Everyone loves a farm shop trip for a mooch about and to pick up some tasty artisan treats. But, rightly or wrongly, they've got a reputation for being a bit of a pricey way of getting fresh food.
But with prices on the rise pretty much everywhere right now, would a farm shop big shop work out that much more expensive than a weekly trip to the supermarket? At award-winning farm shop The Lambing Shed in Knutsford, bosses recently posted on social media a "price comparison" aiming to show that they're NOT that much more expensive than supermarkets.
They also pointed out why the extra pennies make it worth your while to support local farmers and makers. The 'posh' farm shop, that holds the title of best farm shop cafe in the UK, features an array of local produce from farms in Cheshire and Lancashire and home-reared beef and lamb.
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In their recent Instagram reel, they showed a number of products at similar, or cheaper prices to supermarket goods. The post said: "Shall we price compare? We have many items cheaper than the bigger supermarkets around us but we also have items that cost just a few pennies more.
"Those extra pennies help support us which lets us support other small local business that surround us in our farm shop! Not only that, much of our produce is home-reared, homemade and handled with care, because we care as much about our products as we do our customers."
They featured products including pies, sausages, milk and salad which they price compared to Waitrose. Now, admittedly, Waitrose is the 'poshest' of supermarkets too and is regularly named as the most expensive to shop at in price surveys - but the items did prove to be similar and in some cases cheaper to its national rival.
But it made me wonder how much it would cost to do my full family 'big shop' at the farm shop, buying local, small business products, rather than at a national retailer. And would it actually be a better or more pleasing shopping experience?
Well, there was only one way to find out. I headed over to The Lambing Shed farm shop, picked up a pretty wicker basket (there are no metal trolleys here) and filled it up with those artisan goodies.
The full shop
There's no doubting that The Lambing Shed is a lovely place to shop. As soon as you walk in you can see the beautifully stocked shelves, and an array of meat, cheese and pies in its own butchery and deli counters that are better dressed than I am of a weekend that's for sure.
But it also soon became clear this was not going to be an exactly cheap way for me to get meals in to feed two adults and two children for the week ahead. I nearly fell over when I saw that a small punnet of strawberries was going to cost me £4.75, and that the cheapest sliced loaf of bread when I visited on a Saturday afternoon was a granary tin priced at £3.85.
Seeing how stunning all the meat looked, I was a bit worried about how expensive that was all going to be as well. But, like the farm shop's Instagram post said, if you take advantage of their deals it doesn't actually work out that much more than a supermarket shop. I picked up 500g of minced beef and a pack of giant sausages for the 2 for £8 deal.
I also asked for a couple of the pork steaks from the meat counter, fearing how much it would come up at. But £5.04 seemed pretty OK to me given they were huge chunks that I planned to make into a big stew for the family.
The cheapest whole chicken I could find on the shelf was priced at £7.78, but it was a lot larger than the small ones I usually go for which tend to cost me around £3.50 - £4 at the supermarket. I did end up making two meals out of it over two days.
Thinking I would use the mince to make a Bolognese, I headed over to the pasta shelves where I got another shock at the price of packets of fusilli (my pasta shape of choice). They stock the artisan Lancashire brand Northern Pasta Co which was priced at an eye-watering £4.95. Admittedly there was a '2 for £8' offer on to make it a bit cheaper, but I wasn't going to stretch to that on this occasion.
On the fresh fruit and vegetable side of things, I admit I was probably expecting a bit more, but having headed here on a Saturday afternoon, a lot of produce seemed to have already been snapped up. I picked up the last couple of hand-washed carrots left in the basket and some leeks which came in at 37p and £1.54 respectively.
There were loose large jacket potatoes, but I went for the last big bag of 2kg potatoes on sale that seemed a fairly reasonable £1.89. There was also a load of broccoli available, so I chucked in a head of that which weighed in at £1.51.
As I mentioned earlier, the strawberries were a bit of a jaw-dropper at £4.75. But my goodness they were tasty, tasty strawberries. However the raspberries I picked up for £3.30 tasted, well, just like normal raspberries to be honest and the bananas seemed fairly expensive at £2.05.
I particularly liked the fresh orange juice machine - where you can watch as orange after orange is pummeled into submission. Well, into the plastic bottle you hold at the bottom. This weighed in at £3.75 for a 500ml bottle.
Milk was priced at the same as the supermarket at £1.35 - and you could always go for the VERY fresh option of serve your own in a dispensed glass bottle. But this was only for whole milk, whereas I was after a bottle of semi-skimmed, so went with the pre-filled bottle from the fridges.
Normally, on my big shop I would be picking up loads of snacky lunchbox things for the kids, but one of the cost benefits of heading to a farm shop is that they don't have any of those big brands like Bear Yo Yos and Fruit Peelers, which end up costing me a small fortune. Instead I picked up some Williams' Flapjacks (£3.95) and an artisan cookie by Baked by Bean (£3.75) that, I have to tell you, were worth every penny and worth going back to the farm shop for these alone.
What I also really liked about shopping here, was labels celebrating 'this product is local!' were everywhere - with each label explaining the town or village the product had come from and the proud banner: "support small, support local". This indeed pointed me to the ice cream cabinets, where I couldn't resist trying out a pot of Mobberley Ice Cream. Yes, it was pricey at £6.50, but the roasted strawberry flavour I purchased is something I've never tried before and was a taste sensation.
At the last minute I realised I hadn't picked up any cheese and so I dashed back to the deli counter to ask for the "smallest piece of cheddar". I was in a rush at this point so I only saw when I got to the counter that the 296g of Wookey Hole cheddar came in at an eye-watering £6.81. Now I appreciate it's a 'posher' cheddar than I would get at the supermarket - but that price is simply something I would never pay at a supermarket for my cheese.
By this stage I was kind of dreading heading to the check out as in my head it felt like I'd racked up a bill of something like £150. So it was actually a pleasant surprise to see the total come in just under £100 at £97.03.
Now, I know that's a lot of money. But in recent weeks my big family shop at supermarkets like Sainsbury's, Waitrose and Morrisons has been coming in at around and above the £100 mark anyway, all in. However, I was interested to see how products would directly compare to Waitrose (after their Instagram video about it all), so I did a full price compare below.
Full prices - for Lambing Shed and Waitrose
In the Lambing Shed's price comparison video, it compared its products to those from Waitrose. So here we've compared like-for-like products (where possible in similar ranges) from our farm shop visit to what we could expect to pay in Waitrose.
2 KG bag of potatoes - £1.89 (Waitrose - 2kg maris piper £2.10)
454g back bacon - £5.80 (Waitrose - 500g back bacon 2 x 250g packs is £7)
500g beef mince - £4.50 (Waitrose Essential beef mince - 500g £2.62, on offer down from £3.50)
350g thick pork sausage - £4.50 (Waitrose No1 free range pork sausages - 400g £4.50)
500ml freshly squeezes orange juice - £3.75 (Waitrose No1 freshly squeezed orange juice - 1litre - £2.72, on offer down from £3.40)
1.655kg whole chicken - £7.78 (Waitrose Essential large whole chicken 1.75kg - £5.55)
0.416kg loose carrots - 37p (500g loose carrotts Waitrose - 30p)
0.604kg loose leeks - £1.54 ( 600g loose leeks Waitrose - £1.68)
0.584kg loose broccoli - £1.52 (600g loose broccoli -£1.17)
0.978kg loose bananas - £2.05 (Waitrose 1kg Essential Fairtrade loose bananas 89p)
150g Punnet of raspberries - £3.30 (Waitrose 150g raspberries £2.50)
Punnet of strawberries - £4.75 (Waitrose 230g strawberries £3)
400g bottle Mutti passata - £2.20 (Waitrose Mutti passata £1.80, on offer down from £2.45)
0.560kg pork steaks - £5.04 (Waitrose No 1 free range pork escalopes - 600g - £6.89)
142g honey roast ham 4 slices - £2.98 (Waitrose Wiltshire honey roast ham 4 slices 130g - £4)
Just crisps 40g x 2 at 95p - £1.90 (Waitrose Tyrells 40g crisps x 2 £1.10 - £2.20)
500g honey Granola - £5.99 (Waitrose Dorset cereals honey granola 500g - £4.30)
2 pints semi-skimmed milk - £1.35 (Waitrose Essential semi-skimmed milk - £1.35)
296g Wookey Hole cheddar - £6.81 (Waitrose Wookey Hole cheddar 300g - £4.25)
450g Northern Pasta fusili - £4.95 (Waitrose No 1 fusili bucati 500g - £2.75)
Baked by Bean cookie - £3.75 (Waitrose baked white chocolate cookies 4 - £2.50)
250g Salted Cheshire butter - £3 (Waitrose Essential salted butter 250g - £2.20)
Large 450g Llath Ylan toffee yoghurt - £1.50 (Waitrose Yeo Valley flavoured yoghurt 450g - £2.35)
Mobberley roasted strawberry Ice Cream tub - £6.50 (Waitrose - Haagen Daz strawberry ice cream - £3.50, on offer down from £5.30)
Granary tin loaf sliced - £3.85 (Waitrose granary tin loaf - £2)
4 white barms - £2.35 (Waitrose Essential 4 giant white baps - 90p)
Flapjacks (pack of 3) - £3.95 (Waitrose Essential (pack of 5) - £1.40)
Paper bag - 25p (Waitrose reusable bag 30p)
TOTAL PRICE FARM SHOP - £97.03 (meat was 2 for £8 offer on the mince and sausages so - £1 off total) TOTAL PRICE WAITROSE - £76.72
The verdict
Clearly having stocked up on all these artisan goodies I was hoping for a week of tastier-than-ever treats. But in reality, most of the products tasted the same, or similar, to those you would buy at the supermarket.
But shopping 'small' made me focus more on the items I needed to make family meals, rather than pile in all the extras you tend to chuck in at the supermarket like sweet treats and crisps.
Standout products from the farm shop for me included the meats and the treats. The chicken, pork and mince made large hearty family meals, while those flapjacks and cookies were just heaven.
I also loved the Llath Ylan toffee yoghurt which at £1.50 was brilliant value and cheaper and tastier than most yoghurts I normally buy at supermarkets so I'll definitely be buying this again. The fruit and veg taste wise were what I'd expect from any fruit and veg, save for the strawberries which were so sweet and tempting I may well part with £4.75 again for them.
In the price comparison I did, the items mostly worked out mostly more expensive than Waitrose - with the full shop just over £20 more than the supermarket - although some items did work out cheaper or the same like the yoghurt, some of the veg and some of the meat. Although naturally you could get a big shop like this even cheaper at the budget supermarkets like Aldi and Lidl.
Some items I just couldn't justify on my family budget for that sort of expense again - like the pasta at £4.75 and the cheese at £6.81. But the overall experience at the farm shop was obviously much more pleasant than rushing around in a crammed supermarket.
The Lambing Shed is in a beautiful spot in the Cheshire countryside, and of course has the benefit of an award-winning cafe attached to it, which I made use of for a gorgeous slice of home-baked cake and coffee on my shopping visit.
The way the shop is presented, and the warm welcome from staff on every counter, makes good on the shop's statement that they "care as much about our products as we do our customers". It makes it a particularly pleasing experience, so it's up to you to decide whether that's worth spending the extra pennies on the products.
As the Lambing Shed said in its Instagram post, spending extra pennies here does help to support small local businesses, which made me feel a bit warm and fuzzy about my big shop. Which is something I can honestly say I've never felt after trudging out of a traditional supermarket.
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