The Ask.
Hello, I'm Ade and as I'm asking for your help, I should let you know I will be heart on sleeve honest with you, thats just my way. Its been a pretty awful couple of years, hasn't it? A shocker even. If the last 2 years had been different I'd dare say we'd never have met here, but, here we are.
We decided a while back to step off the train heading for aspirational world domination of the Gin Industry and we set about simply making something really bloody special instead of lots of average stuff. We've watched distillery after distillery dropping off the game board over the past year, all good people, good products. What is the issue? Too many of us, doing the same thing.
We had an idea to make our own stoneware flasks and fill them with the very, very best gin we could make. So, we bought an old kiln (made in 1992, the year I left school) off eBay, from a lovely bloke who drove it all the way from Montrose in the back of his campervan. I've spent the past few months watching YouTube videos, reading dusty old books and trying, failing, trying, adjusting and recently, properly getting the hang of pottery.
The flasks are now in production. I make just 2 per day, yes 2! This is where you come in, if you've read this far, maybe we can tempt you?
What are the funds for?
We need to upgrade our kiln, we aren't being ageist, but that kiln is small, slow and hard work! We need to buy more moulds, so I can make 10 per day. There will never be more than 2,500 of the flasks made per year, keeping them desirable and special. We also need to build a drying rack for the casts. We want to improve our onsite shop and develop a speakeasy to take advantage of our fully licensed premises in this idyllic rural setting.
Basically, we just want a chance to do something amazing, memorable, unique, special and from the heart, something we can be proud of, that brings joy to folk and celebrates the farm and Derbyshire and we need help, your help.
About Ade, Bec and Fred.
Together we are The Church Farm Craft Company, a team of two middle aged humans with eclectic and varied career paths who've found their calling at the distillery on Church Farm and a very friendly and occasionally smelly Cockapoo, called Fred, who joins us in our exploits and endeavours.
We have a small rural business, a distillery and pottery running out of repurposed sheds and barns on Church Farm in Barlow, Derbyshire. We grow and forage our own botanicals and we make nano batch gins, rums, vodka and liqueurs on our little hand built still.
During lockdown we diversified the business to survive, we started making craft candles and thats led onto making the candles for Chatsworth House and moving into stoneware ceramic, for the flasks and for candles too.
Bec is the multi talented engine room of the business, she is the distiller, forager and candle maker. Ade is the creative force and business head, he founded the business and has created all of the brands, artwork, designs and continues to spill out ideas, some good and some, not so good.
The pottery is a shared passion, Ade does most of the clay work and Bec loves to glaze. Hand labelling and hand finishing of all the products is a shared job, as is delivering all the lovingly crafted products out to all the lovely customers in their tired but willing 15 year old Land Rover.
Our business is run off batteries which are solar charged. We try to be as plastic free as possible, we compost our spent botanicals, we collect our cardboard boxes and re-use them and we offer a refill service (shop only) for our spirits.
We rent the original farm house on Church Farm (which is confusingly called Top farm) in Barlow, along with the distillery. Living on the farm for the past five years has taught us so much about the seasonality of produce and the shear hard work involved in keeping this great nation fed.
You can visit us anytime for a chat about this project and see what we are doing with your hard earned money, chat about distilling, pottery, business in general or about life on the farm, life with a cockapoo or even the weather!
We are really easy going and we love to show folk what we are up to, cause at the end of the day, engaging with like minded people is what any business is about.