Organic Meringues, Eggs, Hens at Laydilay Farm, Devon

LAYDILAY ORGANIC EGGS

Welcome to our site. We are Laydilay - a small family run business producing cracking eggs and a few spin off products. All Organic, and all ours. Feel free to look around and have a look at our products - hens (when available), eggs, mayonnaise (see below) and meringues

FEBRUARY 2010:

Meet Us - Local Festivals/ Shows/ Markets for 2010:

Feb 17th Buckland Abbey Food and Drink

March 6 & 7th Moretonhampstead Food Festival

April 9-11 Exeter Food Festival

July 25th Totnes Show

Sept 19th Organic Food Festival, Bristol

FRESH ORGANIC MAYONNAISE:

Introducing you to our (nearly new) product.  Launched in June 2009 we have had a few months of learning and making fresh organic mayonnaise for Riverford Organic Vegetables and for our local shops.

We make the mayonnaise ourselves in Ashburton using the finest ingredients we can find. We use our own eggs and egg yolks (pasteurised) and local Devonshire cider vinegar (also pasteurised).  We source our sunflower oil from Southern Europe, the sugar from Brazil (we also use this sugar in our meringues), the lemon juice from Italy, the pepper from Sri Lanka and the Mustard Powder from Canada.

Everything is made by hand and we rely on our ingredients to stabilise the mayonnaise so we haven't had to rely on any extra additives or preservatives. The final product is not pasteurised - which means we have to take extra care in our production to make sure the mayonnaise is absolutely clean when it is put into jars. We believe, by not pasteurising, the mayonnaise has a lighter texture and the flavour is not compromised.  For those of you who have bought it, I hope you enjoy it.

LAYDILAY - A Brief History:

April 2004, owing to an increased demand on Organic Eggs, Mandy started up a small organic egg enterprise with 70 mid lay hens in a small rented orchard in Buckfastleigh.  Having worked with dairy cows in the past, Mandy was a little uncertain how she would take to hens - as it turned out they were an absolute delight - magnificent, majestic black rocks.  They were proudly called 'Ladies who Lay'.  As we were still deciding what to call the enterprise, Mandy's mother suggested that the name should reflect 'ladies who lay' and it was Andy's younger brother that pointed out that there was a song by Bob Dylan called 'Lay Lady Lay' - hence Laydilay was born. Having registered with the Egg Marketing Board and Soil Association  we set about selling eggs and quickly realised that the demand for local organic eggs was larger than initially realised. A  new chicken house and 100 young hens followed in June.

It became apparent that if we were to expand further we would outgrow the orchard quickly so we set about looking for land of our own.  Fortunately for us 18 acres of already organic land just below Haytor in the Dartmoor National Park was up for sale and with an understanding bank manager and a house on the market - our bid was successful.  As with all best intentions, the sale took much longer to go through than anticipated but by February 2005 we were up at 'Eggy Barton' with a further two new houses and  another 200 young hens. 

The concern  of leaving rather valuable stock to the wiles of nature - particulary foxes - led to the puchase of our 2 alpacas in July 2005.  Reasearch and talking to people indicated that alpacas and llamas are very territorial and are useful at protecting stock from intruders like foxes and badgers.  Although we use electrified poultry netting, we felt that extra pairs of eyes at the site when we were not there would help us sleep more easily at night.  It is hard to judge their efficacy but since their arrival we have only had one fox strike and I feel I must attribute some of  that to Bobby and Antonio - ever vigilant!

At this point of writing (Jan 2010) this we have more than 1000 laying birds and 400 young stock.  We feel we have reached the maximum that the land can comfortably hold without disease build up and where we can give the hens the attention we feel they need and deserve.  A big THANKYOU must go out to all our customers who have supported us and to all their customers who have bought our eggs, meringues and mayonnaise.