December
December in the Smokehouse is, at best, completely hectic. We all put in long hours and dedicate ourselves to the fine detail that defines our company to ensure the very best of our products hit the shop shelves, restaurant menus and online customer's doorsteps in time for the festive fun.
January
January, by contrast, brings a welcome chance to take a breath and look around us. We use this time to check in with our customers, re-set our systems and take stock a little.
So we were thrilled to find the time to get out and about and visit a few of our local customers to see what they're up to in January.
Our Wonderful Customers
When asked what kind of customers we have I always say that all our customers share one thing in common - they're all different! That's because we supply independent shops, delis, foodhalls, cafes, bnbs, hotels, pubs and caterers across the UK. They are all run by someone passionate, hands-on and with a vision. Although you might see some products in their shops that you've seen in another farm shop you'll rarely see mass produced items as most of their stock is made by gorgeous, equally passionate, independent makers.... like us !
We love being a part of this group of people who love what they do, enthusiastically share their knowledge and care about their customers. So we implore you to spend your weekends discovering new independents this year. What a New Year's resolotion that would be! Check out our map at the bottom of the home page to see where your nearest stockist is.
Top Barn
This week we called in to Top Barn Harvest Shop to say hi and check out their gorgeous stock and we wanted to share what we found with you. Top Barn Farm Shop is local to our production unit and a firm favourite with some of our staff who live close by. At the Smokehouse we are always sharing our experiences on deliveries or discussing the latest products we've fallen in love with, so Ellie and Ruth jumped at the chance to head over to Top Barn to do some shopping, take some pictures, check out the produce and chat to the staff.
Ellie and Ruth are part of our production team and although Ellie has done some Macneil's deliveries as a cover driver it's not always easy to find the time to call in to browse when you have lots more orders to deliver in the van so she was keen to explore more. They were met with a little gap in the clouds and a gorgeous fresh veg display. Top Barn are known for their fresh vegetables and I can see why.
Top Barn has a product selection you just won't find in a supermarket. How fantastic to be able to select your own pastured eggs from the farm and a gorgeous little video of the chickens who can tell you all about your eggs. The lovely people at Mawley Milk in Cleobury Mortimer have topped up these fresh tanks for customers to fill their own glass bottle of delicious unhomogenised, antibiotic free, high animal welfare milk - or even better choose from the selection of flavours to make it a bottle of milkshake!
My advice is to weave your way through the shop and browse the local gins (like Piston a Worcester based artisan producer), top up on your refillable kitchen cupboard essentials and bag yourself something from the excellent range of locally made crackers, cakes, biscuits and crisps (like Two Farmers they use Droitwich Salt in their recipe) until you get to the back part of the shop to discover an impressive array of cheeses and a wonderfully stocked butchery manned by the knowlegeable and passionate staff who are on hand to offer advice and serve up your favourites just how you like it.
The girls also got lucky on their visit. Ellie and Ruth discovered a nice little tasting happening on the cheese counter. The creative folks at Top Barn Farm Shop had paired our salmon with the ever gorgeous Lightwood Goat's Cheese (made by our good friend just around the corner at Lower Broadheath, Worcestershire) on a Peter's Yard cracker (our personal favourite) and topped it off with an unusual tiny twist of lemon. The girls hadn't tasted this combination before and dispite not being great goat's cheese fans in the past came back to the Smokehouse total converts and raving about the combination.
Ellie and Ruth found our retail products in the bright display fridge, opposite the cheese, along with lots of other goodies like cured meats, pies, salads and desserts.
Now on to the serious business of shopping... What did they buy?
Obviously we supplied the smoked salmon and the honey roast ham on their return as we wanted to leave Top Barn's customers something to buy. Ruth loved the lemon twist on the sample board at Top Barn so purchased the lemon and crackers to experiment back at base. And Ellie loves chutney but hadn't tried runner bean chutney before. Turns out Kit's Kitchen do a brilliant (local) runner bean chutney in their range so Ellie brought the chutney back thinking only of our honey roast ham. That just leaves the cheese. Sadly there was no more of the fabulous Lightwood Goat's Cheese as is had obviously sold out but, thank goodness the girls got a great recommendation to try something new and to our absolute delight they purchased a gorgeous Vacherin (Tony and I used to live in France and this is one of our favourites that you don't see everywhere).
We had a great time experimenting - the cheese, salmon and lemon that was so fabulous in the shop didn't quite work out as well with this creamy cows cheese that dominates the flavours. Not to worry, plenty of lemon left for gins later and the cheese did absolutely not go to waste. The cheese with our ham was a taste sensation and the Chutney was divine with the ham or, better still, a ham and cheese combo. The Peter's yard crackers and salmon are literally made for each other, just missing some cream cheese to make the perfect paring. Next time.
We all had such a great time we think we might do it again some time very soon!
Thanks so much to Top Barn.
If you can't shop at Top Barn and you don't have a local stockist, not to worry, you can shop online and have Macneil's Smokehouse products delivered to your door. https://www.macneilssmokehouse.co.uk/shop/