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🌺 Toby’s Garden Festival is fast approaching and we’ll be there again with all your favourites | 3 & 4 May. 👩🍳 Cheese, chutney and crackers to taste and buy to take home for your weekend cheeseboard. 🥖 Beautiful Brie baguettes to sink your teeth into on the day. 🧺 Cheese picnics, perfect with a glass of something chilled from @sandridgebarton wines, just next door in the Powderham Castle Courtyard. 🎙️Greg will be talking cheese in the @fooddrinkdevon talks pavilion on Friday. Come and listen! ☀️The Courtyard will be full to the ramparts with artisan food and drink. What a couple of days it’s going to be! 🎟️ Buy your tickets now @tobygardenfest.
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Head Cheesemaker Pete is making Cremet today. This is our soft, mould ripened goat’s milk cheese with added double cow’s cream and needs very gentle handling, both when cutting the curds and scooping into moulds. But all this love and care results in a decadent cheese, rich and squishy when young and oozy and more goaty as it ages. It’s a lovely spring cheese and we don’t make lots, so enjoy it when you spot it’s pink label on a cheese counter or on our website. It’s vegetarian and pasteurised.
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☀️Exmouth Gate to Plate | Sun 28 April | 10am-4pm. ☀️Looking forward to Sharpham’s very first @eatfestivals and it’s in Exmouth, very nearly Parsons home turf! ☀️Come and see us, chat about cheese, taste our range, take some home! Meet lots of lovely local artisan producers. It’s sure to be a fantastic day out in a beautiful part of the world.
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🌶️ SCOTCH BONNET CHILLI JAM ON EGGS! Andrea, who does our social media, has always been a bit of a wuss with our fiery Scotch Bonnet Chilli Jam… until last weekend when she had a moment of epiphany with some poached eggs! “You can keep your sweet chilli sauce! Chilli jam is a game changer.” 🌶️ Sharpham Kate (also something of a wuss with a Scotch Bonnet) adds it to all sorts of recipes for both heat and flavour…. 🌶️ And Greg? He enjoys it neat on a cracker with a hunk of Rustic. How do you fancy yours? Neat or not? Made to our recipe by our friends at @highfieldpreserves in mid-Devon.
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☀️Here’s where you’ll find Sharpham at Food Festivals & Events around the county in 2024! Come and taste, chat with Greg, Nicky, Kate and Claudia and plan your perfect seasonal cheeseboard at… 📍27 April | eat:Festival Lyme Regis 📍28 April | Gate to Plate Exmouth 📍3-4 May | Toby’s Garden Festival, Powderham 📍16-18 May | Devon County Show Food Pavilion 📍27 May | eat:Festival Axminster 📍28 July | Totnes Show 📍3 August | eat:Festival Dawlish 📍17 August | eat:Festival Honiton 📍7 Sept | Bovey Food & Craft Festival 📍8 Sept | eat:Festival Riverford Farm, Totnes 📍14 Sept | Barnes Food Fair, London 📍25-27 Oct | Dartmouth Food Festival (tbc) … and no doubt we’ll be popping up at lots of in-store tastings and a few exciting events which are being kept under wraps for now! (Taps side of nose twice 😁) Phew! . . . @eatfestivals @tobygardenfest @totnesshow @fooddrinkdevon @dartmouthfoodfestival @devoncountyshow
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Kate’s at @occombefarm today with cheese, chutneys and crackers for you to sample! She’s there until 2pm with Hunts Cider, Ginger Cat Deli and South Devon Chilli Farm… mmmmmmm A Friday feast!
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💍 NOW is the busiest time of year for planning weddings ... why? ... because you old (and young) romantics often save your proposals for special days - Christmas, New Year and Valentine’s Day! So by now you’re probably ticking things off a huge to-do list. 💍 So if you’ve kick started 2024 with all the excitement of getting engaged and you’ve started planning your dream wedding, then bookmark this ‘All White’ Sharpham cheese tower, have a look at our ready-to-order range of celebration cheese cakes… and our bespoke making service. Link in our bio. … and remember, a cheese wedding cake makes a marvellous centrepiece to an evening buffet. So that’s another thing you can tick off that list!
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👋🏼 HELLO lots of NEW FOLLOWERS! Let us tell you a little about Sharpham Dairy… We’re a small, artisan cheese dairy in south Devon, and we hand-make a range of ten cheeses using traditional techniques. In 2022 we were the first dairy cheesemaker in the UK to be certified a B Corp. Cheese has been made on the Sharpham Estate, in a beautiful valley overlooking the River Dart, for over 40 years using the rich milk from our own herd of Jersey cows together with goats’ milk from local family farms. You can truly taste the lush Devon pastures in our cheese. Sharpham Dairy is owned by Greg and Nicky Parsons - and our small cheesemaking team of ten is led by Head Cheesemaker, Pete Haworth. Our range includes the classics… SHARPHAM BRIE - buttery yellow and rich, TICKLEMORE Goat - starkly white and UFO shaped, and the much-loved RUSTIC. They’ve been joined over the years by ELMHIRST (a decadent triple-cream soft cheese;) SAVOUR (a mixed milk semi-hard cheese); CREMET (a rich goats’ milk and cows’ cream soft cheese), plus two more RUSTIC varieties - Chive & Garlic and Dulse & Sea Lettuce. In the last couple of years we’ve added RUSHMORE, another mixed milk cheese and our own CAMEMBERT. To complement our cheeses we’ve also created our own sourdough crackers and chutneys. Our wedding cakes are towers of delight! We’re proud to say that our cheeses (and chutneys) have won many, many awards, most recently at the 2024 British Cheese Awards just this week, and Cremet holds a coveted 3-star Great Taste Award. Our cheeses are found in delis, on restaurant menus and cheese counters in the West Country and beyond and are also available directly through the sharphamcheese.co.uk website. Link in our bio.
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We’re delighted to share that we won FIVE awards at this week’s British Cheese Awards. 🥇Sharpham Brie scooped a GOLD award. 🥈Cremet and Ticklemore goat’s cheeses and Rushmore, a mixed-milk cheese, were all awarded Silver. 🥉Camembert came away with a Bronze award. The British Cheese Awards are one of the premier competitions for cheese producers in the UK and kick off the award season. After a stunning 2023 for awards, we’re keen to see what 2024 will bring and this is a strong start! . . . . . @britcheeseaward @fooddrinkdevon #britishcheese #goatscheese #cheeseawards #cheese #sharphamcheese #southdevon #devon #devonfood #artisancheese #cheesemaker #cheesemakersofinstagram #devoncheese #goatsmilk #jerseycowmilk #riverdart
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CUSTOMERS | We’re working hard to help our customers - both wholesale and retail - to understand our cheeses and to help them tell our story… ◽️Info sheets and support materials for delis and cheese shops. Soon to be on our website. ◽️In-house briefings and sampling sessions for cheese counter staff. If you’d like a visit from the team let us know! ◽️We’re also getting out and about talking to the cheese loving public at many more shows and foodie events. Catch us at lots of @eatfestivals, in-store tastings, the Totnes Show and Dartmouth Food Festival among others in 2024. ◽️We’ve got plans to work with fellow cheesemaker to promote Devon cheese even further. #bcorpmonth #bcorpuk @bcorpuk #blocaldevon
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ENVIRONMENT | To have a clear plan forward we need to know where we are now - which is why we’re measuring our carbon footprint, in order to create an improvement plan. But we haven’t hung about waiting for that! ◽️We’ve worked with our wrap and label suppliers to move to recycled materials, minimise plastic use, use only FSC board and insulation. ◽️We use a ‘Zero to Landfill’ waste partner. ◽️We send our whey to anaerobic digestion for energy conversion. ◽️We’re cultivating huge boxes of seeds to take with us to our new home…. and big plans are afoot there! Watch this space! And of course we get out in the fresh air to take part in a beach clean or two!
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COMMUNITY | Being a B Corp means we’re part of a growing global community, but it’s great to have a local group on our doorstep, and in January this year Greg helped to establish - and became co-Chair - of a brand new B Local Devon group. Greg also volunteers his time as Chair of community interest company @fooddrinkdevon - champions of the county’s best artisan producers, hospitality and retail. Product collaborations with our local food and drink community are in our DNA, as is chatting about cheese with retailers’ teams and community groups such as the Moretonhampstead Memory Cafe (pictured). We’re also proud to support @foodincommunity, @parklifeheavitree and @hospiscaredevon with either cheese, time and expertise or fundraising. #bcorpmonth @bcorpuk #bcorp #community #bcorpimpactreport #local #supportlocal #localcommunity #givingback #localsupport #charity #blocaldevon #fooddrinkdevon
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B Local Beach Clean | The Sharpham team joined fellow Devon B Corps at beautiful Slapton Sands in South Devon… and the dairy dogs came too! Armed with bags and grabbers from @tillcoastclear we litter picked our way along a fair old stretch of shingle beach and grassy verge. We ambled, chatted, laughed, built connections, and helped to keep our Devon coastline free from rubbish. A fun and worthwhile Friday afternoon! Go Sharpham Litterbusters!
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🐣 EASTER GIFTS | We loved this hamper SO much we kept it in our shop for Easter. And it seems you love it too! 💛 A signature heart shaped Brie, a handmade bar from @exe_chocolate, a big bottle of Elderflower bubbly from @luscombedrinks, plus crackers, chutney and a special packet of flower seeds you can plant out now. ⏰ Last date to order this for delivery in time for Easter weekend is Tuesday 26th. 📌 Order link in our BIO.
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It’s springing out all over down here at Sharpham. Daffodils, blossom and primroses everywhere! #spring #easter #blossom #sharpham #riverdart
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WORKERS | The welfare and happiness of our small team is a top priority. So… ▫️We’re a Living Wage Employer. ▫️Lots of opportunities for the team to upskill with external training and progress through wage bands. ▫️We’ve introduced a ‘volunteer-day’ allowance. ▫️We fund a health plan, income protection and sickness protection. ▫️We offer a share of profits, paid annually. ▫️Regular tasty treats in the staff room! ▫️Free monthly cheese hamper. ▫️Fun! We love a get-together and we’re planning our next staff activity right now! In these challenging times it’s a balance between keeping the business on a firm footing and doing as much as we can for staff, but we hope we’ve got the balance right and we’re always looking to do more. You can read our full Year One Impact Report at the link in our bio. #bcorpmonth @bcorpuk #blocaldevon
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GOVERNANCE | Since we started our B Corp journey, we evaluate every decision we make, we question and challenge and try to make the best possible choices… focused on people and planet, but also for financial sustainability, ensuring that we will be around to use our business as a force for good for the long term. ‘Governance’ covers such things as legal (we work with fellow B Corp @stephens_scown), accounting, insurance, banking and our own board structure. We strive to work with like-minded companies whose ethics align with ours. We’re currently building a Sharpham board structure which will allow us to target the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, both in our strategy and operations.
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The B Corp certification is awarded to companies who meet the highest standards of social and environmental impact; who put people and planet up there with profit and use their business as a force for good. B Corp measures and scores a company’s entire social and environmental impact across five key impact areas - Governance, Workers, Community, Environment and Customers. The average score for an ‘ordinary business’ is 50.9. To be B Corp Certified, a business must achieve a score of 80 or above. Our Impact Assessment Score when we certified in April 2022 was 85.5. There’s still plenty of scope to improve and we measure our progress and set ourselves challenging goals so that we can increase our score when we re-certify in 2025. Over coming days we’ll be looking at the five key impact areas - what we’ve done and what we hope to do. You can read our full Year One Impact Report at the link in our BIO.
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Meet the family behind Sharpham Cheese. The Parsons welcomed @devonlifemag into their home for a wide-ranging chat… over a cheeseboard of course! They talked about being a purpose-led business, working with local like-minded producers, the importance of family and the upcoming move to a new dairy… and much more. 🔗 Read the full feature at the link in our bio.
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Saturday! Greg is ready and waiting at @dartsfarm High Tea Tasting Weekend! See you soon.
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Our online vouchers are the perfect gift if you are undecided what to give, have left it a bit ‘last minute’ or live far away! They come in £20, £30 or £50 denominations and can be sent digitally or by post. Or you can buy an Annual Cheese Subscription to enjoy a curated collection of local Devon cheeses and accompaniments, delivered to your doorstep, or your loved one’s, once a quarter. Sharpham Cheese gift vouchers can be used online at sharphamcheese.co.uk. 🔗 You can buy them from the link in our bio or from our website Home Page.
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#IWD | Our fabulous female staff not only own the business (Nicky Parsons), they also make the cheese (Nicky D and Claudia), wrap and despatch (Brigette, Jane and Nicky P), market and sell (Kate) and everything in between. We’re celebrating them today, all month and always! You’ll find the links to our ‘Meet The Makers’ journal posts in our Highlights section on our grid where you can get to know them all! And let’s not forget our fantastic freelancers and consultants - Andrea who handles socials and newsletters; Hayley, Harry and the PR team at @rawfoodanddrink, and Mollie in London. Happy International Women’s Day to all our staff, and the many female-led cheese retailers, wholesalers and suppliers. The campaign theme for International Women’s Day 2024 is #InspireInclusion. “When we inspire others to understand and value women’s inclusion, we forge a sense of belonging, relevance, empowerment and a better world”. We strive - always - to be inclusive at Sharpham and we’ll be talking about our current and future plans for all our staff during #bcorpmonth soon. #InternationalWomensDay #MeetTheMakers
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Last call for MOTHER’S DAY! Wednesday is the last day to order this lovely hamper full of spring treats for whoever means Mum to you. As well as our signature Brie Heart, we’ve added crackers and chutney; and we’ve teamed up with @luscombedrinks to bring Mum a big bottle of their beautiful Elderflower Bubbly, and added a hand crafted bar of ethically sourced chocolate from one-woman chocolate maker @exe_chocolate. We’ve even added an exclusive pack of flower seeds from Kate’s garden to plant now. We think it’s a box of Devon treats that any Mum would love to unpack. Order at the link in our BIO by 11pm on Wednesday 6th to ensure delivery for Sunday and add a gift message too.
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B Corps are businesses balancing people, planet and profit, and we’re proud that @sharphamcheese is one of them! March is B Corp Month, so throughout the month, we’re serving up all the ways our community is moving business forward, and why it’s so important to us. B Corps are constantly moving forward, working to create more inclusive workspaces, improve their climate impact, and respond to the ever-changing issues in the world. So, if you want to look forward to better business, this is the place. For more info, click the link in our bio or simply search ‘B Corp Month’. #BCorpMonth
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🔥 Sharpham on pizza? Absolutely! This beauty from @artisan.pizzeria features Sharpham Rustic and our Scotch Bonnet Chilli Jam… and was super tasty! Packed with fire and flavour. We got together last week with fellow South Devon food and drink producers at @southdevonfoodhub to catch up and to check out the progress of this pioneering space which will soon be Sharpham’s home. Everyone enjoyed pizza, lovingly handmade by Steve and Vanessa in their mobile wood-fired pizza van, made with @fresh_flour and topped with local produce from Sharpham, @rareandpasture and @devon.microgreens. Cider and fizz from @huntscider and @orchard_drinks, wine from @sandridgebarton and @baysbrewery beers. To find out about the few remaining opportunities available at the hub follow @southdevonfoodhub and contact Julie and Ian.
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📸 Sharpham team photo! The dairy team visited the South Devon Food Hub today to take a tour of the building which will be the new home of Sharpham cheesemaking - and catch up on its exciting progress. We don’t get all the Sharpham-based team in one place very often, so it was a great excuse for a cheesy team snap! We’re keeping the new dairy under wraps for now, but can’t wait to share it soon! @southdevonfoodhub
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🌱 Spring has sprung at Sharpham Dairy. 🌼 They may be small, but they’re a mighty sign that better weather is on the way! And boy do we need a bit of sunshine after all this rain! 🐮At least the spring grass will be lush and tasty for our Jersey girls.
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STOCKIST SPOTLIGHT | Powderham Farm Shop and Bistro In the grounds of Powderham Castle on the banks of the River Exe, this family-owned Farm Shop and Bistro, complete with in-house butchery, deli and Post Office is not just a foodie destination, but a hub for shopping, relaxing and dining on locally-sourced, small batch artisan food and drink. Under new ownership since August 2023, the new team, who also own Otterton Mill, share a vision to serve their community with a considered and sustainable offering. Kate shared tasters of our range there on Saturday and we’re delighted that the farm shop is stocking all Sharpham cheeses, chutneys and crackers and supporting small, local and independent cheese makers! Thanks @powderhamfarmshopandbistro
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Today! CHEESE & CHUTNEY TASTING | Powderham Farm Shop | Sat 17th Feb 11am - 3pm. Come and choose your favourite Sharpham for your Easter cheeseboard. Powderham cheese counter is a top notch!
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HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY to all our followers, however you’re choosing to spend it. If you got your hands on one of these, then enjoy! We’ll be baking ours with some rosemary sprigs this evening and slathering it on warm bread with a dollop of caremelised onion chutney…