May at Hartley Farm

We have a packed edition of this month's update with lots to tell you about. I'll do my best not to mention the weather this month as I'm sure you're all as fed up as me about it!



Firstly a huge thankyou to all who attended our Easter Family Fun Day back at the start of April. We had a great turnout, much more than expected and many of you braved the afternoon downpours to be taken around the farm on our very popular farm tours. Both the Bath Chronicle and the Wiltshire times reported on the day with a few great photo's. A link to the story in the Bath Chronicle is below.

Click here to read our article in the Bath Chronicle!

Next on the calendar is the Winsley Community Barn Dance which we are hosting here at the farm on Saturday 2nd June. Tickets are available now and we are selling some from the shop. More details are available on the Winsley Community website or on our Events page.

We are also putting plans in place to celebrate Bastille Day on the 14th July in style with our very own Boules & Moules day! Soon we will be announcing more details on the day which promises to include a family "Beach Boules" tournament, tastings and specials of some French classics including moules mariniere, along with some wonderful French cheese and wine. Keep your eyes peeled on the website and on our noticeboard at the farm shop for more info soon!



National Honey Week is soon upon us in mid May and so we have invited Fred the Wiltshire

Busy Bees

Beekeeper to the farm shop on Sunday 13th May from 10am until 2pm to show off his range of local honey and beeswax gifts. Fred has been supplying the farm shop for a few years now and his local Wiltshire honey and bee pollen in particular are really popular so here's your chance to meet the man himself and talk about the birds and the bees!


We are just entering the fruitful season for fresh produce and so far this month year we have been enjoying Wye Valley asparagus, Yorkshire rhubarb, Bromham bunched carrots as well as bulls blood bunched beets and rainbow chard from our own fields. Soon enough our own home grown produce will be featuring heavily in the shop and on the cafe menu. Don't forget to keep up to date with our market gardening guru, Kate Collyns, through her blog.



Ed and the team have been planning a few updates to the butchers counter and over the next few weeks we will start to see these changes taking place. We have been working particularly hard on developing a few more meal solutions that takes the hassle out that timeless question "What shall we have for tea tonight?" As well as coming up with a few solutions ourselves we are still very keen to find out what you want from our butchers counter so please don't be shy and tell us. You can reply to this email with your suggestions and ideas, fill in one of our feedback forms in the shop or simply pop in for a chat!




The newest addition to the farm shop has been our new and improved range of frozen ready meals. We think we have started with a good range of meals that we hope you will all enjoy. Many of our lines are gluten free and all are homemade using our own produce from the farm as much as possible. We plan to add a few more lines too along with more desserts all produced from the our kitchen along with family sized portions too. As always we are looking for feedback so please let us know what you want from us.

Specials over the coming weeks include our carnivorous feast of slow roasted shoulder of Winsley lamb roll. Our roast baps have been really popular and this month our fabulous Winsley Lamb gets the headlines.



Firstly we wish Sarah, who works in the farm shop, the very best of wishes as she jets of to the Greek Islands this month to get married! Sarah has been busy planning the wedding ever since she started working here well over a year ago so please join us in wishing her and her fiancee Joel the very best of luck for the future!

Ted our 'young at heart' butcher has just completed his three day cycle to Illfracombe raising money for Dorothy House Hospice. Ted and his team managed to raise over £1500!

We are also really please to announce that Matt, who has been with us since we opened in 2008, has started an apprenticeship with us in our production kitchen. Many of you will know Matt for his smiley service and maybe most importantly his superb coffees. Matt's apprenticeship will last approximately 16 months which will gain him his qualification. Good luck Matt!

As we have mentioned before, our long term sustainable farming plans includes ideas to generate our own electricity. As more farm produce become available and the Farm Shop Kitchen and Cafe gets busier, we have an increasing power need for our refrigeration and cooking equipment. Last month we had some discussions with Bath & West Community Energy who have experience and ideas with renewable energy projects that involve and benefit the whole community. We will let you know how these ideas progress and look forward to hearing your thoughts too.

Lastly we just wanted to include a quick note from our cafe team. We are aware that at times and particularly during the weekend we can get very busy. We are working very hard on addressing how we handle this over the summer and we have a few plans in place to help manage the demand to ensure our service doesn't drop. If you have experienced some delays we are sorry but please be assured we are working very hard to overcome this and hope to improve as the summer goes on. Thank you in advance for your understanding.