The cottage
Here at Yellow Door Cottage, everything is about the food and everything we do is done with love and care. We grow our own veggies and rear our own meat. We try to do this as naturally as possible, from ‘hand picking’ caterpillars to feeding our pigs unwanted apples.
Grown with passion
While it is mostly Amanda’s love for anything with four legs that sets our high welfare standards, we can’t deny that we passionately believe that happy animals make for tasty meat.
We are by no means big, so many of our farming methods are old fashioned and labour intensive. This drives our ethos to waste as little as possible and is reflected in our seasonal menus and products, which vary depending on what’s available or needs to be used up.
Made with love
Because of this, our jams and chutneys are only available in the quantities as nature allows each year, so once it’s gone it’s gone and a recipe may not be back until there is another glut a few years later. It may seem odd to want to run a business this way, but there is something very special about eating food that is super fresh, in the climate in which it is produced – you know that everything tastes better on holiday, at Yellow Door, we try to achieve that feeling every day!
Amanda’s cooking reflects everything that we stand for, local, hearty, tasty. If you join us for supper club or book her to cook for you in any way, you can be sure of a hug on a plate that just makes you smile.
Our team
Meet the wonderful team at Yellow Door Cottage who make it all possible
About Amanda
I’m not a farmer, nor am I a chef but I did spend my childhood following my Dad around the farm and cooking with my Mum in the kitchen. All I ever wanted to do was to farm but somehow, I found myself working in banking! I realised that I loved working with people and that I was organised, I worked hard and I developed a career that took me all over Europe, sometimes the world.
I grew up as a farm labourer’s daughter and being a tom boy, followed my Dad everywhere. All I ever wanted to do as a child was work with animals, so I helped Dad as often as I could always wanting to be useful. It was only when I got my first sheep here at Yellow Door that I realised how much he had taught me through his patience and our shared time together.
About Stan
The man silly enough to marry Amanda in the first place and now stands by her while she works towards the dream of making Yellow Door Cottage a sustainable business!
A big man, with a big heart, he’s found helping out with the heavy lifting and he runs the big building projects around the place.
About the pigs
Our pedigree Gloucester Old Spot pigs. Paula is a gentle soul and a great mum to the piglets, she has her fine specimen of a man in Poker – over 200kg of prime pork with bad manners and teeth to match! Both love nothing better than a bucket of apples, a good rub with the scrubbing brush and a snooze in the sunshine.
About the sheep
A mixture of Dorset Downs, Dorset Polls, Suffolk Crosses and a single Welsh Black Mountain. All of our breeding stock have names and come when they are called!
Shirley, the black sheep of the family. She’s an independent spirit and is often the one off exploring on her own. Mum to Storm and Sheila, who are both sassy just like their mum!
Find out about our other sheep below.