Stephen and Jenny Devereau of Staarvey Farm won the Food Award at the recent DEFA Food and Farming Awards.

One of Stephen Devereau’s earliest memories is from when he was six or seven years old, picking courgettes at his grandfather’s farm in Surrey.

Nothing unusual about that, you may think, but this was back in the 1960s when his grandfather, Harold Poupart, was the first and only market gardener to be growing courgettes.

So rare were these vegetables in those days that Harold’s crop was sent straight up to Covent Garden where it was sold exclusively to expensive restaurants.

Harold even got a mention in one of famed cookery writer Elizabeth David’s books.

With a horticultural pedigree of this standard it is hardly surprising that Stephen and his wife Jenny have together transformed several windswept fields on the Staarvey Road into a salad and herb growing oasis.

Their seven enormous polytunnels are protected from the winds by the several thousand trees the couple planted when they first came to live there 17 years ago.

The polytunnels are filled with row upon row of happily thriving plants - all varieties of herb and salad, including micro salad leaves, edible flowers, spinach, kale, chard and endive.

All are grown organically without the use of any pesticides or chemicals.

’We grow every herb and salad you can think of - including sunflower shoots,’ says Stephen.

Looking around at all the plants and trees you can only think that there really is such a thing as ’green fingers’ and that Stephen mostly certainly has them.

He disagrees and believes it’s about ’having the right motivation and getting pleasure from it - I always get pleasure from growing healthy plants’.

The leaves and herbs are picked most days of the week and taken into a large barn which holds a chiller and a packing room, where they go to be bagged or placed into plastic boxes and labelled ready for delivery around the island.

The Devereaus initially kept hens on the farm and ran a free range egg business.

They also sold a wide range of preserves and some herbs and salad leaves at farmers’ markets around the island.

As demand for their salads and herbs grew they took the decision, in 2015, to close the egg business and concentrate on the growing and the preserves.

They now supply Robinson’s, Shoprite, the Food Assembly and top restaurants all over the island and they employ five people.

’Last year I think we sold over a ton of salad,’ says Stephen.

That’s a lot of leaves.

’People like the local aspect and the freshness of our products,’ says Jenny.

There is a seasonal aspect to everything they sell and it all fits together rather neatly.

During the winter months when even Stephen can’t grow salads they concentrate on making preserves and dressings in the purpose-built jam kitchen. They also use seasonal items such as elderflowers in July to make cordial and they will freeze locally grown summer fruits such as raspberries and rhubarb to use later in vinegars and chutneys.

Today, their daughter, Eleanor, who is home from university for the summer, is busy chopping apricots.

Two of the products from their jam kitchen, the Honey and Mustard Dressing and the Sweet Raspberry Vinegar, won Great Taste Awards this year.

Then came the Food Award accolade.

Jenny recalled: ’We don’t know who nominated us and you don’t learn until the evening of the Awards who has won. It was very exciting.’

’I’d already decided we weren’t going to win,’ adds Stephen.

He continues: ’These awards highlight what pressures there are on farming and growing and raise public awareness of what’s involved.’

The whole family was there to see them receive the award: their two sons, Seb and Alex had arrived back from a cadet trip just in the nick of time to join them in the official photograph.

Jenny says: ’It was a really nice recognition and a nice accolade to win.’

Staarvey Farm products to look out for:

â?¢ Organic lettuce: the crispiest, freshest lettuce leaves, full of flavour - just how you remember it and how lettuce ought to be.

â?¢ Roast Garlic Dressing - intense garlicky flavours and also great for marinating meat.

â?¢ Sweet Raspberry Vinegar - makes a lovely light salad dressing and also lovely poured over ice cream or yogurt - winner of a great taste award this year.