Home / Meet Your Farmer / Fish(7 products)

Father & Son Chris & Dylan Bean run a cooperative of boats based in near Helston, Cornwall. They fish in Falmouth Bay, and fish in small day boats, using static gear and lines.

Because the boats return to port each day the fish is extremely fresh. And because they use static nets and lines to catch their fish, they are far more likely to catch what they want and so their level of discards are very low. These two factors mean that their fish is as sustainable as sea-fishing can be, and we are extremely proud that they supply us.

Home / Meet Your Farmer / Fish / Pinney's of Orford(One product)

Market Hill Orford - 95 Miles from the Farm Direct depot

Pinney's of Orford was born in the 1950's when Richard Pinney decided he had had enough of London and headed for the countryside. He found a derelict cottage just outside Orford next to the Butley Creek on the Suffolk coast. He began to look for ways of making a living and turned his attention to the river, where he set about restoring oyster beds that had lain derelict.

Oysters had been cultivated here for centuries and had a fine reputation but the trade had died down at the end of the 19th Century. He started laying down oysters from Portugal, which grew and fattened very well, and the oyster business began despite being warned by local fishermen, that if you want to lose all of your money, oysters was a good way of doing it!

At the same time, being a keen fisherman, he caught some large sea trout off Orford beach. Not knowing what to do with it, he began experimenting with smoking in a disused outhouse at the end of the cottage. The results were so good that he decided to buy some salmon, and the smoking business began from there. He developed a unique system of burning whole oak logs, a system which has been refined but hardly changed to this day.

The smokehouses are still situated at Butley Creek near to the oyster beds. Trout, mackerel, cod roe, wild and farmed salmon, kippers and eels are among the products that are now available through Farm Direct.

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Home / Meet Your Farmer / Fish / Maldon Oysters(6 products)

Cock Clarks, Chelmsford - 48 miles from the Farm Direct Depot

The Maldon Oyster Company was first established in 1960 and was originally run as a cooperative between several local fishermen, under the leadership of Clarrie Devall.   During the hard winter of 1963, most oyster beds in Essex were devastated by ice and the company became dormant for a few years, until Mr Devall started growing new stocks of Pacific Oysters in Goldhanger Creek.

In the early eighties, Mr Devall took on David Coward-Talbott as a partner and they successfully grew several million Pacific Oysters on the traditional beds in Goldhanger Creek and established some small quantities of native flat oysters in the main Blackwater River.

After Mr Devall’s death in 2002,  Mr Coward-Talbott formed the Maldon Oyster Company with Richard Emans the partnership was set up with the sole intention of revitalising oyster farming in the River Blackwater to its former glory, this work is now continuing following David’s retirement in 2008.

The Maldon Oyster Company now has a large area of the River Blackwater under their management and has re-established a native oyster fishery as well as being one of the largest producers of Pacific Oysters in the UK.
 
One of their primary aims is to utilise this Essex estuary to its best advantage without harming the delicate eco-system and its salt marshes.  For it is an area swathed in natural beauty, supports a wide variety of flora and fauna and plays an important role providing wintering grounds for many migratory birds.

 The area is now enshrined as a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and is also protected and registered under the European Union’s Shellfish Waters Directive (79/923), whereby it has the distinction of being one of only a very few shell fish growing waters in the UK.
 
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