Last Thursday evening Will and I were absolutely thrilled to be crowned the ‘Farming For The Future’ winners at the inaugural Great Cornish Food Awards.

The event was held at Nancarrow Farm near Truro which is an absolutely stunning venue and we were treated to a Loveday Distilling gin cocktail on arrival than a delicious three course dinner. It was great to see hogget on the menu as the main course and much chatter about my passion for hogget ensued!

After dinner Daphne Skinnard from Radio Cornwall interviewed Jill Stein about her life running restaurants in Cornwall with husband Rick and how the business is moving forward with their sons in the business. It was so interesting to hear how they turned a small family business into a multi million pound enterprise.

Glasses of Knightor Winery fizz were poured and it was time to start the awards.

We didn’t have long to wait as our category was up first! Our fellow finalists in the ‘Farming For The Future’ category were St Ewe Eggs, Riveria Produce and St Martin’s Vineyard.

St Ewe eggs is a national brand which started over 50 years ago by the Tonks family. In the early 2000’s they set up their own packing centre on the farm and then in 2022 they moved into their incredible purpose built packing centre near Grampound Road (only 5 minutes from Treway!) and hit a record of packing 100,000 eggs in one week. https://steweeggs.com/

Riviera Produce is one of the UK’s leading growers of Brassica’s such as Cauliflower and other vegetables including Courgettes. They supply the major supermarkets across the UK 12 months of the year from their farm in Cornwall. We sat next to Tom and Olivia from Riveria and it was fascinating to hear about vegetable growing (something we know next to nothing about!) the challenges of the seasons, climate and the huge amount of organisation of staff. https://rivieraproduce.org/

St Martin’s Vineyard is found on the Island of St Martin’s in Scilly. In fact when we stayed on St Martin’s a couple of years ago we throughly enjoyed visiting the vineyard and of course the post tour wine tasting! The vineyard is run by Holly and James and the vines cover just over a hectare of south-facing slopes on predominantly granite soils. https://www.stmartinsvineyard.co.uk/

I’m never sure how judges are ever meant to pick winners from categories when the businesses are just so different but we were absolutely thrilled to be announced as winners.

We were also blown away to be announced as finalists in two other categories ‘Making A Mark’ which was won by Lynher Dairies https://lynherdairies.co.uk/who are world renowned for their production of Cornish Yarg. And ‘In It Together’ which was won by Norton Barton Artisan Food Village https://theartisanfoodvillage.com/. Who are home to a plethora of artisan food producers including Cornish Charcuterie, Popti Cornish Bakehouse, The Cornish Distilling Co, Whalesborugh Cheese and more.

Norton Barton went on to be crowned the ‘Winner of Winners’ in recognition of their collaborative work in the Cornish Food and Drink Industry.

We were presented with a trophy made from recycled Cornish fishing nets which feature cogs on the back to represent the Cornish Food and Drink Industry all working together.

Here is the full list of winners;

• Fishing for the Future – Island Fish Ltd
• Farming for the Future – Treway Farm
• Food for the Future – Origin Coffee Roasters
• Raising the Bar – Tregothnan
• Growing People – Newquay Orchard
• Making a Mark – Lynher Dairies
• In It Together – Norton Barton Artisan Food Village

Seeing as the award was ‘Farming For The Future’ it only seemed right to take a photo with Charlie and Flora who will frankly in time hold the future of farming in their hands. We are working tirelessly to create a bright and sustainable future for farming at Treway. They were very excited to get home after school to see the trophy and were very cross that they couldn’t come to the awards night!