27th February
10.30am-2.30pm
£15
It’s Real Bread Week from the 19th-27th February, and we would like to take this opportunity to invite you to our farm!
Real Bread Week is all about the hows, wheres, and whys of buying quality bread or learning to make your own with great ingredients. We are keen to help everyone understand where their food comes from, and what decisions are best for them.
Continue reading “Real Bread Week 2022 – Milling Tour and Tasters”A twist on our annual open day for these times of Covid, we are having a “by appointment only” open day with morning and evening tours.
They both follow the same format –
Morning session:
Afternoon session:
The shop will be open throughout the day as well for any beef, lamb, mutton, sheepskins, flour, grains, knitting wool or eggs you might need.
Please book so that we know how many to expect. each session is limited to 30 people. We look forward to seeing you there!
Please note that these links will take you to the EventBrite website.
I sometimes like to sieve out the roughest bran from our flour, which means that I can produce a lighter loaf or cake from the wholemeal flour. But it’s always bothered me: what I can then do with the bran. Soaking it to put back in the bread dough confused me, using it to flour bread tins worked but didn’t necessarily use it all up, and feeding it to the hens felt like a waste! But thanks to Danette from Kingsland Farm, I discovered that it was possible to make your own Bran Flakes, and this has changed my world.
Continue reading “Bran flakes”Rebecca’s hot crossed buns were an exciting treat the first time she brought them to elevenses. Since then she has made some every Easter, and each year they are still as exciting! She uses Delia Smith’s recipe as a base, with a few tweaks here and there. The main one is using our wholemeal flour instead of strong white, which produces a less fluffy bun but packed with flavour.
Continue reading “Hot Cross Buns”Writing this recipe feels more daring than writing the others I think this is because we are giving it a recognised name rather than a descriptive one, implying that these chapatis are the same as the traditional Indian ones. While the chapatis we make are excellent, they can never be quite as good as those you eat on the streets of small towns in India. Traditional chapati flour is ground finer than ours, and we haven’t yet perfected the Indian chapati makers’ technique of rolling and turning the chapatis in the same movement and of thinning them by throwing them from hand to hand with panache.
Continue reading “Chapatis”Talbinah (also spelt talbeena, talbina, talbeenah and probably some other variation that I’ve forgotten) is the Muslim word for barley porridge. It is a delicious alternative to oatmeal porridge, and as we currently grow barley but not oats, I’ve been experimenting with it this winter.
Continue reading “Talbinah”Nora first experimented with using our barley flour to make scones, and passed this recipe on to us after it proved to be a success.
Continue reading “Barley Scones”Apparently snickerdoodles aren’t German, no matter how much I think the word sounds it. Whatever they are, they are also quick, soft, and delicious. I found this recipe whilst staying with my brother and sister-in-law when their twins were only two months old, and we all quickly decided that these were perfect snacks for the late nights that were going on. I usually make two or three times the dough in one go, and only bake some at a time. The rest I put into one or two bags and leave in the freezer for when I want something sugary.
Continue reading “Snickerdoodles (Cinnamon cookies)”On a recent brilliant sunny day, I was riding our pony Salix, at speed, up the committee fields to visit the cattle and sheep littered in the fields at the top of the farm; the phrase ‘in May, I sing all day’ came to mind. The road at the top of the hill and the sky above were quiet because we were already in ‘lockdown’. Maybe part of the reason these words came into my mind was that this silence matched the quiet days of my childhood. For me, the words are from a time when the world had less noise and the rhyme from which they derive is part of my primary-school lore:
Read MoreApril is the changeover from winter to summer. In the winter the animals depend on us for their food and comfort. Most of them, all the ones indoors, would be knee deep in muck if we didn’t clear it away for them and give them fresh bedding; they would be without food unless we gave it to them, and that depends on our having saved the grass from last summer. In summer, by contrast, the animals are all outdoors and don’t really need us. We see them daily but, if all is well, that is all we do: we look, we see that they are comfortable and that they seem happy and we leave them to themselves. April is the month by which the big change-around has happened. It is a relief to finally return to the summer pattern; we have by now become weary of feeding and bedding and it is a pleasure to see the animals enjoying the weather and the sweet spring grass. For the vegetables, there is an equivalent shift around now. Through the winter and well into spring we are dependant on last year’s plants and last year’s work and now we are setting out this year’s and just beginning to crop the earliest of them.
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