Daylesford Organics are inviting us all to their Summer Festival, which takes place on Saturday, May 21, from 10am to 5pm. The organisers promise will stimulate the taste buds of dedicated foodies and provide fun for the whole family (including the dog). You will find Daylesford Organics Farm Shop and farm on the A436, close to the boundary between Oxfordshire and Gloucestershire and just five miles from Chipping Norton.

If you have not visited this farm shop before but would like to plan a fun day out this weekend, it’s certainly worth making for Daylesford where entrance is free.

Their aim in staging a Summer Festival is to provide us all with a chance to meet local artisan producers, taste their produce and enjoy cookery demonstrations that will be taking place in their stylish new cookery school.

It’s here that visitors can meet the school’s head tutor, Vladimir Niza, whose enthusiasm for freshly harvested seasonal produce is infectious. Vladimir worked for a considerable time with Raymond Blanc and is also a trained nutritionist. Like Raymond he takes a great interest in the science of food. Vladimir will be showing visitors some of his inspirational menu ideas and offering top tips using fresh ingredients he has picked that very morning in Daylesford’s well-stocked kitchen garden.

Within minutes of meeting him you will notice that Raymond’s amazing enthusiasm and passion for fresh ingredients has rubbed off on Vladimir, who has designed the cookery school courses around produce produced on the farm.

Award-winning food writers Rose Prince and Jane Clarke will be joining him and giving informative talks and sharing their philosophies of food with the visitors.

Jane has just brought out an excellent book entitled Nourish (Collins & Brown, £20). She believes that food nourishes your life, not just your body.

Daylesford is a highly regarded working farm where food is taken really seriously by all who work there. The food they produce is not a cheap option, but as they strive for quality rather than quantity, you get what you pay for. The livestock for example — which include rare breeds such as Gloucestershire cattle —graze in the lush organic pastures that sit deep in the Cotswold hills surrounding the farm, and situated but a short distance from the creamery where the cheese is made.

The big cheese-tasting session that takes place during the festival is worth attending as it provides a chance to talk to John Longman, Daylesford’s chief cheese maker, who produces Daylesford’s award-winning cheeses, including two superb Cheddars, using traditional methods.

While the milk from Daylesford Friesians and the lush meadows in which they graze obviously have an influence on its taste, the fact that the cheeses are turned regularly by hand as they mature, to distribute their flavour helps too.

John is proud that his Cheddar is matured for at least nine months; the extra reserve Cheddar, kept for Christmas, is stored for even longer. Other cheeses John and his team make include the Adlestrop, a medium strength, semi-soft cheese which is rind-washed with a culture to influence its unique taste, then matured for at least ten weeks.

The Baywell cheese, named after Daylesford’s herb-rich pastures, is a soft-bodied cow’s milk cheese with a glorious mature flavour. Obviously John also makes both Single and Double Gloucestershire cheeses, the Single Gloucestershire now having a PDO (Protected Designated Original) and matured for two to three months. No visitor should leave Daylesford without tasting these cheeses.

Obviously a great cheese should be complemented by great bread, and the award-winning Daylesford Bakery can supply that. Head baker Eric Duhamel is particularly proud that all his breads are produced with slow fermentation methods in order to develop their flavours and are shaped by hand in the true artisan way without the use of additives or chemicals.

They never sell yesterday’s bread and always feature a bread of the month — this month’s being tomato bread. He also bakes white and wholemeal sandwich loaves, seven seed sour doughs, Danish rye, spelt sourdough, pumpernickel, fruit bread, baguettes and rolls.

The children can have a great day out too by interacting with the chickens, the ducks, goslings, calves and lambs, and driving toy tractors round a miniature farm course. There are also children’s cookery demonstrations in the cookery school and picnic area that is close to the ice cream and chilled drinks stalls. There is a small farmers’ market too.

Dry stone walling and willow weaving demonstrations are also taking place throughout the day, along with a hedge laying demonstration and a dog show at Lily’s Kitchen to which all dogs are welcome, even those without pedigrees.

Last year, the Summer Festival attracted more than 3,000 visitors. Organisers expect even more this year.