The local bullock being used to lead the way with a new scientific DNA database as reported in the Western Morning News this morning is from our farm. 
We were contacted by Trading Standards officers to take part in the pioneering scheme. This will ensure local meat is just that - local - and any meat being sold as local when it is not will be exposed as such.
We are delighted to have been contacted by the Council to help in this matter because we strongly believe in people's right to know exactly where their food comes from. The horse scandal has been unbelievable and really exposed the state of the meat industry.
Trading Standards officers arranged to visit Langs Slaughterhouse in Ashburton where one of Jonathan's cattle was due to be slaughtered early in February.

It was a beautiful day today when we fed the sheep and we made it a real family affair - the boys absolutely loved it!

A group of local three and four year old children came to the farm today with their preschool to learn all about food and farming. The rainy weather didn't put them off, even though it was torrential at times - it just added to the enjoyment with more muddy puddles to splash in! They enjoyed feeding silage and corn to cattle in the barn, sitting on a tractor, having a snack sat on straw bales and picking apples in the orchard to take back to make a fruit crumble.

We've just heard we've won a national food award for our lamb and mint burger, with the panel of Great Taste Award Fine Food Judges describing it as “…moist and inviting…a good blend of sweetness from the lamb and mint. A well balanced burger.”

We’re absolutely delighted to have received this award. Our lambs have certainly stood out for being a little bit different previously and so it’s fitting they’ve now been noticed in the national food awards too!

We’re frequently told at events we cater at how tasty our burgers are and it’s really great to have now received this accolade. The Great Taste Awards are the largest and most trusted accreditation scheme for speciality and fine food and drink.

In this year’s awards over 8,000 products were blind-tasted by panels of specialists: top chefs, cookery writers, food critics, restaurateurs and fine food retailers. The awards have a rigorous and independent judging process and pride themselves on being about taste and not smart packaging or clever marketing.

We're delighted to be teaming up with the Well Hung Meat Company in a unique and beneficial partnership. The partnership means our pedigree Aberdeen Angus Beef and Lamb will be butchered, distributed and marketed by Well Hung Meat. Customers will benefit from better value for money, more choice and increased flexibility in their orders. 
We're delighted as it means our customers will still be able to enjoy our meat and we'll be able to focus on the farming and selling our famous cooked burgers at shows and events across the country. Meanwhile the team at Well Hung will continue to concentrate on their high calibre meat box concept. 
We'll be showcasing our products alongside Well Hung Meat at the Exeter Food and Drink Festival between the 13th and 15th April.  The event is the South West’s largest food arena and will mark the first public showing of the new partnership.  To celebrate, anyone buying a burger from Peradon Organic Farm will benefit from £10 off a meat box ordered from The Well Hung Meat Company.

Part time seasonal work available with good rates of pay. Mainly weekend work, but also some Fridays and Thursdays. It's hard work but very good fun working as part of our farm catering team. We'll provide and pay for training as well as giving good pay plus plenty of free food etc. You'll need to be friendly, reliable and efficient as you'll be catering at large events locally and/or nationwide where the pressure is very much on (county shows, food festivals, game shows, horse trials etc).Our season starts in April going through to early October then picks up again around Christmas. Let us know if you're interested as we're now recruiting for this season which kicks off shortly.

There must be something extra special in our grass! We're amazed that quad lambs were born to the same mum as before at our farm yesterday morning at 4am. It's incredible considering before February we hadn't seen quads at our farm for 40 years! Rudolph, Amy, Jessie and Ruby burst onto the scene at 4 am and were watched by Jonathan’s mum Shirley, aged 78. She regularly undertakes the night vigil to make sure the lambs are all delivered without problem. The lambs are fit and healthy and will stay with their mum in the barn for a little while to make sure they are kept warm and have all the attention they need. They will then go into the orchard, where they will stay with their mother.

We were really pleased to have been finalists for this year’s South West Producer of the Year Award for the second time in a row – perhaps next year it’ll be third time lucky! In the meantime, though there are no prizes for second place, we felt really chuffed to have been informed by the judges that we were down to the final two for the Family Business of the Year Award in this year’s Food and Farming Industry Awards.

We're so pleased our burgers have won 2 awards in the Taste of the West Awards, the country's biggest regional awards. We won a coveted Gold Award for our Lamb and Wild Rosemary Burgers and a Silver for our Aberdeen Angus Burger. We've worked hard to produce what we considered to be a near perfect meaty burger - containing meat that's properly hung (up to 28 days) and great seasoning - so we're delighted others agree!  Our burgers, like our sausages, are available in gluten free versions as well.

We're absolutely delighted to have won a national Great Taste Award this year, which are likened to the Oscars for the food industry. A total of almost 7500 products from 1600 companies were entered for the prestigious awards, which were blind tested by 350 experts. We won a star for our Aberdeen Angus Beef and Guinness Pie, with the judges commenting: "Very generous filling, visually appealing...The top is delicious. The meat has been cooked long enough, and is tender and in really good chunks...the flavour of the sauce was delicious." To order, click here.
 

We were on Radio 4's Food Programme last weekend - to listen go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b011j39x/Food_Programme_29_05_2011/

We were really pleased to take part in a short film about the benefits of organic farming produced by the Green Party. Take a look by clicking here.

Next weekend we're really looking forward to being at the Dartington Food Fair for the first time. Pop along for a fun day out for all the family and visit us for one of our renowned gourmet 28 day matured burgers or a sausage in a roll. There's plenty going on, with a cookery school, kitchen demos, music and acitivities like face painting to keep the kids entertained  It's on from 28th - 30th May, entry is £4, with under 12s going free.

We're delighted to now be at Richmond Farmer's Market every Saturday, as well as at Partridge's in Chelsea. We're in Richmond from 11 am until 3 pm and in Chelsea from 10 am until 4 pm. We're still at our local markets too and can be found on the second Saturday morning of every month in Cullompton and every third Sunday at Totnes Good Food Sunday market.

We had a wonderful time yesterday at the House of Lords when we received our 'Highly Commended' Beautiful Farm Award in a special ceremony hosted by Lord Palmer. We felt really proud to have received the award, particularly as we were the only ones to receive a Highly Commended one in our region which covers Devon, Cornwall, Avon, Somerset, Wiltshire, Dorset, Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Wales. The awards aim to show a beautiful farm and a profitable, environmentally sensitive business can go hand in hand.

Larry, Lucy, Rambo and Helena were born just minutes apart late last night. Twins and triplets are fairly common, but quadruplets are rare. Lambing is always exciting and times like these make it truly worth it. We couldn't believe our eyes when one lamb appeared after the next! Their mum was wonderful and is producing lots of milk. All the lambs are fit and healthy and will stay with their mum in the barn for a little while to make sure they are kept warm and have all the attention they need. They will then go into the orchard, where they will stay with their mother.We've been getting up each night to check on the expectant ewes for some time now and have had 280 lambs born since Christmas.

We're so excited to have been shortlisted for a Beautiful Farm Award this year. The awards aim to show a beautiful farm and a profitable business can go hand in hand. We're really looking forward to going to the House of Lords next month to find out whether we're winners. Whatever happens, we're delighted to have got to the final stages and to have our farm recognised in this way - we think our farm's beautiful, but we're a little bit biased so it's great to know others think so too!

We're really excited to have had six pedigree Aberdeen Angus calves born in the last fortnight, five bull calves and one heifer calf. They were all up and about on their feet within minutes and all are healthy, and suckling their mother. Our calves stay with their mother for a year suckling, which means they have the best start in life.

We've now had 200 lambs born in the last few weeks and more arrive on a daily basis! There are lots of little lambs now skipping around the old orchard and nearby fields. Pregnant mums are checked on around the clock, to make sure they're okay and we can support them if they need it.

We're taking to the roads in our 4x4 van to make sure our customers have their meat for Christmas. We always use a very reputable courier but even the best couriers are experiencing delays getting to some areas. So for every package we send we're checking the route with our courier first and if there's a problem, we're delivering it ourselves!

we've just been informed we're finalists for the coveted 'Producer of the Year' Award from Taste of the West. The awards ceremony will take place in mid-November and we're very excited about leaving our wellies behind for a few hours to attend the glitzy affair!

We are delighted that this month acclaimed food and wine writer Joanna Simon really enjoyed our beef, writing in House and Garden magazine: "There are no short cuts to producing good beef: it has to be properly hung and matured...the Burrough family matures its organic grass-fed Aberdeen Angus beef for 21 days and the result is excellent flavour and texture." Joanna is the author of many books and she worked for several years as a journalist at The Times newspaper.

This week two lovely twin baby calves were born at the farm. Mother and calves are all doing very well. She came in briefly to calve and are now all out happily in the meadow.

Come and stock up on your beef and lamb - we're at Hestercombe Garden's in Taunton at the Country Fair this morning, as well as Kingsbridge and Topsham markets this morning. We'll also be at Totnes Food Market tomorrow.

We had a very exciting start to the month as baby George was born. He's already a much loved little brother for Harry, who's now 22 months old. George was 9 lbs 3ozs at birth. We're certainly going to be kept very busy with the farming and two little ones under two!

We attended the first farmer's market at Killerton National Trust property last weekend and thought it was excellent. We're going to be there on the 3rd Saturday of every month from now on. We were really pleased that everyone tucked into our free samples of slow-roasted brisket and horseradish sandwiches and told us how much they enjoyed them! Brisket's one of our favourite cuts and we think it's fabulous when pot-roasted for about six hours. There are lots of sellers at the market and it's a great day out because you can do a little shopping, wander in the beautiful Killerton gardens and maybe see the house too.

We went to Ottery Community Market in February for the first time and were really pleased our beef proved to be very popular. It was really good to go out and meet lots of local people too. The market in Ottery celebrates local food producers and craftspeople and there's such a wide range of produce available there, with everything from works of art to cakes. It's set up by Sustainable Ottery, a group of local people working to create a more sustainable community. We'll be there again this month on the morning of 27th March, so pop along and see us there.  

Christmas Day saw the arrival of our first lambs. So far, nine lambs have been born and we're now waiting for the arrival of about another 400! They're all due by the end of January, so it's going to be a very hectic month. We're getting up twice a night to check on the expectant ewes and to make sure they do not get into any difficulty. The lambs are born in the barn and are let out into the fields as soon as they're strong enough. The mums are fed on organic hay and corn grown on our farm while they are in the barn and then they graze on grass once they are in the fields, supplemented with hay and corn.

We've been building a new state of the art barn to house our cattle in during the winter months. We bring the animals in for the shortest possible time to make sure they spend most of their time outdoors grazing.

The new barn has it all and we feel confident our animals are living in the best possible conditions when they are in during the winter months. It has excellent natural ventilation, lots of space for the cattle to roam around in with plenty of straw and access to fresh organic silage (preserved grass) to eat 24 hours a day. 

We started this project in June and it's been hard work getting it finished for when the winter weather arrived. Luckily we completed the barn just in the nick of time and our cattle were in before November's harsh gales and rain arrived.