Our Visit to Mash Direct’s Farm: How Veg Goes from Field to Fork

Travel and food are our passion, so you can imagine how delighted we were during our recent visit to Mash Direct’s farm in Northern Ireland.

As a busy family, we love learning about convenient food that makes our life easier, especially when they taste as good and fresh as homemade meals.

Our visit to Mash Direct, an independent, family owned farm in Northern Ireland, showed us how the Hamilton family take their vegetables from field to fork within only a few hours, locking in nutrients and freshness.

We loved meeting Martin, Tracy and their sons Lance and Jack, and learning more about their family business, as well as visiting the potato field and the big kitchen.

Although Mash Direct was founded in 2004, they are expert vegetable growers with six generations of farming expertise. They currently produce a range of convenient potato and vegetable dishes.

In the picture above, you can see the tractor they first used in the farm. It is now retired and replaced by a modern tractor. 

Harvesting potatoes was an unique experience, we’ve never been in one of those fancy tractors before. It was impressive how quickly the potatoes were harvested. 

The lovely Tracy explained to us how the harvesting process works. Little man couldn’t believe the amount of potatoes in front of him and was happy to pick them straight from the field. 

Once harvested, the next step was transferring the potatoes to a storage room, ready to be washed and sent to the big kitchen, where the fresh vegetables were peeled and steamed cooked to perfection, then mashed.

The whole process of turning fresh vegetables into delicious Mash Direct products happens very quickly, which ensures the vegetables keep their texture, taste and nutritious benefits.

After our hard work at the field harvesting potatoes, we enjoyed a delicious meal of Mash Direct products: mashed potato, champ, carrot and parsnip mash, red cabbage and beetroot and sweet potato fries. 

We loved our delicious meal and were pleased to find out they are low in salt, free from artificial flavouring, preservatives and colouring. No wonder the dishes have won so many awards!

As we visited the farm just before Halloween, we were treated to some Halloween fun, using Mash Direct products to create spooky dishes.

Little man really enjoyed using potato rosti, cheese, olives, tomato, peppers and anything he could find, to make the scariest face he could think of.

We also carved pumpkins inside the Mash Direct bus, which both little man and hubby enjoyed!

A massive thank you to Mash Direct for showing us around the farm and the big kitchen. We loved our experience!

For more information, please check: http://www.mashdirect.com/

I was under no obligation to write this post, just wanted to share our experience.