I hope you are enjoying the summer and having some holiday time. It’s always busy here on the farm in August but we did dash up to London the other week to receive the Organic Food Award 2011 for our Cottage Pie, winner of the prepared foods category at Clarence House. It was a fun evening, though slightly strange for us to be sipping champagne with royalty!

We have extended our range of ready made meals to include several chicken casseroles as well as pork dishes and a lamb curry so we hope you’ll give them a try. The judges were impressed by our ‘good home-made flavour’ and gave ‘ full marks for proper ingredients’.

The days of summer are rolling by and the harvest is coming in. The last couple of days have been dry so we managed to get most of the spring barley combined and today Tim is busy baling the beautiful golden straw. The straw is almost as valuable to us as the grain and ensures that the animals have a very comfortable bed in wintertime. The fields will soon look completely different, cleared of crops, then on the muck, before ploughing and putting in a catch crop of turnips for the sheep to graze overwinter. We’ve had a lot of rain this summer (it did rain on St Swithin’s day) so we haven’t enjoyed basking in sunshine, but there is plenty of grass and the cattle and sheep have done really well. The grass keeps growing and we’ve more silage to make in the next few weeks and there will be enough forage this winter.

The new season lamb is now ready and especially good at this time of year when it is so tender. It was the winner of last Years Organic Food Awards, described by the judges as having a great ‘wallop of flavour’ Our large lamb boxes are fantastic value at only £75 still or choose your own cuts from our full range. The loin chops and cutlets are brilliant to grill or give a quick sizzle on the barbecue. We enjoyed some last night with mini roast potatoes with spicy tomato ‘bravas’ sauce, and the first picked runner beans from the garden. Hope it’s making you hungry!!

Best wishes
from Tim and Jo and all at Higher Hacknell Farm

It’s been a busy few weeks making silage between the showers and we just managed to bale hay last week. This year has been a ‘catchy’ grass harvest with the weather forecast always giving a chance of showers, so it’s been a stop/start job.

We’re not complaining as we really needed some rain. It’s certainly increased the grass yields and helped the spring barley to grow and the grain fill out. It’s just turning colour now, still a little green, so we are a few weeks away from combining. Looking across the fields last week I couldn’t believe how many butterflies there were hovering over the crop. They almost made my eyes dizzy watching them! Butterflies are all very beautiful until they land on the cabbages in the garden! It’s a bit like the swallows, lovely to see them swooping and diving in and out of the farm yard, but as we’ve just given everywhere a fresh coat of paint, all the smart red barn doors are now daubed and splattered white!

It’s been a good season for the stock, the cattle looking really sleek and golden at this time of year, the calves growing up fast beside their mothers. The ewes were shorn at the beginning of June before the flies could get to them and lay eggs in their wool which can cause terrible problems. Tim brought the sheep in this morning and has selected the first of the new season lambs. Our lambs finish naturally on their mothers milk and grass and we don’t force them to be ready earlier with concentrate feeds.

Keith, our butcher has been busy making chorizo sausages which are now organically certified. They are great for cooking with, like a special stock cube, packed with garlicky flavour. We have enjoyed developing them and tasting the various recipes! Tracy too has been working out new recipes in the Higher Hacknell Kitchen for our homemade meals which we are supplying to football teams and nursery schools as well as our regular customers.

With the holiday season upon us we are happy to deliver anywhere in the UK, if you want us to send somewhere different where you maybe staying. Don’t forget to stock up for when the children come home and raid everything in the fridge! Our cooked salt beef and sliced ham are great for picnic lunches and our sausages and burgers are perfect for outdoor cooking. Talking of holidays, Keith our butcher is taking his and Tim and I are attending a special event too, so we will be *closed for the week 25th -31st July*. *If we receive your order by 18th July we can deliver on 21st or 22nd July with the next deliveries on 4th and 5th August.

As always thank you for buying your meat from us at Higher Hacknell Farm, we really appreciate all your lovely comments and feedback. We are really grateful to receive acknowledgement for what we do here and if you are able to nominate us in the food and farming awards it would be fantastic.

I’ll finish this rambling on and wish you a great summer