Sunday Telegraph
BEEFING UP THEIR IMAGE
Jul 18, 2010 | by Jonny Beardsall
The beefburger desperately needs a lift. While floury bread buns and obese children too readily spring to mind, the most prepossessing couple behind Muddy Boots Foods - which make burgers on the Ragley Hall Estate, Warwickshire - would urge us to think again.
"We say -- free the burger," exclaims Miranda Ballard, 28, who, with her husband, Roland, 30, will be presenting their dribble- inducing delights in the Food Village at The CLA Game Fair for the first time, where a record number of 80 food and drink producers will urge you to sample their fare.
Rehabilitating ubiquitous lumps of minced beef must have looked an unedifying task. But with fiendish-sounding combinations like goat's cheese and sun-dried tomato, Stilton and cider, leek and mushroom, and caramelised onion and mozzarella -- all recipes created by Miranda - you hope her creations taste as ravishing as they sound.
The cattle are from the family's Aberdeen Angus herd at Church Farm, Shrawley, where Roland's father, John, has farmed for 40 years. Using prime beef, hung on the bone for 21 days, the burgers are sold online, at farmers' markets and delicatessens, and in Waitrose stores in Malvern and Droitwich from November.
Grass-fed and naturally reared - which means calves single- suckle their mothers for the first seven months -- the animals are raised to the highest standards.
"It's a slow farming method but it makes for happier cattle," Miranda says.
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The Times
January 9, 2010
Marriages and engagements: ‘From the city’s bright lights to a muddy boots idyll’
Miranda Gallimore, 28, and Roland Ballard, 29, founders of Muddyboots foods, will be wed on January 16, 2010
The temperature had sunk to minus 4C at half past six on the morning we spoke to Roland and Miranda. There were, they said, five inches of snow on the ground outside their Worcestershire farmhouse, and the cows had “frosticles”.
For the past five months they have worked virtually daily until midnight, on Muddybootsfood, their business supplying Aberdeen Angus beef cuts and burgers to individual homes, local farmers’ markets and delicatessens.
It’s a far cry from their old life in London. Then Miranda would roll out of bed at 8.20am each day and walk or jog to her job as PA to Sir David Frost, for whom she worked for five years, coming into regular contact with celebrities. Roland’s days were longer — with the film company Working Title.
But neither regrets swapping a life of gym memberships and Starbucks lattes for their daily routine now on a 180-acre farm with a herd of 120 cattle.
“We’ve been ripped out of our past life,” says Miranda, who grew up in Tenbury Wells, 20 minutes up the road. Their farm belongs to Roland’s father and he grew up there. They went to neighbouring schools and their parents had also been to school together.
So they shared plenty of acquaintances when they met first, in 2001, at university in Bristol. Roland first spotted Miranda at the freshers ball. “I thought she was a ball of energy and she hasn’t diminished in any way, shape or form since then,” he says. Instantly attracted, he did not act immediately. “I was an awkward first-year student.” It took another year, a “cheesy” nightclub and a couple of beers to give Roland the courage to tell Miranda he liked her. She, on first seeing him, thought he looked like Patrick Swayze.
A first date, to see the vampire action film Blade 2, was not a success. The second, to the pub with mutual friends, was more relaxed.
They fell in love that summer. “We realised that we could not live without each other,” says Roland.
“One of my housemates said, ‘You have found a male version of you’,” says Miranda. Despite this, they split up a year after graduating.
“I had dismissed this as a puppy uni love,” says Roland. Daily chats and texts followed — “but we were strict and didn’t see each other,” recalls Miranda.
Then Roland covered for her at work for two weeks while she was on holiday. One morning Miranda walked through the door and “the rest, as they say, is history,” says Roland. Once they had moved in, they discovered they enjoyed organising projects together — such as charity fundraising events.
Setting up a business was a natural next step. “Both our parents are self-employed and have worked together,” says Miranda. “We wanted to do something we were both passionate about.”
Roland realised he wanted to propose the day they set up their first stall at a local farmers’ market. “It was obvious we were a couple and I said, ‘This is my girlfriend,’ but thought I should be saying ‘my fiancée’.”
Planning the proposal was tricky. “If your business partner is also your girlfriend it is very hard to get to Bond Street to check a ring without her noticing.”
Luckily, Miranda’s friend Sophie, a jeweller, knew her ring size. On June 30, 2009, Roland proposed on an evening walk along the Pembrokeshire coast, where his family has owned a cottage for three generations.
“He got me to suggest a nice evening walk and then said, ‘We could bring a bottle of wine’. I said, ‘What about champagne?’, as my sister had married the week before,” recalls Miranda. Initially, she was surprised. “We shouted, ‘We are going to get married’ to the sea.”
They are to be married on January 16 at St Mary’s, the Norman church in Burford where Miranda was christened. It’s just across the road from the house where she grew up and as a child she would give tours to visitors, and play at weddings with her older sister who “always made me the groom”.
On the day they are wed, the church will be decked with ivy and candles, and the guests will feast on beef and cider cup at the marquee reception that follows. They will have their honeymoon in Courmayeur, in the Italian Alps, where they will learn to ski.
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Worcester News
Seen on TV – now everyone wants to buy our burgers
6:10pm Friday 14th May 2010
THE Worcestershire couple behind a gourmet burger company have been inundated with orders since their bid to turn their brand into a household name was featured on a television programme on Monday night.
Miranda and Roland Ballard starred in the first episode of High Street Dreams, a new BBC series, which sees businesspeople offered advice to help transform small brands into major sales successes.
Viewers watched them successfully pitch their idea to buyers from Waitrose, which has now agreed to stock their Muddy Boots burgers in its Droitwich and Malvern stores.
Mrs Ballard said: “It has been amazing, completely incredible.”
She said the business, based at Church Farm, Shrawley, near Worcester, had had 145 orders in a few hours after the programme was screened.
The couple, who had previously sold their burgers at farmers’ markets, are currently in talks with Waitrose as to which products they will stock and, if they are successful, they hope to expand into other stores.
They took part in the programme after responding to an advert for businesses to take part.
During the programme, they were given advice on their branding and packaging and told to outsource their manufacturing processes so they could front the company’s marketing campaign.
Mrs Ballard said: “It was quite hard to hear it but we would be fools not to take the advice of these experts.
“Our adviser, William Kendall of Green & Blacks and the New Covent Garden food company, was just wonderful, so straight talking and no-nonsense, which we responded to really well.
“We got to meet Waitrose years before we could have met them ourselves and the programme opened that door for us, which was amazing.”
The couple left careers in London in 2008 to follow their dream of making meals and burgers from pure-bred, traceable Aberdeen Angus beef.
Since then they have run the business from Church Farm, which is owned by Mr Ballard’s father.
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Worcester News
Cream of the crop
1:59pm Monday 14th June 2010
FOUR Worcestershire food and drink producers have proved they are the cream of the crop at the Heart of England Fine Foods (Heff) Diamond Awards.
Muddy Boots Real Foods of Shrawley, near Worcester; Kit’s Kitchen of Egdon, near Drakes Broughton; Hobsons Brewery of Cleobury Mortimer; and Oxsprings, of Pershore all won Heff diamond awards at a gala dinner held at Aston Villa Football Club in Birmingham.
The awards celebrate the top food and drink available in the Heart of England region, which includes Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Birmingham and the Black Country.
There were nine product categories with a special diamond for taste and three special diamond awards which recognised business achievement in the food industry, categorised as grow, innovate and excel.
Hobsons Brewery won the special diamond award for excel and Muddy Boots Real Foods won the special diamond award for innovate.
Miranda Callimore, of Muddy Boots, said: “Winning this award means a massive amount to us. We’ve had to learn a lot about the food and drink industry and Heff has helped us with this, so to get a business award from Heff is fantastic.”
Kit’s Kitchen triumphed in the condiments and preserves category for its pickled shallots, a follow-up to its success two years ago.
Kit Bamford, of Kit’s Kitchen, said: “It’s an outstanding achievement to have won this award twice for the pickled shallots. It underpins a lot of hard work from the staff and we know it’s a good product but winning the award means we can really shout about it.”
Oxsprings was celebrated for its air-dried ham in the meat category.
Alex Oxspring said: “This is the first award I’ve won so I’m thrilled. It’s been a lot of hard work with a pioneering product so it’s great to get the recognition from Heff and the professional judges.”
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Worcester News
Country News latest - Getting back to our roots
11:19am Tuesday 6th April 2010
IT might be a long way from the streets of London to the country lanes around the village of Shrawley, near Worcester, but a young couple are hoping the get-up-and-go they acquired from working in the nation’s capital will prove useful to other local farmers and growers when it comes to selling their wares.
Although both originally from well-known county families, Roland and Miranda Ballard carved careers in London in film production and the media before deciding to return to Worcestershire and set up their Muddy Boots Real Food enterprise at Church Farm, where Roland’s father John runs an award-winning herd of pedigree Aberdeen Angus beef cattle.
Now the Muddy Boots HQ will see the launch of an exciting new initiative for farmers and growers in the West Midlands later this month, when it hosts the Farming and Food Enterprise Development Project aimed at individuals and businesses producing, retailing or serving home-grown and farm produced foods direct to the consumer.
Muddy Boots, through Growing Rural Enterprise, is inviting producers to go along and learn from its business practices. The event will include a farm walk, a chance to learn more about the business, a delicious homeproduced lunch and an informative seminar on marketing.
Roland, aged 30, and Miranda, 28, started trading as Muddy Boots Real Foods in December 2008.
Miranda said: “We thought it was the right time to come back from London and set up our own company. It was something we had talked about for a while because we both came from families who ran their own businesses.”
As background, Miranda is the daughter of Edward Gallimore, chartered surveyor and estate agent in Tenbury Wells, while John Ballard has been at Church Farm for more than 40 years.
Miranda said: “We are so looking forward to welcoming people to Muddy Boots. Roland and I are passionate about quality produce and total traceability so we love getting the opportunity to demonstrate the whole process, from the field to the table.”
Muddy Boots strives to create the highest quality products, from hand-made meals and burgers to innovative dishes such as Stilton and Herefordshire cider burgers and Gran’s Michelmas Pie.
Julie White, of Growing Rural Enterprise, said: “This is a great example of two generations working together and producing a quality product with traditional values. The project is keen to see generations uniting to learn together and move forward with their businesses.”
The event at Church Farm, Shrawley, will be the first in a series across the West Midlands allowing delegates to ‘learn in the field’ from walking the supply chain, viewing good ideas in practice and, finally, tasting the produce.
Each supply chain visit will be combined with a short seminar on one of the aspects observed, such as marketing, community-supported agriculture and adding value to farm produce.
Accredited business adviser Miss White said: “These events are an enjoyable, informal way of learning about how other businesses operate.
“Times are hard for farming. These events encourage businesses to look at what they have got and what they can do with it while also networking and sharing ideas with like-minded people.”
The visit to Muddy Boots Real Foods will take place on Thursday, April 15, and is part of a diverse range of practical seminars, the aim of which is to highlight and share good practice, while encouraging the discussion of ideas, challenges and opportunities.
Growing Rural Enterprise is delivering the project in association with Heart of England Fine Foods, the regional food group.
The project is funded by LandSkills West Midlands as part of the Rural Development Programme for England.
LandSkills West Midlands is managed by Lantra on behalf of Advantage West Midlands.
For more information about the Farming and Food Enterprise Development Project contact Julie White at Growing Rural Enterprise on 07971 666474 or log on to the website growingruralenterprise.co.uk.
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Worcester News
Features
I was Sir David Frost’s PA and had an amazing time
12:52pm Tuesday 13th July 2010
THE glitterati of London society were gathered in the quadrangle of Sir David Frost’s home in the heart of Chelsea for his legendary summer drinks party.
There was Baroness Thatcher with daughter Carol, Joanna Lumley, Billy Connolly, Sir John Major, Sir Elton John, Tara Palmer-Tomkinson etc, etc. About 200 famous faces and everyone a household name.
And on the door, ticking them off on the invitation list as they arrived, was Miranda Ballard of Worcestershire firm Muddy Boots.
That’s not strictly true, because although Miranda is now one half of the “real food” farming enterprise at Shrawley, near Worcester, in those days – just a few years ago – she was Sir David’s PA.
Even so, it was a quantum leap for a girl who was temping as a secretary when her agency took a call saying Frostie, as he is universally known among London cabbies, wanted a new assistant.
From a shortlist of five, Miranda got the job.
She said: “It was almost surreal.
One minute I was sitting in some firm’s office doing the usual sort of office-y things and the next I was picking up the phone and there was someone like Sir John Major or Chris Evans on the other end of it.
“The very first call I took on my first morning was from John Major, who wanted to talk to Sir David about something to do with cricket. They are both great followers of the game. After I put him through I kept thinking to myself: ‘That was John Major on the phone. I’ve just spoken to John Major. Actually, I don’t really think I every got over the feeling of being starstruck’.”
Born in Birmingham, but brought up at Burford, just across the Teme bridge from Tenbury Wells, Miranda was privately educated at a girls’ boarding school and had set her sights on being an actress.
She said: “I love feisty female characters like Judi Dench or Maggie Smith. It must go with my red hair.”
However, she soon realised the chances of making it a paying career were not great and so called on her secretarial skills to tide her over. That was when the agency she was working for received the call from Sir David.
Miranda said: “Obviously he was a name I knew because I had grown up with Breakfast With Frost on the television every Sunday morning and I vaguely remembered him being involved in some important interviews with American President Richard Nixon when I was much younger, but I didn’t know that much about him.
“I think my mother was almost more excited than I was when I got the job. I phoned her up with the news and she apparently ran around the house in a fit. She dashed up to the attic to see if she could find any old copies of That Was The Week That Was.”
Miranda auditioned for the job with a week’s trial and her first morning hardly got off to an auspicious start.
She said: “I got in early, before Sir David, who had stopped to do a few things along the way. I had been told the dress code was smart/casual and so I wore a blazer and long skirt but even that turned out to be a bit too smart.
“I was sitting at my desk waiting for him to arrive when the lift doors opened and out he stepped.
Anxious to make a good impression I immediately jumped up out of my chair – and tripped straight over my handbag. I really screwed up. I was so embarrassed. But he just laughed. He was so relaxed and funny. He was soon laughing and joking with the others in the office.
It was obvious he had a really good team around him and I knew I really wanted that job.”
One of her first tasks was to check through the Christmas card list of Sir David and his wife Lady Carina, a job accomplished in the back of the Bentley during drives across London.
Miranda said: “They send out about 900 cards every year and I had to catch up on all the deaths, divorces and separations since the previous Christmas. When I was checking things like: are Chris Evans and Billie Piper still together? I realised what a surreal world I had fallen into.”
However, the highlight of every year was the summer party, which Miranda had to organise.
She said: “Just standing on the door watching all these people walk past was amazing. Some were exactly like you expect them to be, while others weren’t at all. The younger ones would walk straight past expecting you to recognise them, which you did, of course, while the older ones were more respectful of protocol.
“When Margaret Thatcher arrived, she came up to me and said politely: ‘It’s Thatcher’. I mean she’s one of the best-known faces in the country and here she was telling me her name. She was also one of the few to come up afterwards and say thank you.
Carol Thatcher did, too.
“Another lovely person was Michael Palin. I was standing by the door when this gentle voice said: “It’s Palin..... with a P.’ I thought I KNOW who you are. You are Michael Palin. I’ve just spoken to Michael Palin! Joanna Lumley was so natural, too. Absolutely charming.”
Miranda worked for Sir David Frost for five years and thought long and hard before leaving two years ago.
She said: “I was enjoying myself immensely but there were no promotion prospects. There was only me and Sir David. Also, I had always wanted to set up my own business and time was marching on.”
Most magical moment?
Miranda said: “Well, I’m told Rory Bremner can do an impression of me.”
After that, there was really no where else for her to go.
