ENTERPRISING Monmouthshire husband and wife dairy farmers Lawrence and Izabela Hembrow are celebrating after being honoured at the Countryside Alliance Awards after only a year in business.
The couple, who run Mead Farm Foods, at Redwick, were finalists in the Wales Local Food and Drink Category and came runners-up to Hanes Llandoch, St Dogmaels Local Producers Market, Pembrokeshire.
Izabela Hembrow said: “We are delighted with this fantastic result of runners up in Welsh final. It’s been a great achievement for Mead Farm Foods right from the beginning when we were nominated by our community and customers.
“We couldn’t dream any more for such a young business to be genuinely recognised for our produce and services.
“Rural Oscars are remarkable awards for all these great independent and truly pensionable businesses which play such an important part in rural communities and Welsh economy.”
The awards ceremony in Cardiff came just days after the husband and wife team came to rescue of snow bound families with a pop up farm shop after ‘the Beast from the East’ struck the area with a vengence.
Izabela and Lawrence, whose farm is based on the Gwent Levels in the hamlet of Redwick, near Caldicot, sold milk, bread and eggs from their van parked in Magor Square.
The dairy farm, on 190-acres, regularly delivers its home produced milk locally to families and businesses in Redwick and areas of Undy, Magor, Caldicot, Langstone, Chepstow and Tutshill, taking orders online. Mead Farm Foods recently started bread deliveries
Mum of two Izabela said the dairy had battled against the extreme elements during the snow including frozen pipes and huge drifts of snow on the farm, to produce milk and get deliveries out to customers.
She said: “We had our regular deliveries to make and we were also inundated with online orders for home deliveries of milk from people who’d been unable to get milk and bread in the snow.
“We had the busiest week ever due to the snow which caused long delays in the deliveries, we had frozen pipes on the farm and also in the processing plant. Also, due to the supermarkets shelves being empty, we have had lots of requests for home deliveries as the social media went bonkers after we posted that we were making home deliveries.
“We have never experienced this number of requests before. The doorstep deliveries on the Friday took us from 4am until 6.30pm, using two 4x4s and a tractor, to deliver all the provisions to people’s homes.
“Later, during the weekend, due to the large numbers of requests for milk and bread from locals, we decided to set up a pop-up shop at Magor Square on the Sunday. We have never seen a queue of the size that greeted us when we arrived and the customers just kept on coming. It was the longest few days for us ever and now we are just catching up with the routine jobs around the farm.”
Izabela said she now hoped that her ‘new’ customers would continue to order Mead Farm Foods deliveries.
Mead Farm Foods currently produces and delivers fresh farm milk as well as cream and their farmhouse butter, locally sourced free-range eggs, bacon and now adding bread to their deliveries. They also take orders from local shops, cafes and restaurants.