September at Hartley Farm

Autumn time is now here and for me it has to be the best time of year. Not only because I have lost all faith for the English summer but Autumn brings beautiful colours to the countryside and some great British produce that warms your soul. It also sees the start of the game season once again and also, especially for us, the ticking of the Christmas countdown clock!

Before we go any further I would like to thank everyone who came along to our Family Fun Day on August Bank Holiday Sunday. It was one of the very rare sunny days and the farm was full of smiling faces, a great day was had by all. The highlight for me had to be Jasper the bull finally kicking into action and doing what he does best on our first farm tour. Dad and I had been wondering if he had been doing any "work" and like the true showman he is decided to let us both know he was with a farm tour trailor full of excited families! Thanks Jasper. Thanks also to the Bath Chronicle for coming out and here's a link to the article with a great picture too!

Elsewhere on the farm we are just waiting for our Indian summer so we can cut some more haylage to top up our winter fodder for the animals. More litters of Gloucester Old Spot pigs have arrived too and can be seen frolicking by our allotments. They really are a sight, make sure you say hello next time your passing!

It really has been a very testing summer for many farmers and growers in this country, lets hope it was a one off. Agriculture in Britain has suffered dramatically over the last few years and weather like this certainly doesn't help. As home-grown veggies and fruits start to fill the shelves as well as British meat & dairy lets make sure we buy British to support this very much needed industry. You wont half miss them when they've gone!

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We were joined by expert chutney and jam makers Victorian Kitchen from Dorset as well as local rapeseed oil producer Bath Harvest in the farm shop in recent weeks on our "meet the producer" days. Tastings went down a storm with both producers serving up some of their wonderful produce. Don't forget to check our events page to see more details of more of our meet the producer days coming up including Heavenly Hedgerows on 15th September and House of the Rising Bun on 6th October.

Also on the 21st October will be this year's Apple Day! It's a day to celebrate the wonderful local apples we have in abundance right in the heart of the apple season. More details on this event will be in our October edition but will include apple pressing, apple bobbing, Cider tasting and talks and most probably some apple based treats from the farm kitchen too!

Specials from the farm shop this month include..

3 jars of Victorian Kitchen Preserves for £9.99
Avonleigh Rose now only £8.49 each!

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As mentioned earlier it is coming into game season, one of the best times of the year to be a butcher (and a cook!). Our game is all sourced locally from Wiltshire and in addition to our locally shot wild venison we will have over the coming weeks some wonderful partridge too. As ever with game season we are in the hands of the local game dealers and will strive to always offer what we can. However due to the nature of wild game we make sure we only take the best quality produce from trusted game dealers and so not everything will always be available. If you need to speak to our butchers about what is best and available at the moment and to place an order please call the farm shop on 01225 864948 or email theshop@hartley-farm.co.uk.

If you were at our Family Fun Day last weekend and enjoyed some of our hog roast you are in luck as the butchers have got some of the same scrumptious pork on offer this weekend! Likewise if you missed out now's your chance to make up for lost time and recreate the hog roast!

10% of our Pork this Weekend!

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In the next few days we will be launching some new homemade cakes baked fresh from the farm kitchen available to take away from the farm shop. Ollie and his team have been working (and tasting) away on some new cakes ready to launch this weekend. Our range of family cakes and cup cakes will be available alongside our already very popular traybakes so look out for the new cake display in the farm shop!!

A few months ago we mentioned we had a few plans in place in an effort to meet your expectations in our farm cafe as we know at busy times service can be a bit chaotic! We listened to your feedback and by far the most popular suggestion was to have a cafe till in place at the cafe for a number of reasons. Well, we listened and thought about it (a lot!) and decided, as always, you were right and now have a brand new till system about to be installed. We hope to have this in place by the end of September and with it a more smooth service from the cafe. Thankyou to everyone who took the trouble to fill out a suggestion slip and let us know your thoughts, as ever suggestions slips are around the farm shop so if you have an ideas pop it in the box!

We are also playing our part in the World's Biggest Coffee Morning and raising money for the Macmillan Charity. On Friday 28th September we will be doing our part fundraising for Macmillan Cancer Support. Details on how you can join in and help (mainly by eating cake i'm afraid) will be posted on our events page soon.

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August has been a slightly better month than Kate was expecting, and we've actually had a few days of sunshine, wow! That means that the tomatoes and cucumbers are producing well now, along with leafy crops such as rainbow chard (lovely shredded finely in a salad, steamed as a 'green' like spinach, stir-fried or in curries), salad rocket and lettuces. The leeks are looking good in the field too, and there was just enough dry weather to get them weeded in time. The runner beans that survived the slug onslaught are going for it, and will soon be caught up by the purple, yellow and green pencil beans. September will see a real harvest of veg: some squashes and pumpkins are looking promising, and the kale and cabbages and now growing well too. We just need a few more sunny days for the sweetcorn though…

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Heavenly Hedgerows taster day Saturday 15th September

House of the Rising Bun taster day Saturday 6th October

The Worlds Biggest Coffee Morning 28th September

Apple Day 6th October
-cider tastings and talks, apple pressing & tasting

Sausage Week 5th - 11th November
- New sausages to be tasted, sausage specials in the cafe and a specials Sausage Supper Club!

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We look forward to seeing you all soon

All the best
Tom

August at Hartley Farm

Well it wouldn't be one of my newsletters if there wasn't some reference/grumble about the weather! It seems our week-long summer came to a premature end in July and we're now back to the grey and drizzle. The only benefit from this weather is its a perfect grass growing climate and we have more grass this year than we need! Due to the plentiful grass we have and great quality silage we have cut this year we have made the decision to increase the size of our Aberdeen Angus herd. The recent award for our grass fed beef in the Taste of the West competition has given us further proof and confidence that our slow-growing, traditional breed, grass fed beef is the best around and so our efforts on the farm are going towards breeding for future generations. In July we welcomed a pedigree Angus stock bull by the name of Jasper to Hartley Farm. Jasper is now happy munching the pastures here at the farm, and doing what he does best, looking after our girls and the future generations of Aberdeen Angus cows for us!


On the subject of new life on the farm we've had another two litters of piglets from our Gloucester Old Spot sows in July with a total of three so far this summer. With all the rain they've had plenty of mud to play around in so at least the British summer has brought some happiness! We will also have one or two new arrivals in Pet's Corner soon. We've been on the look out for a few more interesting animals for all to see and as our newly created enclosures are just about finished they will be filled soon so keep your eyes peeled!



We have seen lots of great new products from local producers in the farm shop this summer. Over the next few months we will be inviting some of these wonderful producers to the farm shop to say hello to all our equally wonderful customers! Below are the dates to put in your diary for our "Meet the Producer Days"

Victorian Kitchen and their Handmade Preserves on Saturday 18th August.
Bath Harvest Rapeseed Oil on Saturday 25th August.
Heavenly Hedgerows with their preserves made from foraging local hedgerows on Saturday 15th September.

As well as meeting our suppliers you will get to taste their products and we will also be running special offers on their products for the day only.



As the weather changes from deepest winter to tropical summer in the space of a day at times our butchers are staying strong and continuing to craft their delicious barbecue range on offer from the counter. All available to pre-order are our handmade burgers and sausages all homemade as well as our ever popular glazed chicken skewers, and marinated chicken. Also new to our range is our ready made Beef Burgundy and Beef Stir Fry in an attempt to offer something for all seasons! Our new ready made meal solutions can be popped straight into the oven in their containers and dinner is taken care of! The ingredients are of course using our own meat from the counter and all vegetables are freshly prepared too picked from our vegetable display!

This months specials from the butchers are as follows;

6 Hartley Farm Beef Burgers for £4.50
10 Marinated Chicken Skewers for £8

Also new this month is our 3 for £10 offer in our self-service fridge. Mix and match any pre packed meat with our 3 for £10 stickers on them to save! The range will include our burgers, sausages, free range chicken and more!



While the terrible growing season has continued, ground under cover has been even more valuable this year, and Kate is very excited as her third polytunnel is finally finished! After waiting for a still, sunny day to put the plastic on, she and her team of helpers finally gave up and did it anyway in the drizzle. Now the cucumbers have a home and look happy, with some more beetroot, carrots, spinach and rocket sown to try and make up a bit for all the lost crops in the field. Meanwhile bunches of spring onions and beetroot have survived and are on sale now, along with the trusty red butterhead lettuces and rainbow chard. Roll on the August heatwave, she is looking forward to moaning about the dry for a change!



Firstly, and by far most importantly our butcher Will got engaged to his now fiancee Lizzie in July! Wedding planning has already commenced and we wish them both all the best for their future together.

In other, slightly less exciting but none the less interesting, news (well we think so anyway) we have recently entered a national award for farm shops and farm retailers. One of the sections we were asked to fill in on the entry form was about our green credentials which got us, thinking about what we have done so far this year. We're please to say our solar energy system is now installed on our barn roof and already harnessing lots of energy from all this sun we've been having! In addition to this we have also managed to recycle the following in the past year;

2.5 tons of cardboard 

1.25 tons of Plastics

10 tons of Glass!!

We're very please with this effort and we are continuing to try to decrease our carbon footprint with a view toward rain water conservation among other projects. We'll keep you posted as these projects gather pace.

Best wishes and we look forward to seeing you all soon.

Tom

We're Award Winners!

After nearly four years of trading now (wow) we finally bit the bullet and decided to enter some of our own lines into the Taste of the West 2012 Awards. Of course we have always been confident we are producing some of the finest food from our farm but it's always nice to have someone else tell you that too!

Back in May Mum and Dad were armed with a few choice lines and headed down through deepest darkets Somerset, bound for Exeter where the judging takes place. An anxious few weeks awaited but last week the results were announce and we were thrilled to find out we picked up two awards!

Firstly we won a highly coveted Gold Award for our Homemade Chicken Liver & Port pate. This is one of our favourite homemade products and is our chef Ollie's own recipe which he has been making for the shop for a while now. The judges said....

"The aroma is very fresh and of nice mellow pate. The appearance has a little hint of pink coming through and the pate is a lovely colour. It has a nice smooth texture. The taste is very nice, it leaves no aftertaste (like some chicken liver pate can!) - it has a powerful flavour and dissolves on the tongue." I couldnt agree more! 

Next up was our Silver Award winning Dry Aged Sirloin of Beef. Our butcher Ed picked out a beautiful, dry aged sirloin from one of our equally beautiful Aberdeen Angus carcasses to be judged. The judge's remarks were as follows...

" The aroma was good, fresh, beefy and well aged. Nice appearance both raw and cooked. The texture was fairly good and reasonably succulent. Taste was good - nice 'beefy' flavour"

Our Angus beef dry-ageing on the bone

One of the organisers of the event also mentioned that for us two win not one but two awards on our first attempt is an excellent result!

Farmers, butchers and chefs alike are all extremely proud of this achievment as we have put a lot of effort into our home produced meat along with the food that we are now producing in our farm kitchen. With these awards now to our name we know we are on the right track and hope for more success in the coming years! Thanks to everybody too for your much valued feedback as we firmly believe all our customers have been the best judges anyway!

All the best

Tom

July on the Farm

Welcome to this months edition of our newsletter. As always we have lots to tell you about! Much of this months activity has been on the farm. Despite the unpredictable weather we managed to get all our silage cut towards the end of June. The recent wet and warm weather has provided us with a bumper crop - almost twice as much as last year's that will keep our cattle fed when the weather turns and the grass stops growing later in the year. We will hope to be cutting again later in the summer when the grass has had time to grow again, as always we are dependant on mother nature for that though!

This week we have welcomed to the farm nine healthy Gloucesteshire Old Spot piglets that were born on Monday night. Over the next few weeks, you will see them playing about in the mud with their proud mum next to our allotments. All our Gloucesteshire Old Spot mum's are expecting so there will be plenty of little oinks larking about soon enough!

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Kate has been trying to look on the bright side this month and ignore the rain, cold, wind and slugs. So in positive news: the yummy tender early broad beans are now available in the shop, along with her favourite lettuce variety: Marvel of 4 Seasons, a beautiful red crinkly butterhead. Plus the spring onions are now ready, and tomato plants are looking good in the tunnel - just need some more sun. The leeks been transplanted from the poly-tunnel and are now happily settling into their rows in the.field. Fingers crossed that July will be warm and sunny...

We have also had an update from Robert, our beekeeper extraordinaire. Last year our bees didn't enjoy the climate and so were unable to produce any honey but our hopes are higher this year. All the bees came through the winter very well and all six hives are looking healthy. The weather turned for the worse in April which didn't help matters and delayed any hopeful harvests as quite a bit of the honey reserves were gobbled up by the bees to keep them going through the horrible days (comfort eating!). As is the case with the rest of the farm we are in need of a calm, sunny period to get us going again. Lets keep our fingers crossed for honey later on in the summer!

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The Bath Good Food Awards voting end this Saturday on 30th June. We have voting cards in the shop and you can also vote
on-line through this link. We are going for the "Best Farm Shop" category so if you think we've got what it take please vote for us before Saturday! Click where it says VOTE HERE on the right!

In June I sent Mum & Dad down to Exeter with some of our finest offerings from the farm shop to enter the 2012 Taste of The West Awards. They were armed with our home reared Aberdeen Angus Beef sirloin, homemade chicken liver pate, spinach & feta lasagne and our chocolate brownies. We should be hearing in the next few weeks about how we did so keep your fingers firmly crossed!

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The long awaited, slightly sparkling version of Bob Honey's Midford Cider is now bottled and in the farm shop. We now have the sparkling version alongside the more traditional farmhouse cider and Bob Honey will be here on 7th of July to offer samples of both and talk about his cider making days in Midford, near Bath.

As Wimbledon kicks into action and British hopes are raised again we have the very best Somerset strawberries as well as a few of our own grown fruits to enjoy alongside uncle Geoff's Ivy House Farm cream. Summer is the time for fruits, we are currently enjoying some wonderful Wiltshire-grown gooseberries and soon to be, blueberries too. Nectarines & peaches have also just come into season and are beautifully ripe and juicy and best enjoyed now!

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Throughout June we have had some fantastic, high welfare British veal in the counter. All our veal has come from the Jurassic Coast in Dorest and has proved really popular. Much media attention has been drawn towards veal recently and we have made the decision to back British produced veal as its a really tasty and healthy meat that is produced to extremely high standards of animal welfare and just as importantly supports British farming. More information on the farm we source our veal from and the veal industry is available through the following link,

Click here to read more on our Rose Veal...

Over the last couple of weeks we have been developing more great sausage recipes such as smoky barbecue pork, venison and our new version pork & fresh leek. In addition to this we have a few special offers from the butchery to take advantage of whether your dining indoors or out!

Pork Chops 6 for £4
Homemade Beef Burgers 6 for £4.50
Marinated Chicken Skewers 10 for £8

All our meat is cut straight from whole carcasses, in-house and so we are able to offer all the cuts from our own beef, pork and lamb. If you are tempted by a certain recipe, want to try out an old fashioned cut or just wanting something a bit unusual please let us know and we can prepare it especially for you.

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From the kitchen this month we have launched our new range of homemade treats available from the deli counter. Along with our own scotch eggs we have tartlets, an assortment of pies and salads to compliment our other fine produce from the kitchen. Our homemade meat pies use only our own high welfare, high quality meat from our farm and local farmers. You can try our pies in the cafe too as we will have a select range on our daily specials board. Choose from Steak & Willy Good Ale, Lamb with Mint and New Potato, Chicken & Leek and Pea and Ham pies.

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On July 14th we will be celebrating Bastille Day to give a bit continental flair to our events calendar! We will be hosting our first ever boules competition at the farm and teams can be entered now. If you wish to enter a team in this year's competition you will need to sign up in the shop. Team entry fee is £20 per team and proceeds will be going to Cancer Research UK.

We will also be joined by Great Western Wine from 12pm to taste some of our range of wines along with some cheese in true French fashion at our deli counter. A few french specials will be served up in the cafe too so not for the first time in the newsletter, lets hope the sun shines!

This month we have also launched WildFit. WildFit is a not-for-profit social enterprise that aims to make a real difference to the community. Specialist skills are used to design the ultimate fitness and well-being trails, parkour circuits and eco-gyms in the local community. Trails will set off from the farm shop on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for different abilities to get fit and enjoy the countryside. The first session is free so there's no excuse to try it out!

For more information on all our events check our noticeboard at the farm shop or our events page.

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Flower workshops will be going ahead on 16th and 17th July. If you have always wanted to learn how to arrange a hand-tie of stunning flowers, now is your chance! Come and enjoy an evening with Young Blooms, pimms will be served and there will be a short demonstration from Grace & Laura. They will be on hand to guide you through as you learn how to create a hand-tie. Workshop cost will be £50 and will run from 7pm till 9pm, to book please phone 01225 580271, or 07980199452.

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The BBC Good Food and Farming Awards have launched for 2012. This is what the awards are for...

"This award celebrates the local shops that enrich our lives, selling delicious, carefully sourced and affordable food. High street butchers, bakers and delis, farm and community shops - tell us what's great about their food, and the difference they make to your community and local food producers"

If you think we fit the bill please nominate us through the following link. Thanks!

BBC Food & Farming Awards Nominations 2012

We look forward to seeing you soon.

All the best,
Tom

June on the Farm

A few days of sun and everything seems a bit brighter! Since the rain and cold have packed their bags life has started to appear once again - better late than never I suppose. This month we have our regular updates from the farm shop and cafe along with news from our resident florists, Young Blooms and our resident market gardener, Kate Collyns.

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Throughout May we have been savouring some incredible asparagus from the Wye Valley. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and with the asparagus season the end is always much sooner than we want. We only have a week or two left so if you haven't made the most of these delicious spears yet make sure you do soon! However as we say good bye to one much-loved British treasure we say hello to another. English strawberries are finding their way to our shelves now and as the sun continues to shine they will only get better. There's plenty to celebrate this summer so we have also got stocks of some rather fantastic local sparkling wine. While stocks last we will be offering our Avonleigh Sparkling Wine for just £14.99 per bottle, perfect to wash down those strawberries and cream (Ivy House Cream of course). On the subject of our beloved Ivy House Farm we have also managed to get our hands on some beautiful handmade chocolate from Lick The Spoon. Diana makes all her chocolate in her chocolate factory in Corsham, Wiltshire. She has also paired up with my Uncle Geoff Bowles from Ivy House to use some of his organic Jersey cream in some of her creations. We have a great selection now in the farm shop that make perfect treats and gifts for all. Why not add some to one of our handmade and bespoke hampers for Father's Day this 17th June?

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This week we will have our spring lamb in the counter. Through the summer months we will be sourcing our spring lamb from Steve Bowles (another uncle!) at Church Farm and also Jamie Fielden from Hill House farm in Box. Our spring lamb has had much more time to graze the spring pastures than much of the mass produced spring lamb which focuses on churning out young lambs in bulk to hit the early spring market. Our spring lamb is still beautifully tender but has more flavour than earlier lamb. Whether it be a butterflied leg marinaded for the BBQ or chops for the grill it can't be beaten at this time of year!

Although not really the time of year for game we are very pleased to have found a great game dealer very locally to us to keep us stocked up with wild game through the year. On the counter recently has been some locally shot venison steaks and haunches as well as burgers and sausages. As the game season approaches towards autumn we will have plenty more on offer too.

Much attention and effort has very quickly been drawn to our barbecue range as the summer is sprung upon us. Our butchers have been working hard devising new products for the counter as well as giving the counter a bit of an uplift too! Throughout the week you will find all our delicious homemade burgers and sausages both on the counter and in handy grab and go packs too. The order book is filling quickly for this weekend too so if you want to take advantage of some of our homemade and home reared meat from the counter phone the butchers on 01225 864948 and celebrate the Jubilee weekend in style!

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Kate has been sulking over the last month as she's not been able to get onto the land because of the terrible weather; plus the slugs have been wreaking havoc on her early crops such as carrots, spinach and beetroot – even in the polytunnels. Now she has had her revenge after collecting a punnet-load and giving them to the ducks as a treat; plus this lovely warm weather means they should stay away now too. She's finally managed to plant her tomatoes out in one tunnel: a mixture of heritage varieties and new tasty breeds, from orange cherry toms and golden yellow vine tomatoes, to delicious pink Berner Rose beafsteak, and even a 'black' variety! Fingers crossed we can enjoy them in a couple of months, as long as the sun plays the game! (Don't forget to keep up to date with Kate's blog too)

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Some beautiful summer flowers are now available to include peonies, hydrangea, stocks and delphiniums. They have a larger selection in the workshop too with ready made bunches and plants by the fruit and veg in the farm shop.

Summer workshops are now available! Book to make a gorgeous hand-tie and contemporary arrangement.Come and have some pimms see a demonstration and have a go. Courses are £50 per person to include all materials flowers and liquid refreshment and will be running on 16th and 17th July 7-9pm.  To book call Laura and Grace on 01225 580271 or pop in or email us on info@youngblooms.co.uk

Weddings are in full flow , you can always pop in have a look and say Hi, as of 1st June come see our floral queen being created in celebration of  her 60 years on the throne too!

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This weekend is the Winsley Community Barn Dance to celebrate the Queens Jubilee. The Winsley Jubilee Committee will be holding the event at Hartley Farm. Tickets are in very short supply and will almost certainly sell out before Friday so if you were planning to buy tickets don't leave it to the last minute! Tickets are £10 for adults and £5 for children under 12. We will have a hog roast and a bar stocked with local ciders and Ale from our resident microbrewers, Willy Good Ale. On the pumps will be High Five as well as bottles of their limited edition Betty's Brew which is also available now from the farm shop!

On the 14th July we will be hosting our Boules and Moules day too. The day will include a family beach boules tournament along with tastings of some French fayre to mark the Bastille day celebrations. Details on how to enter Boules teams and events for the day will be release soon!

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I also wanted to take this opportunity to say a few words by way of a tribute to my grandfather, Bert Bowles, who sadly passed away last week as I'm sure many of you in the community will have heard. Known to me and all us grandchildren as Pappy, he was and will continue to be a huge influence to me and all the Bowles family particularly with our proud farming heritage that he was central to and we strive to continue. He will be remembered well by all of us and all his friends. Pictures of him farming the local land will continue to stand proud in our farm shop.

All the best
Tom 

Meat from Hartley Farm

We're often asked in the farm shop "why is you meat different from the rest?" so I thought we probably arent telling the story properly. We take alot of pride in what we are trying to do here at Hartley Farm so I thought it would be useful for us to tell everyone in a little more detail what goes into every joint, cut and sausage that gets put in our meat counter every day.

Why Choose Us?

 

With 5 generations and well over 100 years of faming experience in the family we take things seriously. It is our belief that the same high level of care and attention should be applied throughout an animals life from field all the way through to fork. Meat has become a commodity in the last couple of decades and something which has caused every component of the meat production system to seek the most cost effective way of producing animals for slaughter. Not only has the welfare of the animal suffered but so to has the quality of the end product and now we have very bland meat that doesnt tick any of the boxes it was initially meant for but only the task of filling our bellies.

We choose to offer something different. We put a great deal of effort into choosing breeds and production systems that give the highest welfare for each of our animals and ultimately provides us with meat that is unrivalled in flavour. Our traditional breeds of animal from Aberdeen Angus and Hereford cattle to Gloucester Old Spot pigs grow slowly on natural fodder. This allows them develop fat and therefor flavour. This is not in the interest of the large scale retailers as time costs money and allows for variation and not a uniform cut of meat.

We take advantage of our local abattoir, H.F Stiles, just a few miles away which minimizes any stress caused in transport which is hugely influential in the quality of the meat. Our carcasses are then delivered back to us where we are able to hang and mature them in our cold rooms to maintain complete control and deliver the same level of care as we did on the farm. Our butchers then handle and cut the meat using traditional butchery methods to offer all the cuts throughout the carcass being careful to utilise the whole animal. Our counter offers everything from the big joint that forms the centrepiece of the traditional roast to dry aged steaks and something a little more creative for that mid week meal.

It is also important for us to mention that, although we will never choose compete with the multiples on price as we will always focus on quality, meat that you buy over the counter in supermarkets is often more expensive than our own.

Don't forget our butchers can cut to your specific requirement so if you're planning a dinner party, fancy a barbecue or want to try something a little more unusual please dont hesitate to get in touch!

Phone us on 01225 864948 or email us by clicking here .

Below is a little more information about the meat we offer from our butchers.

Beef

We rear traditional breeds of beef cattle such as Aberdeen Angus and Hereford. All our cattle graze our pastures throughout the year and are only "topped up" with haylage during the winter when the grass starts to slow down. Our pastureland is clover rich and is cared for without the use of fertilizers to keep the whole process as natural as possible. All our beef is hung and matured in house to keep complete control of the product we sell. The resulting beef is well marbled, tender and full of flavour. Whether it be a beautifully aged rib of beef for sunday roast, a succulent steak to fry in butter or some meltingly tender shin or beef to sit on the hob for the best part of a day, our beef is cut and handled to your specific requirement by our butchery team.

Pork

We keep the very best Gloucester Old Spot breeding sows in an outdoor system for the majority of the year. Like us, pigs dont always enjoy being outdoors when the weather turns so they retreat to our straw-bedded barns when the time suits. Gloucester Old Spots are notoriously slow growing breeds with plenty of fat. The pork we have in our counter is therefor from
animals that have had a chance to grow at their own pace and develop an unrivalled flavour. Our pork is almost unrecognisable from that of the pale, flavourless stuff you find on mass stacked high on the shelves of you know where! With our pork you will notice deep pinky colour with plenty of fat, the essential ingredient for perfect crackling. The meat is also the perfect consistency for our homemade sausages that we make from scratch in our butchery. This is how pork should be!

Lamb

Our lamb is reared by Tom’s uncle, Steve Bowles, at Church Farm. Church Farm has been in the Bowles family for many generations and is situated next door to Hartley Farm. Much of the land between the two farms is shared and Steve farms approximately 200 breeding ewes throughout the year on the pastures surrounding both the farms. Steve's lambs are Texel-Lleyn cross which produce hardy, well fatted lambs that grow well on the pastures on the farm. The resulting meat is well marbled, a deep shade of red with a good of cover fat that is essential for great tasting lamb when cooking. We also mature our lamb to bring out the full depth of flavour from the slow growing lamb which is a stark contrast to the bright pink and often tastless meat you may well find at the supermarket.


This bit of text now stands in our "Farm Butchery" section on the website for you to read whenever you want!

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.