A celebration of the taste of Cumbria...

The second Fell Gather event will have an even bigger food focus this year. The festival takes place in Cockermouth on Saturday, June 13, and is a celebration of Cumbrian farming and food.

One of the highlights of the day will surely be the announcement of the winner of Made in Cumbria's popular Cumberland Sausage competition. Butchers and other food business from around the county have entered their takes on this, the most well-known and popular of traditional Cumbrian foods.

For those visitors who would like to try their hand at making their own sausages, Peter Gott will be demonstrating how to do just that. Peter breeds rare breed pigs and wild boars at his Sillfield Farm in the south of the county. He makes fantastic pork products which he sells through his farm shop and in many other food shops around Cumbria. He epitomises our community of passionate artisan food producers, and he has become something of an ambassador for Cumbrian food.

Another ambassador is Annette Gibbons, who has had her own tv show, has written a book about Cumbrian food producers and now runs her Cumbria on a Plate food safaris. She will be one of the judges in the Cumberland sausage competition, and she will also be doing food demonstrations using the principles of the Slow Food movement; good, clean, fair. She'll be cooking using, among other local produce, new potatoes grown very locally at Plaskett Lands.

Other activities during the festival will include demonstrations about bee keeping, brewing beer, making butter and cooking fish, the latter by Whitehaven chef Ricky Andalcio. Fell Gather is held at Mitchell's Lakeland Livestock Centre in Cockermouth.

Content and photography supplied by artisan-food.com