Already widely lauded for coming up with the concept of Open Farm Sunday, OF&G licensee Ian Pigott has now been awarded the Countryside Alliance’s Rural Hero award.
The winners were announced at a ceremony in London (Farmers Weekly pics of the event) and Ian scooped the coveted title.
More than 400 farms took part in Farm Sunday last year as the event has gone from strength-to-strength and opened the eyes of thousands of people to life on the farm.
Ian, who is also a Farmers Weekly columnist, beat off some high-profile competition in the form of TV chef, Clarissa Dickson Wright, journalist Janet Street-Porter and Federation of Yorkshire Shows chairman, Les Wake, to take the title.
In 2006 Ian was named NFU Farming Champion at the Farmers Weekly Awards.
Among many things he’s now also involved in an amusing but informative podcast with friends, called Pure Tilth.
Our congratulations go, once again, to Ian.
awards, farm sunday, ian pigott
Lots of people refer to us on their websites or in their publications, for a variety of reasons. Maybe it’s the press, or a magazine article. Quite often it’s a licensee who is proudly highlighting the fact that they’ve achieved organic accreditation under our standards.
The trouble is people so often insist on adding words to our name. So we become “The Organic Farmers & Growers” or “Organic Farmers & Growers Association” or, inevitably, “The Organic Farmers & Growers Association”. Even stranger variations have been seen.
We’re not an association. We’re a company. We’re called Organic Farmers & Growers. Friends often call us simply ‘OF&G’.
Just a friendly reminder to anyone who cares to take it on board. It makes us feel better when people get it right.
That’s all. Thanks.
Posted via email from Organic Farmers & Growers
Organic Farmers & Growers is very pleased to be unveiling its new Guide to Organic Certification for food processing.
This has been a long-time in the making as our processor certification team refined and refined it to ensure it was going to be as useful and practical a publication as possible.
The guide spells out all of the stages of gaining organic certification in food processing and should answer most, if not all, of the obvious questions that anyone would have before going into the sector. It would also prove a useful reference for companies that have to regularly train new staff in this field.
It’s definitely a quality product (the printed versions would stand up very nicely to be lugged around production facilities), but is also available as a free download from our website.
As well as describing the stages of the certification process there are examples of all the relevant forms, so applicants can see at-a-glance how to complete them. It really should remove a lot of guesswork.
Congratulations to processor CO’s Ruth and Joanna, Development Officer, Steve, and Office Manager, Angela, for pulling this together.
food, guide, processing, publication
We had one of our regular staff meetings yesterday. Some of it is about important stuff. Some of it is useful information and a chance to give and get feedback. But by far the most entertaining part (for us non-greenfingered types) is the agenda item on ‘Gardening Club’.
The big ‘Gardening Club’ news this month is that they have got their hands on planters/troughs(/whatever) to go around the outside of the office! One has even been built (as you can see from the picture).
Obviously no actual planting has been done yet, but we’re all looking forward to the impending blooms and those of us who don’t actually dig may even egg them on to something more ambitious next year.
How about a veg patch folks?!?!
Please note: It has yet to be ascertained whether compost from an OF&G certified PAS 100/Quality Compost Protocol operator will be used in this endevour…
gardening
UPDATE (13 April, 2011): We have now made the pattern available to anyone to download. Please go to http://www.organicfarmers.org.uk/farmers-weekly-pattern/ where you will find the links. Enjoy!
I’ve suspected for some time that I’m working with a bunch of jokers. However we now have official acknowledgment that this is, indeed, a fact.
When an impromptu “best” joke competition was instigated by Farmers Weekly among the denizens of Twitter, it turns out to have been none other than our very own Certification Manager, Steve Clarkson, who came up with the “best” offering.
And his prize? A stunning Farmers Weekly tractor knitting pattern. Now, in many offices this would be filed under amusing and end up in a draw. But not at Organic Farmers & Growers. Oh no. Among our multi-talented team is a master knitter (is there a proper word for that?) in the form of Certification Officer, Katie Owens. As I write Katie is obtaining Steve’s measurements and planning colour schemes. Obviously when we have the finished product Steve will be forced to model it for all to see.
You won’t be surprised to hear that it wasn’t this offering from Steve that won the joke competition:
What do you get when you cross a rooster and a cow? Cockadoodlemoo!
No, the effort that tickled the fancy of the FW team was:
What kind of milk comes from a forgetful cow? Milk of Amnesia.
Are you laughing out loud?
farmers weekly, jumper, knitting, steve clarkson
