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Where Farm and Food Meet In an era of supermarkets and brand-led consumerism, farming can seem disconnected from the food on our plates. Sandy Neil met a family doing some joined-up thinking riving to Gloagburn Farm Shop at Tibbermore from nearby Perth, past its duck pond and free roaming goats, and into its car park surrounded by fields of cereals, sheep, pigs and horses, you see the beautiful simplicity of Ian and Alison Niven’s family business: their 1000 acre farm, their log-cabin farm shop and café, and their ivy-covered farmhouse. There’s no need, or space, here for middlemen. Gloagburn is an uncomplicated machine – farm, shop, home – powered by the Niven family’s pride and values, and, ten years on, it’s pulling folk in their droves. This thriving enterprise seemed dauntingly distant during the poor grain harvests and low prices of 2001, when third-generation farmers Ian and wife Alison fretted about how to keep it afloat, and pass it on to their four children, if any
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of them saw a future in it. ‘We were treading water,’ Ian says, at the mercy of inconsistent crop prices year to year: ‘We wanted to put some life back into the farm.’ The couple were helped by another driving force in the family: their 26-year-old son Fergus, who began selling eggs from his 12 free range hens in the garden shed 15 years ago. The flock multiplied as he supplied village shops, butchers, restaurants, and then the Nivens’ own farm shop and café when it opened in 2003. Today the hens number 4600, fed on wheat grown by Ian, and not surprisingly their eggs are a big ingredient of the baking for the café. Over the years the farm shop and café expanded from its 15 tables and a menu of soup, sandwiches and cakes, to a spacious new extension fitting 100 covers and employing 35 staff. ‘As a family we
10 The Perthshire Larder
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01/11/2013 17:19