be weeks late but I fancy that with a bit more warmth everything we cherish will be back on track for a bumper year. All of the fruit trees and bushes will be brim full of pent up energy, not having produced a harvest last year, so let’s all hope for a bumper crop of everything. I’m tied up in knots here not just fingers.

Talking of pent up energy, we are fairly busy on the market this year with a host of extra events celebrating the rich food heritage the North of England is rightly proud of. We will be visiting a number of venues round the Dales with our meet the producer roads show and cannot wait for our Taste of Teesdale Festival at Raby Castle in July.

The next Road Show is on the 19^th of May at the Crown in Mickleton. This is a chance for us to team up with one of the area’s most outstanding food destinations in one of the Dales loveliest villages. There will be about 10 producers and they will be providing the main ingredients for the owner and Chef Andrew Rowbotham to demonstrate with. There will be ample opportunity for everyone to find out how the produce on sale is reared, grown or produced. Why not book in for lunch in the Crown and make a proper day of it.

Taste Teesdale in July will be a celebration of food and farming with something for everyone. The icing on the Teesdale cake is that it will only cost £6 per car to get in to the event. More about that later.

Barnie Farmers Market is proud to be sponsoring the Teesdale Mercury’s “Young Achiever of the Year” in their Pride of Teesdale Awards. This Saturday we will be presenting the winner with a special hamper filled to the brim with the finest produce the market can provide. This award recognises young people up to the age of 18. The Mercury has always recognised the achievements of the dale’s young people and we are looking forward to meeting the winner.

The 16-22 April was National Bread Week but we are giving it a little extension with Sue’s Bread and her extensive range of yeast blown goodies. Just about every accompaniment the heart could desire can then be found on our other stalls to place on your favourite slice. There are jam’s, cheeses, fish pates and salami to choose from and lots lots more; what a feast.

Every Barnie Farmers Market is a Food Festival.

A local farmers’ market is the regional stronghold of good food and drink. No two farmers’ markets are alike – each being influenced by their own idiosyncrasy of landscape and food culture. In Barnard Castle, we’re particularly blessed being situated in Teesdale and the Durham Dales. Our unique geographic location means we sit shoulder-to-shoulder with fine food producing counties including Cumbria, Northumberland, North Yorkshire and the Tees Valley. Barnard Castle Farmers’ Market’s own history and culture derives from offering a diverse range of award winning products brought each month to the market. Our customers are equally passionate about our market, so much so we now hold a list of loyal foodie volunteers who work unpaid attending each market guiding you through the taste of the seasons.

With each passing month we enjoy more visitors from further afield. April promises to be no different and looks set to be the biggest market for some time. Why not join us and fill your larders and baskets with the best northern food and drink.

The recent headlines and media focus around horsemeat finding its way onto supermarket shelves by way of the burger, has revealed tests of meals (and I won’t go into names) in some cases contained between 30% and 100% horsemeat instead of beef.

Knowing where your food comes from and how it’s prepared should be top priority. Would you buy a car without first wanting to know it’s service history and where it came from? So why should our knowledge of the food we eat be any different. It’s an old saying but ‘we are what we eat’ and nothing could be closer to the truth than recent revelations.

My understanding of a ‘ready meal‘ is when I shout from the kitchen to the children ‘it’s ready’, not pulling a frozen packet from the freezer. In fact we don’t own a freezer, the days of UFO’s (unidentifiable frozen objects) has since long gone. The result?… we eat better, waste less. However, time constraints don’t always allow for such planning, so freezing your food isn’t the real issue, only traceability of its contents. So what do we mean by traceability? Traceability is defined in the General Food Law Regulation 178/2002 as:

‘The ability to trace and follow a food, feed, food producing animal or substance…through all stages of production, processing and distribution’. Farmers’ markets are all about traceability

Most farmers’ market organisations set their own policies, geographic boundaries, and methods of enforcing rules that ensure their integrity. Market managers, in many cases, require proof of insurance hygiene certificates and copies of all relevant accreditation documents.

Barnard Castle Farmers’ Market is currently run by stallholder and community volunteers and you can be certain we will continue to maintain our own high standards for safe food handling, traceability and general excellence. We will also continue to set the standard for direct communications between producers and our customers.

Our list of 2013 Farmers’ Markets and Roadshows with funding from ‘Local Food,’ will be published on our website over the next few days. This is a programme supported by the Big Lottery, which provides funding for projects working to make local food more accessible and affordable to communities.

Happy, eating and see you at the next market, where we will have a live food demonstration… ‘no horsing around’ , but before I go, I can’t resist sharing a little joke…

“A supermarket burger walks into a bar. “Pint please”. “I can’t hear you” says the barman. “Sorry” replies the burger. “I’m a little bit horse”.

Saturday 2^nd February is the first farmers’ market of 2013 held inside St Mary’s Parish Hall, Barnard Castle. Our usual array of artisan food producers will be offering some of the North’s finest food and drink. The aim of our farmers’ market is to put you the customer in contact with the producers and to provide local, fresh, quality produce. All the products on sale have been grown, reared, caught, brewed, pickled, baked, smoked or processed by the stallholder. Add the beautiful market town setting of Barnard Castle, with views to the wild and remote North Pennines and you have all the ingredients for a wonderful day out. See you there.

Planning the 48-hour family-eating binge (which in our home starts early Christmas Eve, ending sometime around midnight Boxing Day), requires each dish to be carefully planned in juxtaposition of those, which follow. I think upon the Christmas Eve supper as the starter to the entire two-day, festive menu.  Crusty bread rolls filled with hot roast leg of pork and homemade apple sauce. If we’re really naughty perhaps a few potatoes roasted in goose fat.

We do attempt to break away from tradition and although I’m happy to accept the dismissal of the goose by the arrival of the three-rib roast, the sprout however remains a permanent fixture. Even if I do fight like a girl, I’ve sworn to forever defend its place on the winter dining table, or at least until they wheel me from this place into whatever retirement home they have planned. On this particular issue there is no compromise.

This year however, we’ll be enjoying a well aged, fore rib of Dexter beef. The anticipation is all part of the pleasure and although our rib has arrived early (already in the mother-in-law’s freezer), I confess having lain awake of a night thinking of the gorgeously marbled flesh, the rib I mean, not the mother in-law. I digress.

If we don’t eat a goose I will make every effort to purchase the goose fat to roast the vegetables, (from Bluebell Organics) including parsnip, carrots, leeks, garlic, celeriac and potatoes.  Pudding is still yet to be agreed, but you can be sure it will include ginger and be very sticky. Day two of the binge will begin with sausages cooked very slowly with buttered eggs. A light lunch of trout fishcakes, will conclude with an evening meal and the three-bird roast. Christmas meals are sacred. I trust you all enjoy purchasing your Christmas goodies as we hope to see you at the last farmers’ market before Christmas, on Sunday 23 December at the Auction Mart.  Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to you all.

Looking forward to the last farmers’ market before Christmas at Barnard Castle Auction Mart on Sunday 23 December 10-3.00. Your last chance to pick up, regional, seasonal food and drink for the Christmas table. More to follow, but below is a list of some of the fabulous stalls you’ll find at the market…

Bluebell Organics -Vegeatables

Wintertarn – Cheese

Just William – Jam

Bessy Beck – Fish

Burtree House Farm  – Christmas Pudds

Annette’s Lakeland Kitchen – Chocolates

Sue’s Bread

Turks Head – Jam

Lanchester Eggs – Sausages-eggs

Loopy Lisa – Fudge

Gingerbread Mam – Gingerwine & Puddings

Wardhall Dairy – Cheese

Lowfield Gardens – Plants & Wreaths

Olive Tree- Olives-sweetmeats

Wildon Grange-Salad dressings-sauces

Handcrafted Boutique -Handmade handbags & jewellery

Cross Lanes – Hot Soup, cakes, biscuits and gifts

Cheese Fiend-Cheese, wine hampers, Spice Monkey Sauce

Alan Skivington – Charcuterie