So I’m Hairy.
Our Secret List chat with Hairy, the charismatic force behind Vicky’s Bread alongside his wife Vicky Harford, delivering artisanal sourdough to the finest independent shops, cafes, and restaurants across Devon and Cornwall for nearly two decades. When we caught up with him at the Porthleven Food Festival, where he curates the Food and Farming tent, his no-nonsense approach to bread and business was immediately apparent.
A passionate champion of traditional baking methods – “You do it how it was meant to be made. No additives”, Hairy embodies the authentic spirit of Cornwall’s independent food scene. Beyond baking, he’s a fierce advocate for small producers, personally selecting only Cornish vendors for both the Porthleven Food Festival and Royal Cornwall Show. His commitment extends to supporting emerging talent, sometimes offering reduced rates to help newcomers gain exposure.
With strong opinions on everything from the “desert” created by supermarket culture to the extraordinary walks of West Cornwall, Hairy offers a refreshingly unfiltered perspective on Cornwall’s food landscape, celebrating the madness and creativity that makes the region’s independent food scene truly special.
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I’m Vicky Harford’s partner and husband, and we’ve been running Vicky’s Bread for nineteen years this year, and we only do wholesale. So, our business is making the best bread and delivering it to local shops in the whole of Devon and Cornwall. Shops, cafes, restaurants, pubs, but we don’t have our own shops. We don’t go in competition with our customers.
And we deliver seven days a week to the whole of Devon and Cornwall by 08:00 every day, three hundred and sixty days a year.
Fantastic. One of my first interviews yesterday was with Jude Keriama. And when I was asking him about his top food producers, Vicky’s Bread was there, and he was saying how he loved it all. What’s great about Vicky’s Bread?
Baking bread like we do is really simple. You do it how it was made meant to be made. You don’t add anything, so there’s no additives. It’s only sourdough. Use some commercial yeast in some of the breads because you need a little bit. You can’t be totally sourdough. We don’t make cakes. We don’t make fancy things. We don’t buy bought in premixes. We make 30 products of which 15 of them are just specials we really do for shows, which we don’t do every day of the week.
We have 10 products we do every day, and that’s what we do.
And you present yourselves a little bit differently as well, don’t you? When you look at you the Vicky’s bread stall here… I don’t mean this in in the way it might sound, but it’s not polished. It’s got a real sense of character.
We’re very real. So, Vicky does all the artwork as well. The branding is all Vicky. We are what we are, and we don’t pander to anybody. If they don’t like it how we do it, I don’t really care.
That’s what we do. We but we supply fantastic small village shops, small Spar shops, big farm shops, all over Devon and Cornwall, and we’re supporting independent retail. We don’t supply supermarkets. We were asked to supply a big supermarket, about five years into the project, and we went: No, we’re not doing that.
I totally get that.
And also when you get supermarkets, they pretend to be providing good bread, but most of it is actually not very good. And if they are supporting an artisan bread maker, they put it on the bottom shelf below the domestos products.
If you have the likes of Waitrose who go to an area, Waitrose is not the answer to the world’s problems. If you go to Hampshire and Sussex, there are no good small producers of artisan producers because Waitrose is so strong and is perceived as being better than the other supermarkets. It’s not. It’s a supermarket.
It provides the same stuff made by the same own brand companies that Sainsbury’s do, and Tesco. That doesn’t make them bad places.
They just present it differently.
They present it differently. But, also, you need the supermarkets for your stuff. But the problem with the Waitrose thing is it destroys farm shops. It destroys good delicatessens. It destroys small local shops. It’s like a desert when you go to an area where Waitrose are strong because people believe it’s better.
You’re very right.
And so, obviously, you’re passionate about food. If you were going out for a bite to eat in Cornwall, any places that come to mind?
Unquestionably, the best pub operator, probably in Cornwall is Charlie Inkin, who runs the Gurnard’s Head and the Coast Guard’s in Mousehole. He’s a good operator. He does a good job. It’s a fun atmosphere. He looks supports local things.
He’s quite a character as well, isn’t he?
He’s quite like me. He’s a good lad. Yeah. And he runs a very, very good pub.
You always have a nice meal. It’s tough running pubs at the moment. It’s a really, really tough gig to make a living. The way costs have gone have made it very expensive to go out for dinner. The food has to be that expensive. The beer has to be that expensive. That’s sort of disappointing in lots of ways. It’s meant that the cafes are doing very well. So, the boom area in the whole of Cornwall and Devon is cafes.
A pub is a church.
Yes!
It has to be open. There are laws. And not real laws, but there are laws. Right. You stay open. You serve people. You listen to their problems. Yes.
If you’re a cafe, you go, well, we got this cafe. It was a petrol station. It was a Costcutter, and we’re going be open during the day. And we’re going to be the chef, and we’re going to be the front of house? And my daughter’s going to work in it. And that creates less overheads. They don’t have the overheads that the pubs have got because their rates are not being categorised as a pub, as a retail outlet. So they’re paying £2,000 rates instead of £25,000 rates like most pubs. So, they’ve got a better starting point. They also don’t have to do be open all the time so they can make it work for them.
So, I think some of the best food you’ll get in Cornwall now is in cafes. I really do. I think some of the beach cafes.
Any that come to mind?
We supply a few. Castle Beach in Falmouth does a really nice job.
They’ve just done up the cafe there as well.
They’ve done it up a bit. Now it’s a bit easier to deliver to. Occasionally, it gets washed away, but when it’s there, it’s better.
We don’t go out very much at the moment. We’ve had this through a couple of years when we don’t go out.
That’s been a common theme from people I’ve been talking to. Either that they’re just really busy or they’re just not going out quite as much as they used to.
We’re lucky we’ve got fishermen friends, so I can get a Lobster or a Turbot and cook it at home.
Buying better produce from home or buying meat from Treway Farm, which is grass fed and really well hung, You’re getting a better meal and a better deal quite a lot of the time if you have the talent.
I think if you’ve got the time, and you actually realise it’s enjoyable to go and get something. It’s difficult sometimes to compete with doing that at home and going out.
It doesn’t take time to cook. You can cook any meal in the time it takes to cook the carbohydrate.
Very true.
And so, what about a top Cornish tip? Something that people should see, do, experience, something that people might not think about or know about.
Go west.
Go west!
Just go to those cliff walks down in Cape Cornwall. Swim in those old miner’s pools down in West Cornwall. I’m not going to tell you where they are. You have to find out, but they are extraordinary things.
Have a have a look at Google Maps. Have a scan around and make your own adventure.
The walking in West Cornwall is extraordinary. Walking on the Lizard is lovely, and there’s a lot more variety. But I think West Cornwall is really special.
I love going to St Mawes. St Mawes is like going to the South of France. There’s always something. One of the restaurants, one of the pubs is good. They all go up and down a bit.
St. Mawes, if it’s not blowing westerly, it’s seven degrees warmer than the rest of Cornwall.
And it feels when you’re sitting there having a drink or eating, it feels like you’re in Europe, doesn’t it?
Oh, it’s completely different. It has a totally different fell. Totally, totally different feel. And I think that is really important.
I think Falmouth’s got quite a lot of good independent restaurants now. Truro is pretty awful. St Ives is trying quite hard, but I don’t know if it’s working yet. So, I think it’s a bit corporate.
I think Falmouth is the most interesting place to eat at the moment.
It’s got a lot of atmosphere, in Falmouth. And it’s helped by the Uni being there and the creatives. We go out in Falmouth when we go out.
I go to The Working Boat. It’s a good pub. We used to run the Shipwrights. It’s got a new owner, and that, I think, will be good.
So, the other thing we do as well as Vicky’s. Well, I do, is we run the food and farming tent at the Royal Cornwall Show. And we also do the same at the Porthleven Food Festival. And the key to that is only Cornish producers. So, you have to be from Cornwall.
So, we don’t have flap-jackery from Devon. We curate it. So, you don’t apply online and fill in a form and write a cheque and get in. You fill in a form, which you write by hand, and you email it to an email address, which sometimes works. And say what you want to do, and I look at it and go, I like you, or your produce is interesting, or we really like you, or you’re a really tiny new producer. We can help you. We won’t charge you full price.
I think the spirit of Cornwall, isn’t it, about, being really supportive if someone’s got passion. Because a lot of people that are in the food business down there are actually not doing it for the money. They just love what they do, and yes, they would like the money, but they’re doing it because they’re super passionate.
So here at the Porthleven Food Festival we have, say 30 producers. Um, and we have a bit of content here, so we have a bit of music, which we organize. At The Royal Cornwall, we don’t have music.
We have a bar and a cafe, and we have nearly 70 producers. It’s a proper agricultural show, so we have prizes with rosettes. And the person who won overall last year was a Cornish garlic guy. So, this is a guy who had mental problems, decided he needed to grow something to feel better, so he bought a single elephant garlic.
Fantastic.
The next year, he had 10 elephant garlic. On the next year, he had 200 elephant garlic and he started to well. He thought, I’ve got a lot of garlic now and started making stuff with his garlic. And his wife started helping him, and he was really enjoying it. And then he came to the show, and it was his first show, and I we didn’t really charge him. And he got the best in show at Royal Cornwall.
And the president of the show has now rented him land so that he can grow more garlic. So, it’s a really cool story. It’s good things progressing.
I was saying before, but that’s the Cornish way, isn’t it? If someone’s trying and someone needs some help, often people will take their time or their efforts and give them a hand because we’re supportive. And it’s enjoyable, isn’t it? To connect with people like that.
And going to places to eat – the Mussel Shoal. I like the Mussel Shoal.
The Mussel Shoal for me is a little piece of heaven. It’s a little bit crazy and chaotic and there’s some magic’s going on in that kitchen for them to be able to churn out all the food.
Yes! Vix used to would work for us. So, I like Vix and Kelvin. I like the vibe. I like the madness.
It’s love.
You need more madness in the world.
You do need more madness. It’s great fun!