Sarsden Apiary.
Cotswold honey, hive by hive, unblended. Sarsden, 3 miles from the farm gate, supplying this shop since August 2020.
What they make.
Cotswold honey, hive by hive, unblended. It is a apiary first and a supplier to this shop second, which is the correct order and worth stating: nothing here depends on us, and none of these businesses would close if we stopped ordering.
They have been supplying the farm shop since August 2020, which makes them one of the longer-standing relationships in a chapter where the average is about four years.
What we sell of theirs.
On the shelf
- Cotswold honey, 340g
- Set or runny, depending on the season
- Hedgerow honey, 227g
- Late-summer flow, darker
- Comb in a jar, 400g
- Twelve a week at most
- Beeswax blocks, 100g
- Sold to candle makers, mostly
The relationship
- Supplying since
- August 2020
- Distance
- 3 miles from the shop, straight line
- Payment terms
- 14 days from invoice
- Listing fee
- None, and there never has been
- Exclusivity
- None either wayThey sell to whoever they like, and so do we
- Mark held
- Honey and comb · dueBacked by Diddly Squat
Prices are set by the producer, not by us. Where a line has a fixed retail price it is because they asked for one, which two of the nine do.
What went wrong. In 2022 we bought a season of honey forward at a fixed price in February, which is a thing you can do with barley and cannot sensibly do with bees. The oilseed rape flowered early, the weather turned, and the yield came in at roughly forty per cent of a normal year. We had contracted for volume that did not exist. The apiary offered to buy in someone else’s honey to make up the shortfall and we said no, because that is exactly the thing the sixteen-mile rule exists to prevent. We went without.
Sixteen miles, and what that actually means here.
This producer is 3 miles from the shop door. Under the planning condition that governs what the farm shop may sell, that is what makes them stockable at all — not the quality, not the story, and not whether they photograph well.
It is worth being blunt about the consequence: if they moved twenty miles away we could not sell their food, however good it was. The rule takes no view on merit.
- Distance
- 3 miles
- Since
- August 2020
- Lines stocked
- 4
At a glance.
On the public register
With the audit date and the next one due.
Paid in fourteen days
From invoice, not from delivery.
3 miles away
Inside the planning radius, comfortably.
One failure published
Above, with the party at fault named.
The other producers.
Chadlington Bakehouse
Sourdough, cottage loaves and a morning bun that sells out by ten.
Cotswold Curd
Raw-milk hard cheese in 12kg truckles, matured on board.
Windrush Smokery
Cold-smoked trout, dry-cured back bacon and smoked butter.
Dean Market Garden
Salad, roots and brassicas on two and a half acres.
Enstone Meat Co
Dry-aged beef, sausage and bacon, cutting for the shop and the pub.
Bruern Mill
Stoneground flour, milled slow enough not to cook the grain.
Supply the shop yourself.
If you are inside the radius and make something we do not already have, the route in is short.
