We are what we eat

Farmer Clifford Freeman is a passionate advocate of local produce. He tells Katie Jarvis why we should find out everything we possibly can about our food

- Clifford Freeman

Clifford Freeman is a Gloucestershire farmer who believes we should know everything about the food we eat. “I don’t just want people to know that something comes from Gloucestershire. I want them to know the name of the farm where it was produced,” he says.

He keeps a prize-winning herd of rare breed Gloucester Cattle on his farm at Redmarley, where he also runs educational sessions. Local primary schoolchildren visit to meet the animals, to see the onsite butchery, and to make their own burgers from the farm’s beef. Provenance is everything.

Clifford’s love of traditional farming began in his own childhood, on the family farm at Little Cugley. “When everybody else was starting to get things in plastic packaging, we had halves of pigs hung up on the walls in the kitchen. We’d milk the cows and make our own butter,” he recalls.

His dad, Eric Freeman, is known as one of the visionaries – along with Joe Henson – who recognised the plight of Gloucestershire rare breed farm animals and helped save them from extinction. “Dad has always been interested in all the traditional Gloucestershire things people were sweeping away, which are now coming back into popularity,” Clifford says. “If it wasn’t for him, many of those things would have disappeared, including Gloucester Cattle.”