Yeo Valley started with a farm rather than a brand. The Mead family took on Holt Farm in the Yeo Valley below the Mendips in 1961, began making yoghurt in the farmhouse in the early 1970s, and turned to organic production in the early 1990s. Three generations on it is still family owned and run from the same corner of Somerset, and it has become the country’s best known organic dairy name while keeping the slower commitments that organic and regenerative farming ask for: soil first, herds fed off pasture, hedgerows and gardens treated as part of the operation rather than as the scenery around it.
The values line up without anyone having to say so out loud. Yeo Valley makes food that turns up in ordinary kitchens every morning and takes it seriously anyway. We make knives in a converted sawmill on the edge of Savernake Forest, in numbers small enough that every blade passes through our own hands. Family scale, rooted in one bit of English countryside, more interested in doing the thing properly than in doing it quickly.
So we made the Breakfast Pair. The Sunday roast has always had the good knives, while breakfast makes do with whatever happens to be nearest the butter dish, and this corrects the imbalance: a hand-serrated Finesse for fruit, bread, bacon and melon, and a rounded Savernake spreading knife for butter, jam and honey. The handles are English yew, with a British Racing green liner and our green spine detail, a nod to fields, hedgerows and the valley where Yeo Valley began. Made in Wiltshire from Swedish 14C28N stainless steel, hardened in small batches to 60 Rockwell.
A very limited pair, for people who believe the first proper food of the day deserves better.
In collaboration with Yeo Valley Organic.