A day in the life of Andrew Freemantle
A day in my life:
4am: I get up and start a hog roast pig cooking for Masons open day. Back to bed, up again at 8am in office emailing out hog roast quotes.
10am: Meeting with Charlotte from BPEX. I showed her around our just-finished meeting room and butchery.
2pm: Another meeting with Tom Lee, an engineer who is helping me dismantle an old mezzanine floor to reuse as a new store shed for catering equipment.
3.30pm: Meeting with Ollie Allen, Devon County Show secretary, about next year’s show and the Taste of the West food court I am involved with.
5pm: I take the wife and family to the Masons open day (typical farmer’s day out). I often get invited to corporate events I am catering at as a customer guest. I speak with Richard Geale, my rep, about trading in our 11-year-old 6310 (Cost £28.5k) for an equivalent new model (replacement cost £45k). I did try and barter the next 20 years’ open day hog roasts for free in return for the new tractor, but Richard would not have it. Interesting decision – considering potential food inflation, wouldn’t that be a very good deal for them? Swap complimentary tickets for two of my own hog roasts baps. We purchase a John Deere snow globe.
7.30pm: I get dropped off at the Gypsy Hill Hotel, Exeter, for a BPEX meeting about reducing pig feed cost. Dinner is sausages and mash (my own sausages – we supply them). I was briefly on the TV Tuesday night about the flooding. And my auntie asked: “Have you put weight on?” It’s no wonder, doing what I do.
Andrew Freemantle farms 300 sows on 28ha near Exeter, Devon. He sells 130 pigs a week, with 85 going to abattoirs and the rest supplying their farm shop, pork wholesale business and catering trailers. Andrew was 2008 Farmers Weekly Pig Farmer of the Year.