Jilly Rowdon
Jilly Rowdon, Jillys Farm Shop, Dartmouth
“Jilly’s Farm Shop - a Farm Shop in the truest sense of the word”
A Food & Drink feature (July 2008) by David Jones, Manna from Devon
Anyone who has shopped for meat in Dartmouth will have come across Jilly Rowdon. For many years she has had a stall in the corner of the Old Market Square, selling the produce from her farm at Lower Norton on market days, usually helped by her mother, Flo. More recently she could also be found at Dartmouth Farmers Market each month. However, eighteen months ago she took the bold step of becoming a permanent fixture when she took over the lease of the Market Stores outside the Old Market Square and turned it into Jilly’s Farm Shop.
Quite how Jilly finds time to run a full time retail business is anybody’s guess, because this is a Farm Shop in the truest sense of the word; that is, an extension of the farm itself. So before the shop opens the stock have to be fed, abattoir arrangements made, animal welfare issues taken care of and any of the million and one other farm tasks dealt with. But then, like anyone from a farming background, Jill is no stranger to hard work. I once asked her about holidays and she said she’d taken one….. once. That sort of work ethic is completely alien to someone who hasn’t been born and bred to an agricultural lifestyle.
Jilly’s father kept the farm before her, running a dairy herd as well as beef and lamb. The dairy has now gone and pigs brought in with anything up to about 400 animals at any time. I say about because Jill never counts the total exactly as superstition has it that if you count your livestock you’ll lose one or more soon afterwards.
Having taken over what had been a greengrocer’s, the shop still sells fruit and veggies alongside meat from the farm. Where possible the produce is local but this is not always as easy as it sounds as many producers find it easier to sell everything to one merchant than to service lots of small shops. But one of the attractions for regular customers is the ability to buy seasonal stuff that may have only been picked the day before as well as Jill’s own and other local produce such as Creedy Carver free range chickens, Heron Valley drinks, and Langage Dairy products.
Fruit and veggies that are going past their best are taken by Anna, one of the crew who run the shop, only to be brought back once she has turned them into pickles or chutney. That sort of thriftiness appeals to me a lot. Like many small shops in and around town, Jill has faced challenges from the arrival of M & S and Lidl. The business has bounced back after initial dips following the opening of each of these, but isn’t quite back to the level reached before they arrived. The next worry is the imminent opening of Sainsbury at the top of town. Jill is very down to earth about this, “We’ll see what happens” she says.
Our favourite Jill Rowdon story, which we tell all the time at the cooking school when waxing lyrical about local food, is that a couple of years after first meeting her, Jill proudly announced to us that she had named a calf after Holly. Holly was rather unnerved at first but soon realised that this was a compliment. Since then there has been another Holly and a Davey calf and we’re delighted. Try getting that sort of personal touch at Sainsbury!
Jilly's Farm Shop, Market Square, Dartmouth 01803 832849
First published June 2008, By The Dart
