Bodnant Welsh Food - food from the Vale of Ffestiniog

Business was brisk at Furnace Farm Shop, part of Bodnant Welsh Food, on its first Saturday. From the car park we followed the smell of baking bread. At the fruit and veg display I filled a brown paper bag with broad beans and placed them in a large wicker basket; much more pleasing than a plastic bag into a trolley.

The deli counter was temptation, full of new tastes to explore including cheeses from the on-site dairy. A few slices of air cured ham from Trealy Mon at £45 per kilo. Sausage rolls were more to our taste - watching a film later that night the last roll was sliced into wafer thin rondels and shared round.

Good to see Purple Moose beers on display and Cynan’s shiitake mushrooms (fresh and dried) from Nantmor.

Top marks to master butcher Ian Miles for the meat counter, his salt marsh lamb sourced from the Vale of Ffestiniog. Black beef even more local with just a fourteen mile round trip to the abattoir and back. We chose minted lamb henry for our supper with the broad beans and our own freshly dug new potatoes.

The setting is good. Across the farmyard, now courtyard, an ice cream parlour and a long thin cattle shed converted into a tea room. In a corner the National Bee Keeping Centre for Wales. Plenty to see and do. Upstairs is a posh restaurant and on the top floor a cookery school.

This is what it looked like just before the official opening: