The Hacknell Chronicles

THE FESTIVE SEASON BEGINS

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This Halloween weekend is the time when we make cider, a special ingredient for the wellbeing of farm life at Higher Hacknell! It’s our final harvest of the year, now that all the other crops -the hay and silage, the barley and wheat and then the potatoes-are stored away.

It’s been a very fruitful autumn with good pickings of mushrooms, blackberries and even wild cherries earlier on, and the grass has kept growing till now so the animals have been able to stay out grazing. Like most livestock farmers though, we are pretty worried though about the amount of forage-hay and silage- that we have for winter feeding this year. Due to the dry spring the yields were very low and winter fodder is in short supply and very expensive, especially organic, if we find we have to buy in extra. So this good autumn weather has done the lambs and the cattle well and we are hoping it’s not going to be a long hard winter!

Cider making also marks the start of the festive season, though even festivities involve work around here! We’ll be picking up the apples in the cider orchard, crushing them between the cogs of the chipper and building a ‘cheese’, layers of apple and straw, on the old press. It takes about 4 tons of apples to build the cheese which should produce about 3 barrels of juice/cider. But friends, neighbours and family help to make it an enjoyable job and kick off the winter season ahead with the odd glass or two of the amber nectar!

Our Christmas range of meat is available to order now, and I’m very happy to discuss what you’d like, either by phone or on the website. Bronze free range organic turkeys range in size from small (about 4.5-5.9kg) to medium (about 6-7kg) and large (8-10kg). I usually recommend about 500g per portion, so a 5kg turkey would feed 10 for just one meal or 5-6 people for Christmas Dinner and some cold for Boxing Day. For a smaller family, goose has great flavour and range in size from 4-6kg, but there is less meat on them than on a turkey.

If you want a change from poultry, sirloin joints and rib of beef on the bone are a real treat for the Christmas table. If you are ordering beef on the bone you can choose the size from 1,2 3 to 4 bones. A 4 bone rib of beef will weigh about 6 or 7 kilos and feed a big crowd, and 4 bone sirloin joint would be a bit smaller, about 5 kilos. You can also have these joints off the bone and rolled which makes them easier to carve.

The other essentials for the Christmas feast are hams and gammons-all home cured here at our farm butchery, and our dry cured bacon. Keith the Higher Hacknell butcher makes delicious sausages and chipolatas, as well as sausagemeat for stuffing, which are free of preservatives as well as being free range organic.

I’ve had several people asking me lately about how our animals are killed, so if you don’t mind me bringing the subject up-I know some people prefer not to think about these things, we’d like to be open to all your questions. Tim takes the cattle and lambs to a small local abattoir in our own trailer, which is about 40 minutes drive. The animals are unloaded and slaughtered straight away so there is no waiting around and getting stressed in a large lairage. They are stunned and slaughtered under the supervision of a ministry vet who also checks the welfare and health of the animals. The carcasses are then dealt with and cooled in a cold store and myself or keith our butcher collects them the next day when they are brought back to hang in our cold store at the farm butchery here. The beef is usually hung for 3 weeks or more on the bone and the lamb for a week to 10 days. Pork, reared to organic standards by a couple of local farmers is also killed in a nearby abattoir, usually the same one, and in the same way. The chickens are killed at a different abattoir situated on a farm about 12 miles from here. Tim and I catch the chickens and we take them into the abattoir where they are also stunned, killed and dressed under supervision of the vet before bringing them back here. The turkeys are killed and dryplucked on farm and hung for a few days before they are dressed.

For more information about our Christmas range of organic meat or about our farming, do get in touch.

We look forward to hearing from you soon.

Best Wishes from Tim, Jo and all at Higher Hacknell Farm

We are the winners!

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There is a buzz of excitement at the Farm this week as myself and Tim prepare to go to the annual Soil Association Organic Food Festival in Bristol, on Saturday 11 September. We will be attending the event and receiving the award for the best organic meat (from none other than the lovely Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall!!) for our home reared lamb. It has been described by the judges as “Smooth and tender with a lovely wallop of flavour.” and “Soft and melts in your mouth.”

Lamb is particularly tasty at this time of year as the subtlety of its flavour changes to suit the seasons. Late Summer vegetables such as aubergines and tomatoes really compliment lamb and bring out the flavour. Over the Autumn months the richer flavour develops and is perfect for a lamb stew or a traditional roast lamb.

If you want to just try our lamb for the first time, our Lamb Lovers Taster Box is a great choice, you can get one here. Or, if you’d like to stock up for the Winter months ahead, you can get half a lamb here.

Our beef hasn’t been without recognition this month either as it scooped a Bronze in the Taste of the West Awards for beef steak. In addition, our newest product Salt Beef was awarded a Silver.

Next month we aim to launch our new loyalty scheme following the feedback we received from you in the survey you kindly did a while ago. Watch out on our website for more details and to find out how you can benefit from offers and discounts!

It has been a busy month here for us but we look forward to hearing from you soon, and to find out what you think about the lamb.

Best Wishes from Jo, Tim and all at Higher Hacknell Farm

Shearing Time

Organic farms abound in insect life-and as the heat of summer is truly here-the whole farm feels and sounds alive. The bees feed on the clover nectar, the ladybirds eat the aphids in the corn and the birds feast on the unwelcome guests in our crops. But not every insect is beneficial and top of our list of enemies are blowflies. These flies are the reason we shear our sheep at this time of year-they lay their eggs in fleece and when they hatch they worry and harm the sheep, so it is a real relief when the shearer arrives and we get the job done, especially this year with the recent scorching temperatures. Shearing on a hot day might not be much fun for the shearer but it’s great for the wool as the ‘yolk’ or oil in the fleece rises and the fleece comes off better.

It’s a busy day, parting out he ewes for shearing from their lambs while they are being shorn,and noisy with them baaing for each other until they are reunited. When the fleece is off, it’s rolled up and put into huge bags which are sewn up ready to be sold, which usually means taking them to the wool board. It’s amazing to us that hundreds of years ago fortunes were built on wool, and even recently Tim spoke to a farmer who remembered that he used to be able to buy a new tractor with his wool cheque because nowadays the wool cheque barely even covers the cost of the shearing.

I find it incredible that wool is so undervalued as it is a ‘wonder fibre’! It can absorb as much as 30% of its weight in water without feeling wet to the touch . It is quite fire resistant and of course insulating. It’s also a vital part of Bristish history: Richard the Lionheart’s ransom was promised in wool, the Lord Chancellor still sits on a woolsack and futures trading was invented by Cistercian monks who offered contracts on their future wool production. Once upon a time there were 300 bylaws relating to wool and wool production -there was even a law that people had to be buried in wool-we thought all the rules and regulation we farmers are faced with were a modern thing!

But hopefully wool is coming back in fashion as we rediscover it’s benefits. We have a friend who is probably going to take some of our wool for felting and making into shrouds and another customers is having a few fleeces for spinning. I used to do a bit of spinning, though the resulting jumpers and hats are a bit emabarrassing, so the spinning wheel has sat in a corner and got dusty! But if you are interested in some fantastic products using wool from Higher Hacknell Farm do have a look at my Friend Yuli’s website bellacouche.com

Grass Fed

It’s all about grass at the moment, growing it, cutting it and conserving it.
Above us, the sun is shining, the skylarks are singing and it’s beautiful. On the ground the grass is either lying in neat rows waiting for Tim to bale it up today, spread out to dry, or still waiting to be cut.

Grass is our most important crop at Higher Hacknell Farm, as we are a stock rearing farm and all our lamb and beef are grass fed. You’ve probaly read or heard people saying ‘grass fed’ beef is the healthiest and tastiest to eat and there are alot of learned papers with the fact and figures. As far as we are concerned, it’s just common sense and natural for livestock to eat grass, especially here in Devon where it grows so well. So, it doesn’t come as any surprise to us that grass fed animals also make the best tasting meat. And it is obviously better for the environment that we grow our feed here on the farm rather than buy it in in concentrate feed from the other side of the world and then not really know what we are putting into our animals.

In a letter recently to the Farmers Weekly, Peter Melchett, the Soil Association’s Policy Director wrote:
“Grass-fed cattle and sheep avoid the damaging impacts of imported animal feed, while helping to store carbon in UK grassland and rough grazing. People outside farming tend to ignore the huge differences in the ways in which livestock is produced. The feed that goes to intensive chickens and pigs, or to high yielding dairy and beef, gives a completely different environmental impact when compared to free-range and organic poultry or pork fed largely on home-grown feed or soya imported from countries like Italy. Grass-fed, native breeds of cattle cannot be compared, in terms of taste or environmental impact, with feed-lot beef.”
Farmers Weekly (14 May, p.31)

Although to most people, grass is just grass,to us organic farmers, it means everything! We have many varieties, different seed mixtures, all for specific purposes. Some, like the red clover and rye grass grow quickly and make good quality silage, while the permanent pastures have a huge diversity of mainly native grasses and herbs, and grow slower, but make sweet smelling soft hay. We have a mixture of short, medium and long term leys here at Higher Hacknell Farm which means some fields are ploughed every three to five years in rotation with growing crops such as barley and wheat. These are the short term leys which produce the high yielding ,good quality grass for feeding to the fat cattle, whereas the permanent pastures are never ploughed and used for grazing and for hay. One of my favourite pastures here is the old parkland next door to the Northcote Manor, with a stunning copper beach tree in it and the field above it, we call The Beeches, is laid up now for making hay. When I walked through there with my spaniel puppy the other day, Tim pointed to his bright yellow legs which were completely stained by the mass of buttercups he’d run through and knew exactly where we’d been!

The tractors are going up and down the lane with trailers of bales to be wrapped and stacked, and then onto the next field, to row up and bale. There are still more fields to mow and we’ve got to keep it going while the weather is with us and get the grass conserved for winter, which happily seems a long way off!

Going To The Show

This week we are all getting ready for the Devon County Show. I’ve been setting up the stall today down in Exeter trying to make old bits of hessian which used to line the corn bin into a ‘rustic chic’ back drop! Back at the farm Keith, the butcher, has been preparing fantastic cuts of meat - beautiful racks of lamb arranged into guards of honour with little paper hats, rib eye steaks, and as the weather forecast looks hot, tempting koftas and kebabs for the barbecue. We are launching our new range of summer cuts at the show, lamb kebabs in a spicy marinade and pork kebabs in hoisin sauce as well as all the best selling sausages which we seem to hand out in a never ending supply of tasters at the shows! Ann who helps us in the butchery has been hand pressing hundreds of steakburgers ready for cooking, while I’ve been making some home made tomato relish and horseradish sauce to go with them. There is no shortage of horseradish growing in the garden at the moment, the only trouble is peeling and grating it is a tearful business! However I’ve discovered the food processor makes the grating less painful!

Win a Spring Meat Box

Here at Higher Hacknell Farm Spring is well under way with all the lambs now born and most of the calves too. We are always attempting to improve what we do; while Tim is trying to figure our how to increase his lambing percentage and improve the pastures, I'm wanting to make sure you get the best quality meat and service from us. So we are taking a fresh look at what we do and how we can do it better and ask you kindly for your opinions. 
Win a Spring Meat Box
However when I mentioned to Tim last night that I was intending to do a survey, he groaned, as most farmers would, at the thought of questionnaires and being hasselled, so I understand if this is something you don't want to take part in! However it will take less than five minutes and I truly appreciate your comments. 
To do the survey , follow the link http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JPYFK83 and we will enter all participants who put their emails on the survey into a prize draw to give away a Spring Meat Box. Please reply by 31st May.

Find out about our customer loyalty scheme

Higher Hacknell Loyalty Scheme

Would you like extra meat FREE or FREE delivery? If you’d like to become a regular customer of Higher Hacknell Farm Organic Meat by ordering a monthly box valued at £75 or more then we will add an extra 10% worth of free organic meat or if you prefer, free delivery.

The scheme is a hassle free and convenient way to shop-we’ll contact you a week before your next order is due to remind you it’s on it’s way, by email or phone if you prefer. If you are going on holiday, or need to skip a month, just let us know, you’re not tied in.

It’s also completely flexible. Choose one of our standard boxes, the mixed box is a favourite with the loyalty scheme customers, or make your own choice of cuts from our full range of organic beef, organic lamb, organic pork and organic chicken.

You can have a different choice of meat cuts each month, if you like organic sausages, organic burgers and barbecue meat in the summer or slow cooking cuts such as organic beef brisket and organic mutton in winter

If you’d like to take advantage of our loyalty scheme offer then please email us at [email protected] or phone 01769 560909 to discuss your preferences and for us to take details of your requirements.

Spring Arrivals

During the past month the hillsides have very much come alive! During the winter when there isn’t much grass the countryside is a quiet place to be, but right now there is a cacophony of bleating lambs and anxious cows calling their calves everywhere you turn! Amongst the many new arrivals on the farm, the most prominent and certainly the most demanding has been my new Springer Spaniel puppy, ‘Buddy’.

'Buddy' the Springer

However he has incentivised me to get out of bed early and give Tim a helping hand by checking the stock, a daily routine, while out walking. It’s especially important right now with so many newly born animals. In particular we have to check the cows udders arn’t bursting with milk, a sign that her calf isn’t feeding, or any animal on it’s own could mean things arn’t quite right. The other day there were 5 cows on one side of the hill but 6 calves, as one calf had not found her way across the stream and up the other side of the hill.to join it’s mother, so it needed sorting out. We have also had to bring in cows and calves when their mothers are just producing too much milk and the calf can’t keep up, which could cause mastitis in the cow if left. We then either milk the cow by hand or sometimes put a stronger calf on it to drink the milk, but whichever method we use there’s a chance of a kicking from the cow!

We’ve had over thirty cows calve since Easter, as the lambing pretty much came to an end, calving begun. Tim was kept busy sorting things out when there were 8 calves born in less than 2 days, as some of the young heifers didn’t really know or care what had happened to them and wandered off leaving their calves, while others had maternal instinct in overdrive and became too aggressive to get close to. It’s one thing managing the farm, but worse is the admin attatched to each animal as every calf born has to be registered within a few days of birth and then receive a passport from the government. Dealing with the bureaucracy is what really drives Tim mad, the phone calls, on line systems with passwords that don’t work……., you get the picture! But however frustrating things can get, it is a beautiful time of year, the swallows have arrived, the fields and woods are filled with the sound of birdsong, the leaves are coming out on the trees a vibrant green and what we want is some rain!!

The herald of the future

Our new bull - Billy

Every three years we need to replace our bull, so that we don’t breed back into the same bloodlines. Last Wednesday Tim and I left George, the veterinary student in charge of lambing and went off in the landrover and trailer to Exeter to the South Devon Herd Book Society Spring Show and Sale. It’s four years since we bought Tregondale King Cole, our current bull, and we’ve used another bull, a ruby red Devon on his daughters for the last year and now we really must get a new bull. It’s not so easy though getting the bull you want at auction and the last two times we’ve tried to buy at the sale we have been outbid on what we wanted and had to buy later privately. The Show is a good place to see the best of the breed. It started at 9.30 and each class of bulls was paraded bytheir owners in the ring and judged while we checked their pedigree in the catalogue and marked down which we liked. Obviously size and conformation-a good well rounded behind- are important, as well as an attractive coat and head. Much of it is personal choice but the techical side-which now is referred to as EBV or estimated breeding value, records statisics such as calving ease, fertility, birthweight, growth at various ages and carcase information. It’s alot to take in! Then, having chosen a few we liked the look of there is the questionof bidding, do we bid early so if we don’t get one we have more chances, or do we hang on for the ones we liked the most and risk getting outbid and coming home with nothing? After the juding, which took till lunchtime when we’d seen so many bulls we were getting confused! We discussed our tatics and decided we’d miss the first few and wait for our favourite. Even though Timwas doing the bidding I was getting really nervous by now, and my heart was beating! The first went for reasonable prices and then no 14 came in and Tim got bidding. We’d decided that the right bull is so important for the future of the herd that we’d spend more than we’d done previously and as someone bid against us, the auctioneer kept going up in hundreds of guineas until finally the other person dropped out and the autioneer banged down his hammer and pointed at us! It was a great relief and although it was the top price paid up till then at the sale we knew we’d got what we wanted. Interestingly the prices went up after that and some of the other bulls we’d selected but not liked as much went for even more. A bull from the same herd as the one we bought made the top price of the day so we were pretty pleased and as Tim led him into the trailer, he said he heralds a new future! I’m sure he’ll give us cattle we’ll be proud of.

Lambing well under way

It’s amazing what happens in a week! Seven days ago the land was completely yellow and lifeless and now the warmer temperature and rain has got it moving. Spring- what a perfect description! This year everything has been behind with a longer and harder winter than usual, but hopefully we are catching up now. As they say, ‘ a peck of dust in March is worth a king’s ransom’ and the dry weather has been ideal for getting the dung spread on the land and the spring barley planted at the optimum time.

The lambs are being born during the last week and we are probably about a third of the way through. Tim is getting a bit weary of all the early mornings but our lambing student has been helping me with the evening shifts. Most of the ewes and lambs are going well and need little assistance. When they lamb they go in a pen with their lambs to ‘mother up’ for a day and we check the ewe has milk and they are feeding ok. Then we put them in a bigger barn for another day where we can keep a good eye on them before we take them out in small groups to the fields. We get a few ewes who for some reason don’t like one of their lambs and reject one which is very time consuming trying various methods and tricks to get them to accept the lamb. It’s understandable if there has been a mix up and a ewe has the wrong lamb, but when she doesn’t like her own lamb it tries the farmers’ patience and language! As a last resort the ‘orphan lamb’ gets bottle fed. The number of orphans is increasing as some ewes may not have enough milk for 2 or 3 lambs and they need feeding 4 times a day. George, our vet student assistant here on work experience is beginning to understand why Tim is keen to foster them to mothers with only a single lamb!

We’ve also had a couple of cows calve this week although the main herd is not due to start calving for another few weeks. This Wednesday is going to be pretty important as Tim and I will be going to the South Devon cattle sale in Exeter to buy a new bull. We need a new bull every three years so he does not serve his own daughters as they go into the herd. It’s an important decision as the bull obviously makes half the herd. We want one that produces good shapely calves with excellent growth rates but not so big that the cows have calving problems, so hopefully we’ll be getting a top bull who will be fit to serve our 40 cows during the summer. Talking of summer, Tim heard on the Farming Today programme on the radio this morning that a weather forcasting agency-not the met office –is predicting a summer like 1976!