The Spring Lane Farm shop is up on Spring Lane over on Mapperley Plains in Nottingham. I think that over the last year I have tried a fair amount of produce from the shop, and quite a lot of the time I have quite sadly photographed it with the intention of turning it into a blog post at some point. So today I am finally putting ‘pen to paper’ or to be more accurate ‘fingers to keyboard’

On their site they describe themselves better that I can “In our Butchery we sell our own produced Beef, local Lamb & Pork, chicken and we make our own sausages – 15 varieties. We have a bakery where we bake fresh bread, cakes, pork pies and meat pies. We sell Free Range Eggs from our own laying hens and grow Wilja Potoates on the Farm, also sold in the shop. We have a wide variety of cheeses and home cooked meats ranging from own cured Ham, home made Haslet and scotch eggs!”

This morning I was sitting down to my brunch and realised that everything on my plate had come from the Spring Lane Farm Shop. It had not been a consious decision as I was starting to cook, it was just an amalgam of a whole set of quality ingredients from the fridge and cupboard that just so happened to have come from Spring Lane Farm Shop.

So what was on that plate?

Chicken Meat Sausages

Smoked Back Bacon

Free Range Eggs from the Farm

That brunch was almost themed along that question of ‘which came first the chicken or the egg’ as I was having some chicken and lemon herb sausages, and free range farm eggs all from the shop. The sausages had been a last minute impulse buy as they were only £1.63 for a small pack of 6. They ended up being really tasty, and even though made with chicken they stayed moist and did not dry out while grilling. The eggs are always fresh and you can tell that they were laid not too long ago as the egg white stays pert and firm in the pan and doesn’t run everywhere like you often get with supermarket eggs. The bacon is always good here, I like the smoked back bacon, if I can get smoked streaky I like it more.

I like their bakery although I have not yet worked out the best time to visit to get everything I want. One thing I always try to get my hands on are the white baps topped with baked cheese. They make excellent homes for a cracking bacon sandwich! They also make pies both sweet and savoury which are well worth sampling.

Got to love the meat counter

And that Deli Counter too

There are so many good farm shops in this county that I have to confess I do not just frequent this one, I kind of spread myself thinly amongst them, a little less thinly than the butter on that slice of toast I carved from one of their freshly baked loaves, but not enough to be eligible to buy shares in the shop. All I will say is that if we are this side of town we will pop in and more often than not spend too much money on the essentials and also non-essentials.

‘Is it too late to rustle up another bacon sandwich?’ I am pondering as I press submit

I digress (for a change)

To find the Farm Shop you basically need to know where Spring Lane is, just drive across Plains Road then Mapperley Plains past all the shops, then turn right. Or maybe put it into your sat nav to be safer.