Farmers - this is your section which we plan to update with relevant farming news as and when we have any. Have you read Diary of a Dairy Farmer? A diary from a Devon diary Farmer. If you have any items of news that you would like to share, then let us have them and we will publish it here for other farmers to read.

Have you experience with starting-up selling your own produce? Have you invested in cream or cheese-making facilities? Have you had animals slaughtered and butchered and sell your own meat? Have you started to sell vegetables, or fruit direct?

If you have and would like to share you experiences with others and help them do the same, please send us your experiences, tips, comments, advice, pitfalls and do nots, then we will publish them here. .

Also if you know of slaughtermen, butchery services, or processers to assist dairy producers or similar services again, pass them on to us and we will begin a directory of these services

We would encourage you to look at ways of offering your produce directly. For livestock there are opportunities to have a slaughterman and butcher prepare some of your animals. We know of one farmer in Devon who has an arrangement with his local butcher who not only butchers the animal but then makes sausages, of various varieties and packages them with the farm label. The farmer then has the produce back and then sells this direct.

People are often happy to wait for the right produce, so keep customers informed as to when you will have produce ready, or have regular availability on your entry here at FarmsDirect.org. If you can deliver larger orders this will also help.

For dairy-based produce again it is possible to make small quantities and let the customer know when you will have cream, cheese, yoghurt, ice cream available.