3 of the best farmstays in the UK if you love food

A Day At Our Farm by Simon Rogan

What, When & Where: Nestled in the Cartmel Valley in the Lake District, Our Farm was created by acclaimed chef Simon Rogan and his team to grow fully traceable ingredients for his Michelin-star restaurants in the area. A Day At Our Farm experiences are held on selected days throughout spring and summer, and include a welcome drink and snacks, a guided tour of the farm and a three-course meal, cooked over fire.

Why It’s Great: You’re shown around by head grower, John Rowland (pictured below) and Our Farm head chef, Liam Fitzpatrick, offering a unique insight into the farm-restaurant relationship. John shares his expertise of growing in harmony with nature – with plenty of tips for the green fingered. While Liam’s guidance allows you to see the plants through a chef’s goggles, with all the possibilities for cooking, pickling and preserving. John supplies the restaurants’ vegetables, fruit and herbs, even cultivating specialist plants to offer the flavour profiles usually found in ingredients that can’t be grown in the UK – he grows herbs that replicate citrus and peaches, not for their fruit (which rarely ripen) but for their stones are used to infuse a taste akin to almonds.

Sat on sharing tables in among the vegetable beds, you’ll experience the true abundance of produce cultivated in a small space. With a combination of well-loved ingredients and new flavours, the feast is a true delight – hearty and rustic but elevated and clever. Think fire-roasted short ribs, fermented broad beans and fennel and baby leaf salad with edible flowers. The burnt Basque-style cheesecake is served with hedgerow compote.

Stay over: There’s the option to combine A Day At Our Farm with a night in the groups’ rooms in Cartmel village – which is worth it for the breakfast at Rogan & Co alone!

Extra Bites: If you’re staying around for longer, dine the next day at L’Enclume or Rogan & Co in Cartmel village for the full Michelin experience, or pop to Henrock, headed up by chef Mark McCabe, just north of Lake Windermere at Linthwaite House hotel.

A Day At Our Farm is priced at £150 per person or with B&B for two from £643.

VISIT

Home Farm Suppers at Heckfield Place

What, When & Where: Extending the food offering of this restored Georgian house hotel in Hampshire, the Heckfield Home Farm Suppers are held on long tables in the estate’s market garden (there are currently three planned for August). Headed up by culinary director Skye Gyngell, the feast includes three courses plus snacks served on large sharing platters, along with an arrival drink and wine throughout the meal.

Why It’s Great: Offering a high-definition snapshot of the season, the summer suppers series at Heckfield Place is a sensory symphony as you’ll feast upon ingredients mere hours after they’ve been removed from the earth while sat among the growing flowers, fruit and vegetables. We sat in one of the glass houses in between rows of towering tomato vines – the perfect perfume for a summer’s evening. The 400-acre farm has been part of the estate since the 19th century and is now farmed biodynamically. Alongside the market garden, the farm has mixed arable and livestock, growing produce and flowers, rearing Guernsey cows, whose milk is processed into dairy on site, a herd of beef cattle, several flocks of sheep, saddleback pigs and hens for laying.

The Home Farm Suppers menus pay tribute to this land. Example dishes include green gazpacho with crème fraîche, Heckfield lamb à la ficelle with young onions and herb jam, and tomato tart tatin with ewe’s curd and lemon thyme. Two desserts are served, such as a summer berry semifreddo cake alongside a giant gooseberry pavlova, plus a selection of local cheeses with rye crackers.

Stay Over: Each room offers different views across the grounds and has unique character from natural materials and thoughtful craftmanship. All rooms include breakfast in Marle, you can enjoy estate tours around the market garden, ancient woodlands and organic farm, plus there’s tea and cake served in the drawing room every afternoon.

Extra Bites: Staying around? Heckfield Place has two restaurants, Marle which holds a Michelin Green Star, and Hearth, which focuses on fire-cooked dishes. Plus afternoon tea is served in the Glass House.

Home Farm Suppers are £145 per person and rooms start from £700 in August. 

VISIT

Farm Feasts at Pennard Hill Farm

What, When & Where: On the edge of the sprawling valley that once a year becomes Glastonbury Festival, Pennard Hill Farm in Somerset is a farm with rooms (and tents) that puts on regular feasts to showcase their own produce and that of their neighbours. The farm feasts include a set three-course meal with optional appetisers and drinks.

Why It’s Great: The passion Tom and Pippa Godber-Ford Moore, who run Pennard Hill, have for their corner of rural England and the produce they can grow there (or source nearby) is infectious. As a chef, Tom has chosen the animals to rear based on their eventual taste as well as their roles in Pennard’s regenerative farming system. He raises a combination of Mangalitsa pigs, which are great for charcuterie due to their high fat content (Tom describes them as the wagyu of pork), and Oxford Sandy & Black pigs. He keeps heritage Herdwick sheep, usually found in the lake district, well past the standard age to enjoy as mutton. Even the vegetables, grown in no-dig beds, are often varieties less known, such as bitter leaves grown to pair with the rich meats in winter, and he forages weeds and berries from the land to enhance the dishes.

The inviting candlelit dining space is found upstairs in the converted barn, to reach which you must journey through the rustic open kitchen complete with a giant fireplace, built specifically for cooking over. From the wood fire you’ll enjoy the likes of roast venison chops with smoked romesco sauce, lovage and potatoes cooked in Mangalitsa fat.

Stay Over: With various options, from cosy cottages to glamping pods suspended in a canopy of oak and ash trees, a stay here is a truly unique experience. Accommodation comes with access to the indoor barn swimming pool for some relaxing water therapy.

Extra Bites: If you opt to stay the night, you can enjoy a hearty breakfast of bacon, smoked borlotti beans, duck eggs and tree spinach in the barn or delivered to your room.

Feasts are priced at £55 per person and Stay and Dine tickets from £355. 

VISIT