Ask Colin and Di Dawes from Foxbury Farm, Brize Norton, how many awards they have won since opening their Farm Shop and Butchery and they will be hard pushed to come up with an answer. The couple find it easier to admit it's an award-winning shop, and leave it at that. They have won so many awards since the shop first opened seven years ago, they have stopped counting.

Foxbury Farm was one of several Oxfordshire farms that opened their doors to the public for Open Farm Sunday, organised annually by LEAF (Linking Environment and Farming), a national charity that helps farmers improve the way they farm by encouraging them to take up Integrated Farming.

This charity organises initiatives such as Open Farm Sunday which brings farmers and consumers together to give us all a chance to see how farmers are working in harmony with nature to produce good food.

The Daweses decided to go one step further than most this year by inviting a team of local chefs who use their produce to demonstrate how they cook Gloucester Old Spot pork, beef and chicken raised at Foxbury Farm. They even bought a mobile demonstration unit so that the chefs could work outside in the farmyard, opposite the newborn lambs and close to the free-range chicken.

Although Foxbury Farm is not organic, the Daweses practise similar clean-rearing methods and their livestock is definitely free-range. Foxbury is a traditional mixed farm of some 750 acres, which lies in quite an exposed position on the south-eastern edge of the Cotswolds and just off the A40 between Witney and Burford.

When diversification became essential for agricultural survival, the Daweses decided to sell their meat direct to the public. Out of this decision has grown their full-time dedicated on-farm butchery and farm shop which now employs five full-time staff and seven part-time workers.

Colin says their decision to sell direct to the local community is paying dividends in terms of creating local employment.

Foxbury also sell meat to local pubs and restaurants, including the Clanfield Tavern; the Swan, Swinbrook; the Fleece, Witney; and the Hollybush, Witney.

Colin is worried that a number of establishments state on their menu that their meat is from Foxbury Farm when it's not. While this does not happen frequently, it does happen.

He cites one place whose owner occasionally calls into the farm shop for a couple of dozen sausages, then boasts that all its meat is from Foxbury. Others don't even bother to buy sausages, they just list Foxbury as one of their suppliers.

"It's become fashionable to boast that you are using local products these days. But some are just jumping on the bandwagon and I 'm not sure what can be done about it," says Colin.

He is concerned that people eating meat they assume comes from Foxbury might find it inferior and blame their farm. He admits that it would be very difficult for a member of the public to judge where the meat comes from and accepts we have to trust that claims made on the menu are true.

Colin recalls the BBC report last month which exposed a number of restaurants and bars selling foreign meat as British beef. The investigation had surveyed 40 outlets of which an astonishing 20 per cent were selling meat in this way.

The BBC had carried out DNA testing of the samples and eight of the 40 tested proved to be Zebu cattle found only in Africa and South America.

The investigation called for restaurants and food outlets to be forced to prove the origin of their meat in much the same way as butchers, and for there to be a new, clearer and stricter definition of the term 'local'.

At the time Jill Greed from the National Beef Association in south-west England told the BBC that such deceptions exploited consumer demand for real local food and that until there was a properly audited trail through the hospitality industry, the situation was only going to get worse.

Colin deals with this problem by phoning establishments that boast they use his meat and insisting that they remove the name Foxbury from their menus. He says this seems to work quite well, but he's aware that he may not know all the local outlets making this boast yet sourcing their meat elsewhere.

The young chefs who demonstrated their skills in front of record crowds during the Open Farm Day certainly use meat from Foxbury Farm.

Ben Bulger from the Clanfield Tavern says that throughout his 15-year career he has sourced local produce for his kitchens. He wouldn't cook with anything else. He enjoys working with local suppliers who produce and rear the products themselves.

He joined the team at the Clanfield Tavern after a period at Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons. While demonstrating, Ben cooked a delicious roasted fillet of Foxbury Gloucester Old Spot pork wrapped in air-dried ham, which he served on a bed of spring vegetables. He admitted that he had never cooked a meal in a farmyard before, but said that it had proved a very worthwhile experience.

Roger Crudge, of Crudge's Cheese, was demonstrating in the farmyard too. He showed visitors some of the finer arts of cheese making. Roger admits that Oxfordshire doesn't have a cheese making tradition to boast of, indeed he may be the only cheese maker in Oxfordshire.

He makes his cheese in a dairy just outside Churchill, from organic milk from a Jersey herd at Great Rollright. He's been cheese making for more than a year, and is turning out some superb semi-hard cheeses, such as Kingham Green and Haddon Gold which has a softer texture and delightfully creamy flavour. Both these cheeses are sold in the Foxbury Farm shop.