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Celebrating Organic September with Special Offers


We’re in the mood to celebrate as we head into September, after the best summer here at the farm that we can remember. The harvest is in, the grass is cut and baled, and the livestock are looking very well. As well as an extra glass or two of cider, we’ll be offering plenty of deals on our organic meats this month, and doing tastings at the farmers market as part of the Soil Association’s Organic September campaign, so keep a look out each week on our website www.higherhacknell.co.uk.

Now it’s time to sort out the sheep and get them ready for tupping at the end of October. Tim’s weaned the lambs and they are now literally knee deep in clover, so not missing their mothers too much! The ewes have to be ‘dried off’ for a period before they go to lusher pastures, and Tim is off to select a couple of new Lleyn rams for the flock tomorrow.

At this time of year the lamb is especially tender and mild, whilst the mutton has a more robust flavour which makes it great in curries and casseroles. Our good friend Bob Kennard has written a book ‘Much Ado About Mutton’ which is to be published on 4th September,and we can thoroughly recommend it, especially as he mentions us and includes some of my recipes. Sheila Dillon of the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme comments ‘Mutton is one of Britain’s glories - crazily neglected. This is the book to bring that neglect to an end. As Bob Kennard shows so enthusiastically, it’s win-win: mutton has a luscious taste, it’s rich with the essential fats we need to eat and in eating it we give new life to farms and farmers under threat. Bob Kennard will make you a believer.” You can get copies through us or go to www.aboutmutton.com and @aboutmutton.

We are very proud to have won another Great Taste Award, this time for our Lamb and Squash Curry ready meal, so if you haven’t got time to make your own, you could happily pass ours off as home made-with the judges commenting that it has ‘a generous amount of lamb with excellent piece size. The aroma is good and the curry has a home cooked taste.’

With a slightly more autumnal feel in the air now, I’ve enjoyed getting back into routines again and spending more time in the kitchen. We’ve been making the most of our ripe tomatoes and cucumbers, and to compliment them I got inspired to make my first ever pork pie. Although I was immensely pleased with myself (especially when I didn’t drop it coming out the oven, it was heavy), it was such a labour of love, making lard and stock, as well as the pastry, that I’m not going into production any time soon! However I’m very happy to share my recipe, and also pleased to receive any of yours, so do send them to me by email or comment on our Facebook or Twitter pages.

In the meantime, do make the most of the offer on our delicious South Devon organic beef and get some casseroles made and put away in the freezer while we are giving 1 free 500g pack when you buy 5x packs of beef stewing steak. Just order 2.5kg of beef stewing steak, and then write in the comments box at the end ‘special offer’.

There’s an old farmers saying about the harvest that ‘if you haven’t got it, you won’t need it’. I hope it’s not true in reverse, because for once we have plenty of hay and silage, and a long hard winter isn’t something I’m looking forward to. We wish you a beautiful autumn, and may winter be a long way off!

With best wishes

Tim, Jo and all at Higher Hacknell Farm

New Season Lamb Offers from Higher Hacknell Farm

This week we’ve been busy in the Higher Hacknell Farm kitchen making our tasty ready meals, and when I say making them, it all starts out in the field where we rear the beef cattle and grow the potatoes to make the award winning cottage pie. I’ve been hand digging the first of the potato crop and they are really soft and buttery, perfect for our mash! They are been selling well this month so Tracy our chef has also making pork with green peppers and red wine and chicken and vegetable casseroles, which are great if you are enjoying the sunshine outside too much to spend time in the kitchen yourself.

 

We are celebrating the first of the new season lamb this month with special offers on lamb loin chops and racks of lamb which won us the top 3 star accolade at the prestigious Great Taste Awards last year. Next week the lambs will be weaned from their mothers, so the early milk fed ones are especially tender and delicate in flavour and a real treat.

Then it’s time for the North Devon Show coming up on Wednesday 6th August, where we’ll be having a stand in the Food Hall and giving tasters of our range of sausages as well as having plenty to sell on the day, so do visit us if you’re going to the show and see our Facebook page for more details.

There’s been lots of positive news lately about organic food with the latest research proving what we all feel we know to be true, that organic food more nutritious, being high in antioxidants and lower in toxic metals and pesticides. There was also an interesting article in The Guardian (23 July 2014) which I have ‘tweeted’ by Richard Young, policy director at the Sustainable Food Trust, discussing how meat-eaters would be doing their health and the environment a favour by eating beef and lamb. Health benefits include a healthier balance of saturated fats from beef and lamb from grazing animals and very healthy omega-6 to omega-3 ratio. You can find our full range of grass fed organic beef and lamb on our website at www.higherhacknell.co.uk.

In the meantime I hope you’re having a great summer, it’s certainly one of the best I can remember.

With best wishes

Tim, Jo and all at Higher Hacknell Farm

Sunny times at Higher Hacknell Farm and more monthly offers.

 

What a fantastic month we’ve had, plenty of sunshine and a dash of rain, and silage and hay in plenty! I can’t remember a year like it, usually we’re moaning that it’s too wet to cut or so dry there’s not enough of a crop, but apart from very frustrating machinery breakdowns, it’s happy harvesting at Higher Hacknell Farm!

While Tim’s on his tractor working round the clock, I’ll check the stock and on a summer morning, with the mist still lingering, it feels pretty special. The cattle are in no hurry to get up, and for them the living is pretty easy, abundant grass to feed on and sun on their backs. The sheep are doing well on the lush white and red clover, a feature of organic farming systems, fixing nitrogen back in the soil, and this week the first of the new season lambs are fit to go.

The peas have flowered, the pods are filling out in amongst the barley. It’s a very traditional crop, but is back in vogue as a method of growing protein together with the corn, and we prefer to be self- sufficient in feed, rather than buying in imported soya, to supplement the stock in winter. We always like to grow a few rows of potatoes for ourselves and for the home made ready meals in the field, and this year, our son Jim, planted a long row of onions as well.

 


He’s just got a job as assistant gardener at River Cottage HQ in Axminster, so we won’t be seeing so much of him. I’ve always found that a roast Sunday lunch is a reliable way of tempting the family home, but with all the treats he gets to try there, I’ve got a hard act to follow! So when he dropped by last weekend we barbecued some beef short ribs, a cut I’ve been keen to try out for a while. I’d done some good casseroles with them last winter, but this time I marinated them in a dry rub of peppers and spices, then put the dish in the bottom of the Aga at a very low temperature overnight and the next day finished off the cooking on a wood fire to give them a lovely smoky flavour. I recommend they are definitely worth a try, especially with a few fat sausages cooked on the barbecue alongside.

Last week the local Ramblers Association visited and we had an interesting afternoon walking around the farm and talking about what we do and various issues. Antibiotic resistance has been in the news in the last few days, even David Cameron has highlighted the need to develop new antibiotics, but in using, “more antibiotics on healthy animals than on unhealthy humans.” as Dr Margaret Chan, head of the World Health Organisation says, these would be as vulnerable to resistance as the current ones. One of our customers at the Farmers Market was asking me about it, so I explained that we do not use routine antibiotics as organic farming practices ensure that animals are kept in healthy conditions in the first place. Antibiotics are used occasionally when a sick animal really needs treating and then the withdrawal time has to be triple the statutory length. In intensive agriculture antibiotics are frequently used routinely and preventatively in order to reduce disease risk and promote growth, which we definitely don’t agree with.

The holiday season is here now, so if you have family gatherings and parties, there is plenty of choice on the website from bumper barbecue boxes to long slow roasting joints. Check out our special offers too with pork leg down in price this month to £11.50 per kg and pork steaks down by £1.50 per kg.

I hope you’re enjoying the summer too. We look forward to hearing from you soon-order by Sunday for delivery next week on either Thursday or Friday.

Best wishes

Jo and Tim and all at Higher Hacknell Farm

June news from Higher Hacknell Farm and Free Delivery Offer

June is one of our favourite months at the farm with the stock looking so well at this time of year, their summer coats gleaming in the sun. The trees are heavily in leaf and the countryside is a mass of shades of green. It’s now that we appreciate where we live, with stunning views of the moors from here and can forget what it was like last winter! We made a short video of the farm in June last year to give you an idea of where we are and what we do, so I hope you’ll have a look if you haven’t seen it yet.

 

 

The sheep are looking chic and cool, having been shorn a couple of weeks ago and we have plenty of wool. We send most of it to the Wool Board, but I have had some spun into knitting yarn available in natural white and a selection of colours on the website. The next job is silage making, and there’s plenty of grass this season which is good, but we need some dry days to cut it and bale it up. I think it’s looking better weather towards the end of the week, so we’ll keep an eye on the forecast.

 

 

It’s always great to have good news, and we’re very happy to have just won another clutch of awards from the Taste of the West, winning Gold for our organic South Devon beef steak, Silver for our Lleyn lamb steak and Bronze for our Lamb and Squash Curry. There were over 1000 entries and we are lucky enough to have won an award for each of the three products we entered. There’s nothing easier, quicker or more delicious than a Higher Hacknell steak, I hope you’ll agree, especially if you don’t want to spend too much time in the kitchen! I’m just happy to have a steak with some fresh salad and home grown new potatoes, but you can always dress it up with a bearnaise or creamy pepper sauce. I’ll often marinade lamb steaks using the recipe for kebabs or serve them with ‘patatas bravas’ from the Moro cookbook. If you’ve got some favourite Higher Hacknell dishes, please share them or send me a picture or recipe for our Facebook page.

 

 

We’ve had a couple of technical problems on the website adding items to the shopping cart lately, and thank you for letting me know. It is fixed now, but please contact me if you have any difficulties ordering online at www.higherhacknell.co.uk or if you prefer to order by phone, that’s fine.

And lastly, to thank you for supporting Higher Hacknell and to celebrate our recent success we are offering FREE delivery on all orders over £100 from now until the end of June, ordered on line. If you are going away this summer or planning a party with friends somewhere, we are always happy to deliver to a different address and do phone me on 01769 560909 to discuss what you’d like or need advice.

With the solstice just over a week away, I hope you enjoy the summer ahead and best wishes from

Jo and Tim and all at Higher Hacknell Farm

May News and Offers from Higher Hacknell Farm

 

It’s such a beautiful time of year; the bluebells have been spectacular, and for the first time ever, we had a cuckoo visit , frightening the dogs with his loud call. The young lambs are are so funny to watch, gallivanting around the fields in gangs and then spring up in the air, several feet off the ground. Calving has gone well, the second year for our bull and he’s done a fantastic job getting all the cows in calf again and without problems. They bellow like mad mothers, calling their calves, which keep getting away from them under the single strand wire fence. Typical young, they enjoy time out exploring the big field and sleeping in the long grass, but come back when they’re hungry!

 

Although it’s raining now and the strong wind is blowing the blossom off the old pear tree in the orchard, this has been a really good spring for the farm. Compared to last year, when the grass hadn’t grown at all due to the cold dry weather, this year it’s abundant and we’ll be hoping to make silage quite early. I’d forgotten what a ‘normal’ spring was like, sunshine and showers in fair amounts to get crops growing, but better not to get too smug as you never know what’s round the corner in farming, especially where weather is concerned!

 

I’ve heard a rumour going round, that there’s a heat wave due to arrive in the next two weeks, with warm weather blowing across from Spain. Although not from any source I can rely on, it’s got me thinking about barbecues and planning one for the next bank holiday. We cooked some of our plain pork sausages last weekend over an oak wood fire, nice and slowly and, yum, they tasted so, so good and really different from the usual fry up in the kitchen. Sometimes I think we get carried away with trying new recipes and cooking exotic ingredients when simple can be best. A couple of sausages, a medium rare Higher Hacknell steakburger with a generous helping of our special family recipe barbecue sauce is just the best and needs nothing more than a fresh green salad and a decent bread roll to go with it. What makes the difference is using ‘good’ ingredients-our home made sausages are a very high proportion of organic pork, with only 10% breadcrumb and seasoning to bind them together, and naturally we don’t use any preservatives or additives in our organic sausages. Our quarterpound steakburgers consist of nothing but pure home bred beef with a seasoning of salt and freshly ground pepper, and they’re gluten free too. If you need tempting further we’ve got the barbecue special on offer for just £17.50 until the Bank Holiday.

Halal slaughter has been on the news a lot recently and as I’ve had several enquiries I think I should explain how our animals are slaughtered, without wishing to offend. There are no halal methods used at the local slaughterhouse where we take our animals. They go in our trailer the short distance from here to a small abattoir in Combe Martin where they are killed humanely with stunning in the presence of a vet. Then the carcasses are brought back to our farm butchery where they are dry aged and hung on the bone to improve texture and flavour before butchering. There is complete traceability and you can be assured of the provenance of everything you buy from us, which is checked and inspected by the Soil Association in order to verify our organic certification.

And lastly, Ellie, our youngest, put some pictures together in a spring video clip for our Higher Hacknell Facebook page and blog when she was back home recently, and it features our new farm sign beautifully painted by local signwriter Sarah Harvey. After 29 years a new one was definitely due. I hope you like it too and that you will ‘like’ our Facebook page.

I hope you are enjoying Spring and look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best wishes
Jo, Tim and all at Higher Hacknell Farm

Order now in time for Easter!

Just a reminder that our last order date for Easter is 6pm on Sunday 13th April, so just over a week away. The last date for delivery will be Thursday 17th April, but we will also be delivering on Wednesday 16th, as it tends to be almost as busy as Christmas, and it’s best to get ahead of the rush.

With a couple of bank holidays and family and visitors staying, it’s essential to have plenty of food in store! Our mixed meat boxes will see you through, just decide what size you need: small, medium or large. Our Spring box has enough variety to match the seasonal weather- fillet steak for a special treat for two, or sausages, koftas and chicken pieces for the barbecue and a lovely Sunday roast. Our gammon joints have 10% off this week, and are delicious hot or cold in sandwiches, or as a centrepiece for the buffet table. Also on special offer are beef short ribs, very much in vogue with chefs at the moment. If you haven’t tried them yet, they can be cooked in advance or left for a long time in the slow oven and so are easy for entertaining but have a bit of a ‘wow’ factor! If you are going away and want some meals on standby, take a look at our selection of award winning ready meals.

Although we are still waiting for the swallows to arrive - any day now- it’s very spring like everywhere. The farm has a completely different feel to a few weeks ago when it was so empty and quiet, now every field has groups of newly born lambs charging around in little gangs and manic mothers baaing! The birdsong is so loud and varied that you could be in some far off jungle and the wild flowers in the hedges and woods will be a burst of continuing colours from now until mid summer. The cows have started calving, with one calf born this morning and two yesterday, so the weeks ahead will continue to be busy. We’ve planted the spring barley and this year Tim has added peas to the mix, which will provide excellent protein and mean we don’t have to rely on imported crops such as soya. We’ll also try to get a few rows of potatoes planted in beside the corn before Easter, and Jim is going to grow onions in the field as they haven’t done well in our vegetable garden for the last few years.

We wish you a very Happy Easter whether you’ll be spending it at home like us, or going away somewhere. Do phone your orders through to me on 01769 560909, especially if you want to ask about any particular cuts or cooking tips or go to the website at www.higherhacknell.co.uk. I look forward to hearing from you soon.

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

p.s
Don’t forget we’ll be at the Exeter Food and Drink Festival on 25th-27th April. I’ll put the details on our Higher Hacknell facebook page.

Meat modelling and more news from Higher Hacknell Farm

People often ask me if the life of a farmer is very hard, imagining the early start to the day and back breaking toil, but it’s a lot easier than being a model, as I recently found out. I took part in a photo shoot to promote the Exeter Food and Drink Festival which takes place at the end of April and wanted to take something impressive. I reckoned a 4 bone rib of beef would look pretty good, but had second thoughts after arriving at Michael Caines’ restaurant having struggled with it under my arm from a carpark the other side of Exeter and then had to hold it aloft for the group photo. It was not just a matter of a quick click of the camera, we had to wait for everyone to line up , Michael Caines had to change his jacket and people went backwards and forwards rearranging various props and tablecloths, while my arms felt like dropping off. I thought that would be it, but then the photographer mentioned doing some ‘intimate meat pictures’! Being cautious, I let the ice cream producers go before me (they were facing melt down)!

As well as photographing meat, and you may have noticed we’ve added lots of pictures to the website lately, we’ve been busy supplying our friends at River Cottage with our delicious lamb burgers, which are now in the Bristol Canteen, as well as Axminster and Plymouth. Sam, the ex chef at Axminster, is starting up his own restaurant at the Blagdon Inn in Somerset and from next week we will be supplying them too. Nearer to home, The New Inn at Roborough has put our very tasty herby pork sausages on their menu, so it’s great to know that you can go out to eat and get local and fully traceable meat. So many restaurants say they buy locally or ethically but I sometimes wonder how committed they really are, so it’s reassuring when they go directly to a farm such as ours to buy ingredients.

Back on the farm, Tim is waiting for a sight of the first swallows to arrive, but so far it’s just our children returning home from overseas. Our son Jim came back from Mexico and is going to be our lambing assistant this year, and Rosy who has been working as a vet for an animal charity in India, arrives next week and will hopefully lend a hand too. I saw a couple of Canada geese fly over the house this morning and they usually come about this time of year to nest on our ponds (if my spaniel Buddy leaves them alone).

Last year’s lambs, or hoggetts as they are called, are grazing the rape and turnips Tim planted last autumn, and love to have something fresh and green to tuck into at this time of year when there isn’t much grazing available. We are getting very short of fodder for the cattle and the ewes, who are housed ready for lambing. Last year’s dry summer and late spring meant that our yields of hay and silage were down, so we’re anxious that stocks will last as we like the animals to have all home grown feed and don’t want to be forced to buy in feed for them.

It’s beginning to look like there’s better and drier weather on the way and we are so ready for it! Tim has bought a new dung spreader (not something I get very excited about!) but he’s very pleased with it as it has very good tyres which make it possible to go on the land when it’s still a bit wet and not make a mess or cause damage to the soil structure. Getting the manure on the fields is all important to us organic farmers and it’s perfect recyling, using waste product to fertilise this seasons crops. He’s now worried that if we don’t get any rain the dung won’t wash in. Have you ever met a happy farmer?

It’s Mother’s Day at the end of the month, so remember to order a lovely joint of meat now, so you or your family are ready to cook a perfect roast dinner to celebrate together. Please order by Sunday for delivery on the following Thursday or Friday at www.higherhacknell.co.uk. Look out for our special offers-this week - there’s 10% off lamb shoulder.

Look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best wishes

Tim, Jo and the Team at Higher Hacknell Farm

February on the farm, Valentine’s and monthly offers

We all need something to look forward to at this not very exciting time of year, so at Higher Hacknell we are going to celebrate Valentines Day with a special offer on our deliciously tender rump steak!.It’s down in price by over £5 per kilo. Do take a look at our website which now has lots of new pictures of the range of meat cuts we offer. Our steaks have earned us numerous Taste of the West and Organic Food Awards over the years. Everyone has their favourite, whether it’s the meltingly tender fillet steak or rib eye and rump which have more flavour, so take your pick.

 

I don’t think we need records to know that it was the wettest January ever, but at least we are not suffering as badly as our Somerset neighbours. However the fields are very soggy, but as our land is steep, much of the water drains down off it, and is helped by the ditches running alongside. Tim spends a lot of time looking after the ditches and drains throughout the year, keeping them clear and digging them out which all costs time and money, but at times like this you know it’s really important. The land gets sour when it is constantly waterlogged and takes a long time to recover. We also try to use as much natural water as possible for the stock by capturing rainwater in troughs and making efficient use of our resources. It seems crazy in this country when we have so much rain and then a few months later, the reservoirs are dry and people can’t water their gardens!

The ewes are housed in the barn now so they can keep dry and take it easy before they lamb in March! They were scanned last week to see how many lambs they are carrying and the results are very good, so we’ll keep our fingers crossed that nothing goes wrong between now and then. If we know whether they are carrying singles, twins or even triplets, it helps us to feed them exactly what they need in terms of home grown hay, silage and oats. If they have 1 lamb we don’t want them getting too big and fat which causes lambing difficulties but if they have 3 or more lambs they need top quality nutrition.

We’re looking forward to Spring now and the days are getting a little longer. I just hope it stops raining too! The snowdrops are out and the daffodils in bud, so it’s on its way. We look forward to hearing from you soon, if you place your orders on-line by Sunday, delivery is the following week on a Thursday or Friday. Please phone me on 01769 560909 if you need any advice about what to choose or if you need to know anything about our produce.

I hope you are well and not too wet!

With best wishes

Jo, Tim and the Higher Hacknell Farm team

News from the farm, horsegate one year on and special offers!

The news is full or what we should or shouldn’t eat at the moment, and now it’s a year since it was revealed that horsemeat was in so many supermarket burgers and ready meals. It exposed the extent of a food chain which was pretty much untraceable and global. Most of us were shocked as to how this could have been going on, adding to the realization that we couldn’t trust what was on the label or know what we were eating.

It was a reminder to us of why we are doing what we do here at Higher Hacknell Farm and maybe we are right in our belief that ‘small is beautiful’; when things get too big-whether they are supply chains or supermarkets, they get beyond our control. If you’d like to know more about our complete organic integrity and how the supply chain at Higher Hacknell starts at one side of our farm yard and ends at the other, please read our blog

Voting for the BBC Food and Farming Awards is now open. It would be great if you’d like to nominate us for the’ best Food Producer’ or ‘farmer’ by clicking here.

Our special offer this week is 10% off our beef lasagne, which scooped a gold Taste of the West Award and won the title ‘best ready meal’ . Also until the end of January, beef stewing steak is only £10.50 per kilo from the usual price of £11.95. For a delivery next week on either Thursday 23rd or Friday 24th, please order by this Sunday 19th.
Many thanks and best wishes

Jo and Tim and all at Higher Hacknell Farm