A morning at Ebbor Farm

Ebbor Farm sits above Priddy on the top of the Mendips, about forty minutes out of Bristol if the A37 behaves. Hannah Pearce has been sending us vegetables since our second year and hogget since 2022, and until last month none of the current kitchen team had actually been up there.

It is smaller than we expected. Eleven acres of growing ground, a polytunnel that has clearly been patched more than once, and a flock of around ninety. Hannah runs it with two others and a rotating cast of people on the WWOOF scheme. There is no cold store worth speaking of, which is exactly why the van comes down on a Wednesday and why we plan the week around it rather than the other way round.

We had the timing wrong on the beans. We had been ordering borlotti as a fixed weekly quantity, which meant some weeks we got beautiful ones and some weeks Hannah was picking early to hit the number. She said so, politely, standing in the row. We have changed the order to a range instead of a figure, and when there are more we will put them on as a side.

The hogget is a year old, not a lamb. Worth saying because people ask. It is a sheep in its second season — more flavour, a bit more work, and a longer time over the fire. Hannah's flock go out on the limestone grazing, which is the reason it tastes the way it does and the reason we do not do very much to it.

The blackberries were an accident. They grow down the lane between the farm gate and the road, and there were more than anyone was going to pick. We came back with about four kilos in a crate that was meant for kale, and they went into the ice cream on the September board.

We are going back in November for the pig, which Hannah has been threatening to persuade us into for two years and has now probably managed.