Behind The Scenes: Planning Christmas

Christmas starts in June at Field & Flower, but if truth be told, I try to ignore it until at least August. We don’t start this early because we’re keen to stock the online shelves, but because our farmers want commitments of how many turkeys and table birds we might need this year. The day-old turkey chicks arrive on John’s farm in Devon in July and take 5-6 months to grow... more on this later.

As Christmas edges closer at Field & Flower, I dip into the areas that need solving, or to be frank, that I enjoy. In the last couple of weeks I’ve been working out whether we can deliver to you on Christmas Eve, how we’ll recruit 40 new members of the team (without Anna who looks after our team and is on maternity leave), how many orders we can take per day (last year we broke a record for one day – 3,290), how we could get my daughter into our Christmas dinner photo shoot (I now understand the saying 'don’t work with children or animals') and of course, how many Frenchbeer turkeys we now need to sell.

Whilst the problem-solving is sometimes difficult, being asked to go and see, or even better, taste the new Christmas product is not! I always enjoy seeing what the team have been creating with our independent smokers, cheesemakers, butchers, curers and deer stalkers.

In the last few weeks some of the highlights of Christmas planning include:

• A lovely Black Bee honey with almond and vanilla – it was intense but we decided it could be the a lovely way to start Christmas morning on your toast​.

• The land-based salmon has gone down very well with a 42% increase in sales week on week. We got ahead with a land-based smoked salmon tasting, which was a very enjoyable morning trying different cures.

I was asked to cook and try the truffle stuffed smoked free range chicken (never a chore) which I have already decided needs to be in my Christmas order. The butchery work that has gone into preparing the chicken made it quick cooking and easy to carve with an incredible flavour and a great smell that filled the kitchen.

I’ve been speaking to John at Frenchbeer Farm this week and he sent me this photo of him with his turkeys which are being reared in the Dartmoor National park.

As always it’s great to see everything start to come together and Christmas appear on the website. It’s rewarding seeing orders coming in already for the products we’ve worked hard to develop or knowing John is rearing for you