Hampton Estate Naturally Reared Produce Newsletter November 2022
Roll Up Roll Up for our December beef collection day which will be on FRIDAY 2nd DECEMBER and will be our Christmas collection and final collection day of the year. Fresh Hampton prime beef, wild roe venison, Special Steak Pies and Sausages of all varieties are all ready for you to order, and as it will be early December, we will be joined on the day by local great producers with their own stalls for that early Christmas present.
Christmas 2022 could well be the year of the superb beef joint, as avian flu spreads across the country. Let’s hope not, but just in case, it’s worth securing your Christmas sirloin joint, carvery rib, brisket, or silverside for peace of mind. We will have lots of the most delicious minced beef for family lasagnes, shepherds pies and bolognaises, and of course stewing and braising steak for warming casseroles and piping hot pies. For long slow thoroughly satisfying cooking we always recommend Hampton short ribs which can be left in a low oven surrounded by veg and a drop of red for at least five hours and the results are always delicious. Don’t forget a generous sprinkling of salt on the meat at the start.
Kidney, hanger steak, heart, cheeks and tongue are all making a comeback and rightly so. These meats are packed with flavour, are full of iron, and winter is definitely the time to experiment. The River Cottage Meat Book is our go to recipe book, it’s so well written and full of inspiration for all things beef related.
Don’t forget our Hampton Herby sausages, and our new Hampton Wild Roe Venison sausages and Christmas chipolatas. Christmas needs sausages and as you can see, we can provide.
All Hampton beef details are on our website, just follow this link Hampton Estate | Beef
All our wild roe venison details are on our website too, just follow this link Hampton Estate | Wild Meat. We have good supplies of haunches, fillets and steaks, and I’m delighted to report that our new roe venison sausages are causing quite a stir. They were all snapped up last month and the one packet available to the Hampton tasting team went down a storm.
And Hampton Special Steak Pies and also returning by request prime mince beef pies will have been crafted and cooked to perfection for the 2nd December, please order as soon as possible to avoid disappointment. They are crammed full of Hampton steak and are made in a family size or individual size. Perfect.
Please send Helen your order helenjackson@hamptonestate.co.uk and we will make sure it’s ready for your collection.
As it’s our last collection day of the year (have you ordered enough to keep you going until the end of January?) we will be joined by local producers Nibbs Gin, Greyfriars Vineyard, Flamingo Paperie, Fine Feather Press and Charlie’s Cold Pressed Oil Company. All tried and tested and all fabulous.
The annual Myrtle’s Courtyard Christmas Fair (in aid of church funds) will be at Myrtle’s Courtyard on Saturday 3rd December where there will be many more stalls and stands, and where we will also be selling our Hampton beef and produce. If it’s easier to pick up your order at the fair on Saturday just let us know and we can have it ready there.
On Friday 2nd December we look forward to welcoming you to Hampton for special mulled wine and a pre-Christmas catch up from 10.30am to 3.30pm. Please zap your order over to Helen as soon as you can and have a leaf through some inspirational recipes as we have the inspirational produce to match.
Very best wishes
Bill and Bridget
Hampton Estate Naturally Reared Produce Newsletter October 2022
It’s time for the best October beef, for roasts and for stews, for lasagne and bolognaises. It’s time to try Hampton wild roe meat in the form of a haunch, steaks or fillet, it’s time to bag some Hampton Herbies, Beef Bangers or Hampton Wild Roe Sausages and it’s time to order our very special Hampton Beef Pies.
And all this can be yours at our next Collection Day FRIDAY 21st OCTOBER, when we will open at 10.30am until 3.30pm with fresh coffee and cake, lots of farming chat and the usual Hampton catch up. The browsing table will be in operation for extras on the day, but to make sure exactly what you want is ready and waiting please email Helen helenjackson@hamptonestate.co.uk with your order. Click here www.hamptonestate.co.uk/beef for details of our plethora of deliciousness and choose what you need for your October culinary masterpiece.
As the temperatures start to dip there is no doubt that the word ‘hearty’ comes up more and more when beef is mentioned. A beef stew with Hampton braising steak or shin, slow cooked with plenty of onions, carrots, a drop or two of red wine, bay leaves and thyme, plus loads of seasoning can’t be beaten. Add mushrooms for the last few minutes and serve with plenty of mashed potato. Always a winner.
Don’t forget that we will have 4kg or 10kg Hampton Beef Bags packed with a selection of steaks, joints, stewing and braising steak and prime mince. Everything in one handy bag and your beef is sorted for the month.
Following our super successful Hampton wild roe meat (venison) tasting evening why not add some roe to your order? www.hamptonestate.co.uk/game lists haunches, joints, steaks, diced and mince to choose from. We have also been developing our Hampton Wild Roe Sausages after useful feedback from the tasting evening and these will be available on 21st October, do order them now. With Bonfire Night fast approaching, why not gather the ingredients for a pre bonfire filler of best beef burgers, sausages of all kinds, Wild Roe, Beef Bangers or Herbies.
More and more of our wonderful customers are trying liver, tongue, hanger steak and kidney which are all full of goodness, and their reports are very positive indeed. There are so many brilliant recipes using these ingredients and so worthwhile to cook.
Out and about on the farm our hop harvest is complete, and the yield confirmed our suspicion that Fuggle hops don’t like 40 degree Celsius heat for long stretches. We produced less hops than hoped for! Waggoners Campsite will be closing for the winter in the middle of the month, after a summer of great enjoyment and major use of the wild showers to cool off. The beef herd is enjoying the fresh grass which is growing well giving us excellent autumn grazing and we have just sown 80 acres of new grassland in the Puttenham and Seale fields and the new shoots are relishing the sun and occasional rain.
Please email or phone Helen with your order for all Hampton produce, please put Friday 21st October in your diary and we all look forward to seeing you here for coffee and cake during the day.
With our best wishes
Bill and Bridget
Hampton Estate Naturally Reared Newsletter September 2022
We were all delighted to welcome so many friends and customers to Hampton last week for our Wild Roe Meat Tasting Evening and thanks to so many for joining us and giving us your very positive feedback. Wild Roe Meat certainly proved the winner, although I think the walled vegetable garden came a close second place.
And now we have the luxury of offering both Hampton Pasture for Life accredited Beef, and wild Hampton Roe Meat at our next Collection Day on FRIDAY 16th SEPTEMBER. What a choice.
The latest beef carcass is hanging in the temperature controlled cold store and will give us every type of cut, joint, and roast that you need. 10kg family bags with steak, joints, braising, stewing and minced beef are always ready, as are 4kg convenience bags with the same selection, but just a little less. But as always, make up your own order however big or small, be it a single bag (0.5kg) of prime mince or a selection of steaks and joints, or a carvery roast to wow the family at the weekend. The beef world is your oyster this month and check our price list here, thumb through the recipe book, and send your order to helenjackson@hamptonestate.co.uk as soon as you can.
Don’t forget to add some Hampton Herby Sausages, or Hampton Beef Bangers, which are always popular either hot or cold with a drop of mustard and sometimes a hint of mayonnaise. Ditto for Hampton 100% beefburgers, always winners.
If you are looking for nutrient rich, good value cuts, then do order some delicious liver, kidney, tongue or heart. You will be in good company as every celebrity chef is extolling the virtues of these wonderful meats, especially at a time when household budgets are having to factor in enormous energy cost rises. Liver casserole is mouth wateringly delicious, incredibly nutritious and cheap as chips.
It’s very good news that Hampton Special Beef Pies will be specially made and cooked for the day. A family pie, rammed full of steak and deliciousness, feeds four, and an individual feeds one. Their popularity is legendary, and Robyn our wonderful pie maker always produces the goods with such a cheerful smile.
Turning to our other source of meat at Hampton, wild roe meat is also available for ordering for 16th September and, as at the tasting evening is sold frozen. We are perfecting our Hampton roe burgers and sausages, and burgers come in packs of 4 and sausages in packs of 6 . Roe fillet and steaks need cooking hot in order to caramelize the meat, and a barbeque is such a good way of achieving this, with cooking methods just the same as for beef. Diced and minced roe can also be used instead of beef for shepherds/cottage pies, lasagnes and spaghetti bolognaise, to name just a few. Check our venison/game page here to make your choice.
It’s our September newsletter and September is always hop picking on the farm. We have started our hop harvest and are picking hard, which means that decorative hop bines are available to buy. A hop bine or garland is a 365-day dried flower arrangement, exuding aroma and only available during our hop harvest. Order your hop bine today and pick it up at the oast whenever is convenient, or better still, join us in the hop garden on Saturday 3rd September where we will have a good selection picked and for sale.
More info on our website www.hamptonestate.co.uk/events.
We look forward to seeing everyone on Friday 16th September. Pick up your order, enjoy a fresh cup of coffee or tea, sample Bridget’s home-made cakes and biscuits and engage in a bit of foodie chat.
We will be open from 10.30am to 3.30pm and fingers crossed for yet another fine September day.
With very best wishes
Bill and Bridget
Hampton Estate Naturally Reared News June 2022
It has been such a pleasure to see so many customers and friends at two recent events. First the Jubilee Beacon at Seale which kicked off the Platinum Celebrations and gave us a burst of flame to light up the night sky, and secondly Open Farm Sunday last weekend where just over 1600 visitors inspected the farm, the woodlands, the tractors and trailers and much, much more. Thanks to everyone for your support and encouragement.
And now its another celebration of all things delicious and meaty as we look forward to our next Collection Day on FRIDAY 15th JULY. This will be our last collection day until September so a great opportunity to stock up, plan some recipes and meals in advance, check out our beef and venison lists and zip over your order. We will open at 10.30AM until 3.30PM and will be looking forward to seeing everyone for fresh coffee, tea, and of course Bridget’s homemade biscuits and cake.
The easiest way of ordering Hampton beef is simply to select either a 10kg or a 4kg bag as they have steaks, joints, stewing, braising, and mince all popped into a Hampton bag and ready to go. They are great way into Hampton delicacies and will never disappoint.
But we are also proud of our bespoke order service. Just order whatever you need, and we will put it into a Hampton bag, and it will be ready for you to collect. An example would be four rump steaks, a family roasting joint and a kilo of prime mince. Alternatively, there’s a celebration coming up and you need a triple carvery rib, some mince, and short ribs for 8. Order as much or as little as you need, and we will have it ready. Don’t forget Hampton Herby Sausages and Hampton Beef Bangers. It’s sausage season and pop them on the barbeque with some Hampton 100% beefburgers and it’s a winner every time. We have excellent supplies of all beef cuts, joints, steaks, mince, stewing, braising, and I’m pleased to announce that Hampton Special Steak pies are on the menu in July.
Our steak pies are homemade, packed full of steak, herbs and some very special ingredients including lip-smacking pastry and come in family size or individual size. There’s every chance that we will run out so do order as soon as possible.
And don’t forget your venison. Paul and Will are out stalking in the early mornings, and we have lots of the finest venison imaginable. Haunches, fillets, rack of venison, steaks, diced and minced venison, all bursting with flavour are ready to be ordered. We are also holding a VENISON TASTING EVENING later in the summer on Thursday 25th August. More details to follow but Steve the chef will be cooking venison in all sorts of delicious ways for you to try and we will have a butchery demo as well.
Out on the farm all our cows have calved and are happily grazing around the park with their calves in tow. They also have the delight of the bull (Petworth Major) for the next couple of months as he ensures they are all back in calf.
This fabulous weather is perfect for haymaking, and we have grass cut all around Shoelands Farm and the Hogs Back. It will soon be dry enough to bale and bring under cover in the Dutch barns, ready for feeding all through the winter.
Ordering Hampton beef and venison is as simple as checking out the beef list at www.hamptonestate.co.uk/beef/ and venison list at www.hamptonestate.co.uk/game/, and sending Helen your order helenjackson@hamptonestate.co.uk . We really look forward to hearing from you, and of course seeing you on the 15th July for a catch up, some cattle talk and if you have a moment it will be a chance to tour the Hampton garden.
With best wishes
Bill and Bridget
Hampton Estate Naturally Reared News May 2022
Beef, venison, sausages, pies, offal, and a good old chat are all back on the menu on FRIDAY 27th MAY at our next beef day. The best Pasture for Life accredited Hampton beef is currently hanging on the hook in a bespoke facility in the middle of the Surrey Hills, which will enhance its flavour and tenderness, and will ensure the best possible quality meat. Deliciousness guaranteed.
We are ready and waiting for your order and have everything available in the carnivorous line. 10KG Hampton family bags are always popular with lots of customers with a mix of steaks, joints, stewing steak, and mince. The smaller 4KG version is similarly useful, just a little less of it. These bags are great value for money and should keep you going until our next beef day. Perfect planning.
Alternatively make up your own bespoke order from the list on our website, www.hamptonestate.co.uk/beef. Have a look, make a menu plan and get in touch. Whether it be just half a kg of mince, or a sirloin joint for 10 people every order is special.
How about trying some short ribs, which as everyone knows are a firm favourite at Hampton, sprinkled with pepper and salt and cooked slow during beef days. They gently sizzle away wafting a delicious aroma over proceedings in the Hampton courtyard. But equally great are brisket joints, and slightly faster would be top rump or silverside, joints that taste so good hot but equally delicious cold, in crusty white bread with a dollop of horseradish, a sliver of butter and a sprinkle of salt.
We have sirloin, rump, flat iron, spider, and feather steaks, and it’s a very respectable month to find the bbq, dust it down and fire it up. Add in some Hampton Herbies (pork sausages) or Hampton Beef Bangers and a couple of packs of Hampton 100% beefburgers and everything is sown up for outdoor cooking.
Hampton Special Beef Pies make a welcome return to the beef day with their mouth-wateringly good, home-made pastry and special steak filling and are available in family size (feeds 4) or individual. The current record order for individual pies is a very impressive 8! I’m sure it can be beaten.
May is a great month for deer culling. It’s light at 5.00am and evenings are becoming lighter and lighter giving our stalkers more time for that all important shot. As a result of some very accurate shots, we have excellent venison supplies. Will has been butchering under the watchful eye of our brilliant butcher, Simon, and has produced some smaller joints and some fantastic looking steaks. There are also the most tender fillets, and both diced and minced venison, and all of it is stacked with flavour. Now is the time to branch out and embrace Hampton wild venison. You will never regret it.
We also have supplies of the most delicious beef liver, tongue, heart, and kidney. These are all so rich in iron, rich in flavour yet cheap as chips to buy. I thoroughly recommend a foray into offal principally because being pasture for life our beef cows produce the most tender and tasty offal imaginable.
A note regarding the timing of our next Beef Days. We are firm believers in slow grown food and have decided to elongate the gaps between our Beef Days for the remainder of the year to allow the herd to grow on and make good use of the fantastic pastures at Hampton. Following 27th May our next collection dates will be 15th July, 16th September, 21st October and 2nd December. Do bear this in mind when placing your order.
Out on the farm we have a great hop training team in the hop gardens twiddling the young hop shoots up the strings. It’s critical that this is done well, and the team are learning fast. It’s obviously outdoor work and lots of food, water and I’m delighted to report, sun cream, are needed each day. There is still room for more trainers if anyone is looking for a couple of weeks work in the sunshine. All training provided. Just get in touch.
Waggoners Campsite, on The North Downs Way is up and running and we have had lots of campers already this season. Mark our new campsite manager reports a good number of Duke of Edinburgh campers last weekend who really tried out the facilities (composting loos, wild showers) and all came through with flying colours. Bring your own tent, rent a firepit, slap on a Hampton sirloin and that magical camping experience is like no other. Check out the new Waggoners website which gives all the info. www.waggonerscampsite.co.uk and have a look at the reviews which are pleasantly supportive. Then book your pitch.
Open Farm Sunday is just round the corner on SUNDAY 12th JUNE when we open the farm to everyone. There will be tractor and trailer rides, meet the cows and calves, ice creams and picnics, a straw bale play area, machinery displays, our famous woodland trail including the tree planting challenge and lots of car parking. We will be talking sustainable regenerative farming and all things health, and even adding a spot of wilding for good measure. Book your free tickets by visiting our event at TryBooking.
We all really look forward to seeing you on Friday 27th May. Helen is waiting for your order (helenjackson@hamptonestate.co.uk) and Bridget is working on new cake and biscuit recipes. Will is out stalking and Bill is deciding which joint to cook on the Big Green Egg on the day.
Very best wishes from us all
Bill and Bridget
Hampton Estate Naturally Reared News March 2022
Our next Beef Day will be on FRIDAY April 8th which is a week before the Easter weekend and we hope will fit in well with Easter cooking plans. Family gatherings, friends dropping in, and a long weekend to plan for will give you every excuse to order some Hampton produce and enjoy the best quality local beef possible. We look forward to your order and to seeing you for Bridget’s legendary cakes and biscuits, plus of course fresh coffee and tea and a good catch up.
Easter often means a proper roasting joint and I think that a carvery rib is unbeatable. We have ribs ready and waiting for your order and for a recipe you cannot go wrong with Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall who describes it as The Full Monty, and it’s very hard to disagree. He starts the recipe as follows.
‘This is not just a Sunday lunch, it’s a celebration of all that is exciting about good meat. For me, a well hung forerib of beef (carvery rib) is the ultimate roasting joint.’
The Full Monty includes Yorkshire pudding, perfect roast potatoes, leeks with greens, beef bone gravy, creamed fresh horseradish and glazed carrots. Wow. We would add a bottle of good claret and a nap.
We would also advocate other delicious roasting joints such as topside, top rump and silverside which will roast brilliantly, can be slightly smaller, and still be part of your own Full Monty.
But it’s not just about roasting beef. We have a great supply of sirloin, rump, ribeye, flat iron, and feather steaks, which will all taste mouth-wateringly good. Braising and stewing steak flies out of the cold store door every month as does our prime minced beef. For long slow cooks we always advise short ribs or brisket and a very minimum of four hours cooking time. Check out our price list www.hamptonestate.co.uk/beef and pop your order over to Helen at Helenjackson@hamptonestate.co.uk.
There will be lots of Hampton Herby Sausages and Hampton Beef Bangers to order and enjoy, hot or cold but always with a spoonful of English mustard. The same of course for our 100%beef burgers, hand made at Hampton and ready for your first barbeque of 2022.
We also have wonderful wild Hampton venison ready to be ordered, and its truly delicious. A Hampton haunch will give a beef carvery rib a run for its money, venison fillets are smaller but stacked full of flavour, and diced and minced venison make stews, pies and even bolognaises. All our venison is wild roe deer, stalked on the estate, hung in the cold store, and butchered by Will. About two food miles max.
We are expecting our first cow to calve in the next couple of weeks, always an exciting time. The cows were pregnancy diagnosed ( PD’ed) by the vet in November so we know they are in calf, but sometimes the predicted calving date can be a tad misleading. Last year’s calves have all been weaned leaving each cow to concentrate on her new arrival.
We welcome two classes from a junior school based in central London who will be visiting the farm later in the month and fingers crossed they might see a calving. We will be talking cows and calves, grass, soils and worms, and trees and habitat. And a date for your diary in the summer is Sunday June 12th when we host Open Farm Sunday again, with this year’s theme being ‘health’.
In the meantime, Waggoners Campsite opens on Thursday April 14th for the long Easter weekend and it will be great to welcome so many campers from last year back to the site over the summer. Don’t forget, it’s eco-friendly and off grid with wild showers, compostable loos, and fire pits all in a gently rolling grassy field just off the North Downs Way. Pass on the info. We are looking to recruit a seasonal coordinator for the campsite, what a great experience in both farming and leisure, do contact Helen for details.
Beef Day is on the 8th April and we really look forward to seeing everyone to pick up their produce, with coffee, tea and cake from 10.30am. I’m sure that there will be a well-stocked browsing table for any extras you might need and please look round the garden if you have time as we slip into spring.
Very best wishes
Bill and Bridget
Hampton Estate Naturally Reared Newsletter January 2022
Very Happy New Year to all, and I sincerely hope that all your Christmas and New Year cooking was as enjoyable and delicious as expected. We decided that we had eaten ‘like Kings’ over the break and now, after a good sort out of the larder and finishing up of festive deliciousness, it’s time to regroup, restock and menu plan for the weeks ahead. To help in this process our first beef day of 2022 will be on FRIDAY 28th JANUARY.
We have excellent supplies of well hung 100% pasture fed pedigree Hampton beef ready for your order and as always look forward to hearing from you. Prime mince is always extremely popular in January as are stewing, braising and diced steak. Hearty casseroles and bolognaises spring to mind. Carvery rib joints were in great demand last month and there can be no better joint of beef, especially if numbers are to be fed, for flavour, size, and wow factor. Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall has a fabulous rib recipe and once his gravy and Yorkshire puds are added it’s a winter feast for all. Add roast carrots, parsnips and spuds, a fine bottle of red and it can’t but cheer up everyone enormously. There are lots of other joints which will have the same effect if ribs are not your thing, (topside, top rump, silverside) and of course there are sirloin and rump steaks for the early 2022 barbeque. We even have local charcoal for you.
Great news for the start of 2022 as Hampton Special Beef Pies and prime mince pies are back on the menu. Knowing their popularity, it’s so good that local chef Robyn is ready to create her masterpieces and blend all those special ingredients into the most delicious individual or family sized pies. Worth popping an order in straight away.
Our venison stocks are looking good, and delicious steaks, haunches. diced and minced venison are available today. Do hurry with your venison order as we so often sell out very quickly, and we know just how much our venison cognoscenti love it.
Hampton Herbies and Hampton Beef Bangers are good to go, and we are always ready and able to turn out our 100% beefburgers at the drop of a hat. Finally, liver, heart, kidney, oxtail, and tongue are available, are absolutely delicious and we can always supply recipes for using these lesser-known cuts. So well worth it.
For all cuts, joints, products and prices please look here at www.hamptonestate.co.uk and then send your order over to Helen at helenjackson@hamptonestate.co.uk. You will notice that we have increased our prices modestly this month, as every cost to us (butchery, transport, hanging etc) has risen over the past quarter.
On the farm our winter-feeding regime is now well under way, and we are feeding all the cows hay in their fields, as grass growth is pretty much non-existent. The foot trimmer is booked to tidy up the cows’ toe nails (a day’s operation and vital to keep their feet in tip top condition) and we will be weaning the young calves from their mums in the next few weeks. We advocate a natural weaning system, splitting the cows and calves into two groups, and putting them in adjoining fields divided by a strong fence. The calves can still see and touch their mums through the fence, but critically the milk supply can’t be reached. We will compensate their lack of milk with a grass-based protein cattle cake and ensure that they get the very best hay. In the meantime, the mums have some peace and quiet before calving starts in March, and the farming seasons continue.
We really look forward to seeing you on FRIDAY 28th JANUARY to pick up your order. Cake and coffee will be ready from 10.30am up to 3.30pm when we open and do send over your order to Helen to avoid any disappointment. If you have any beefy questions, queries or dilemmas please get in touch and we will do our very best to help.
With best wishes
Bill and Bridget