Biffo & Spanky Special Christmas Hampers - Made to Order

Hidden away behind The Farmhouse restaurant and the car park behind the local Tesco store in West Malling High Street is a wonderful little delicatessen called Biffo & Spanky, where you always receive a warm and friendly welcome from Mick and Richard.

Mick & Richard will make up a Christmas Hamper of your choice

Biffo & Spanky offers a special made to order Christmas Hamper service with a superb range of quality foods, fine meats and cheeses, quality teas and coffees, truffles, crackers, pates, caviar, dips, bread, olives, fine spirits, wines or fresh coffee beans.

Christmas Hampers - Made to Order at Biffo & Spanky

It is impossible not to be welcomed into this lovely, little barn where you can choose from their huge selection of special foods and ask for a Christmas Hamper that is made especially to your request.



Maybe Grandad loves those special cheeses or Grandma would love some Chocolate Truffles with her favourite ground coffee beans!  Why not pop in and ask for your very own  hamper to be made up.

And once you've chosen they will put your items into a lovely wicker basket and wrap it for you!. And all service comes with a smile and the odd "Christmas Cracker" of a joke!

Enjoy a coffee while you wait or give them a call on 01732 871717 to find out more......

Christmas Shopping in West Malling

Christmas is a time when community spirit is at its best, so it’s a wonderful opportunity to support your local shops and businesses. We all shop and spend more in the run up to Christmas, so if that extra money can be spent in neighbourhood shops, on locally sourced products, it can help to sustain our local economies.

Walking into your local town to browse for Christmas goodies will make you feel far more festive than picking them up in the supermarket, and you may find the quality of the products in the local shops is so much better you carry on shopping there right through the New Year.

In a recent post we looked at the many advantages of shopping locally. These included the opportunity of buying fresh, local, organic produce that hasn’t travelled halfway around the world, the personal friendly service you receive in small local stores, and the environmentally friendly effect of walking into town rather than driving to out-of-town stores. All these benefits are particularly relevant during the Christmas period.

If you’d like to support the local shops and suppliers of the West Malling area when you’re preparing for Christmas this year, here are a few ideas on where you can pick up those festive essentials:

Christmas turkey. The most important item on anyone’s Christmas shopping list is a turkey for the big day. Why not combine shopping locally with supporting a worthwhile charity, when you order a delicious organic Christmas turkey from Spadework Farm Shop? Spadework is a charity that enables people with learning difficulties to develop independence and personal skills. Why not pick up your Christmas tree while you’re placing your order?

Christmas veggies. This is an easy one as there’s no better place to pick up fresh, locally produced vegetables than the West Malling Farmer’s Market. Held in the High Street on the fourth Sunday of each month, the farmer’s market is beautifully timed to take place on Sunday 22nd December. Look out for tasty cranberry sauce and chutneys alongside the parsnips, sprouts, and spuds.

Christmas cards and wrap. There’s another chance to support a valuable local charity when you’re looking for your Christmas cards. The Heart of Kent Hospice shop, located on West Malling High Street, has a stylish selection of cards and you’ll know your pennies are going to good use supporting palliative care for local people.

Christmas decorations. Nothing warms the dark days of winter like a Christmas candle, and at Katie’s Candles and Gifts in Abbey Arcade you can pick up gorgeous candles with festive scents ranging from orange, clove and cinnamon, to nutmeg and ginger. All their candles are hand poured with eco soy wax and natural cotton wicks, and are made in West Malling.

It adds an extra sparkle to Christmas when you know that all the seasonal food you’re eating, and all the festive decorations around you, are sourced locally. In a couple of weeks we’ll be publishing a West Malling Christmas gift guide, so look out for ideas about what to buy every member of you family, right here in West Malling.

Why West Malling Farmers Market is worth a visit

One of the best things about living in the West Malling area is the fantastic Farmers Market that takes place on the 4th Sunday of each month. In fact the next market is just a few days away on 28 April 2013 and we can’t wait to browse the stalls that line the High Street; after all it’s what that beautiful wide road through the centre of the town was designed for.

West Malling Farmers Market

In the national media recently there have been a lot of questions asked about the produce we eat and where it comes from, especially meat and processed foods that we buy in the supermarkets. The concerns over horse meat contamination that have filled the newspapers have only highlighted the fact that as consumers we have very little idea what is in our food, and what happens to it before it arrives on the supermarket shelves. 

Local Produce from Local Producers

A huge advantage of shopping at the West Malling Farmer’s Market is that everything sold there is produced locally and we can have direct contact with the farmers and producers themselves, asking them anything we want to know about the food we are buying. We can choose fresh meat, fish, bread, eggs, fruit, and vegetables direct from the source, and support our local economy at the same time.

As shopping directly from local producers gains popularity, other ways of sourcing local products are starting to appear. A new online service called Farm Drop has begun in London and aims to spread all over the country. Their vision is to bring together regional groups of farmers and producers with local shoppers. The shopper will order online through the Farm Drop website and the farmers will bring the produce to a local venue such as a pub or community centre for a prearranged drop off.  

The ethos of Farm Drop is to use online technology to reconnect farmers and producers with consumers in their region, strengthening local communities. They believe that food sourced locally will be fresher, healthier, and simpler. They also believe that produce sold through Farm Drop can be sensibly priced without producers losing out, because the system will eliminate the transport costs and heavy mark-up often associated with supermarket food.
 

Located in the Garden of England, West Malling is surrounded by farms and local producers, yet a huge proportion of the food we eat is imported from abroad. We all have a fantastic opportunity to choose good value, fresh, local food direct from the producers, whether we visit the farmer’s market, buy from local farm shops, or even set up our own regional Farm Drop.

There is also a Farmers Market that has started at Offham.  This is run on the 2nd Saturday of each month at Spadework in Teston Road, Offham.  With the arrival of Offham Farmers Market too, the West Malling area is lucky to have the benefit of access to 2 markets a month where we can buy local produce and to talk directly to the people who produce it. 

More details on Offham Farmers Market and we will be letting folks know more about the producers and stallholders on the West Malling Local Shops website very soon.

In the meantime, with the warmer weather coming, it's a great month to visit a Farmers Market to catch up on what's available.