Wilding Farm
Whitchurch, Bristol

Supplies restaurants including Tare, Box-E, Dela and Root, all in Bristol

You might be forgiven for thinking there is a restlessness about the careers of Sam and Beccy Leach. Sam planned to be a teacher until he did an actual teaching module. He trained as a butcher and a baker, before becoming an accomplished cook, with stints in London at St John and 40 Maltby St. He and Beccy ran Birch in Bristol garnering cult status and rave reviews from the likes of Marina O’Loughlin before walking away, keeping only the restaurant’s vegetable garden and branching out into Somerset cider. Said garden is now geared to producing food for some of Bristol’s more interesting places.

• Harry Baker crab apples, Globe artichokes.

Rob Howell at Root is a long-time Leach fan: “For the first time in my career I can actually say we work the menu around the produce,” he says. “Doing it justice is the main thing. The only downside is that sometimes you can create a special dish but due to seasonality and availability we have to take it off the menu.”

The Leaches always intended a shortish life for Birch. “We always saw it as something to run for a limited time,” says Sam, “before thinking about children and moving to the countryside. There wasn’t a clear plan for what came next. Perhaps a wine shop or bakery, even making cheese, but ideally less all-consuming than a restaurant where you are always under pressure to perform, always one bad review away from a plunge in reputation. It wasn’t a long-term option for a healthy and happy life.”

• Beccy picking sweet peas.

Wandering around their plot in late June, the healthy happiness shines. The plan for children and moving to the country is near fruition. Beccy is seven months’ pregnant and they are weeks away from a move into Somerset with a cottage, more land and their own cider orchard.

“The more I got into food, the more interested I was in production,” says Sam. “The where and how, what varieties, what soil type. And once we started making cider as a hobby, it seemed the obvious thing to pursue next. All of the orchards are there, crying out for attention and available for rent.”

• Cooking just-dug Nicola potatoes; Early Nantes carrots

The two arms of the business complement each other with harvests following on. “Vegetable-growing fits well alongside cider-making in the flow of the seasons,” says Sam. “It is something we both love to do. The garden was originally a way to provide things we couldn’t buy locally for the restaurant. The gaps in availability are still there and there are now many more good restaurants in Bristol.”

The couple’s growing philosophy, like their cooking, is deceptively simple. “Broadly speaking, we grow organically, though we aren’t certified. We don’t spray or use anything other than compost and organic seeds, though we are saving more of our own seed now. We have aphids but also lots of predatory insects. We have pigeons but also sparrowhawks. We have slugs but lots of slow worms and frogs.”

• Dinner in the garden.

We end our visit drinking Wilding cider, sitting at the plot while Sam and Beccy cook over a small outdoor stove. Perfect boiled potatoes, just lifted; fresh-picked Oskar peas, Early Nantes carrots, crisp salad leaves and porky sausages from their own pigs. As the sun sets and the starlings chatter, it is easy to see why they quit the stress of restaurants and why their growing is in demand. AJ
Instagram: @wildingcider

Ryewater Nursery
Sherborne, Dorset

Supplies and consults for restaurants including Kiln and Smoking Goat, the Begging Bowl, Som Saa and Ikoyi, all in London

• Luke Farrell in the greenhouse.

When Luke Farrell started growing Thai herbs at Ryewater Nursery, the only chef he was interested in supplying was himself. After working in south-east Asia, he became “addicted to herbs and chillies”, and returned to the UK about 15 years ago with a suitcase of plants and seeds. Luckily, his father, lepidopterist Clive Farrell, had greenhouses at the family home in Dorset. “The climate was already set up in there,” says Farrell, “so I stuffed in my plants and hoped for the best.”

He took a box of his herbs to David Thompson at his Michelin-starred Thai restaurant Nahm. Thompson’s response? “‘We need more.’ It all spiralled from there.”

• Clockwise from top left: Thai green papayas, trumpet vine, Thai ‘prik yuak’ chillies, a Chinese painted quail, which eats insects in the greenhouses.

Farrell now has three tropical greenhouses, complete with a custom jungle soil mix, rain systems and underfloor heating. Inside, he grows gingers and galangals, herbs, papayas, bananas and types of gourds which have leaves and flowers that can be used in soups. “It’s a good one to have because it doesn’t travel well from Thailand, the leaves will have turned black,” Farrell explains. By 2014, the Begging Bowl, Smoking Goat and Som Saa had opened in London, and Farrell’s operation became more like a business – although, even at capacity, he can’t always meet the increasing demand. “I just sent 24kg of green papayas to Som Saa. They’ve cleared me out.”

Most of his work is as a consultant. At Kiln’s request, he has just sent three lemongrass plants to another of their suppliers to grow for the restaurant. Recently, he’s been researching west African chillies for London restaurant Ikoyi: “There’s one that looks like a scotch bonnet but tastes of apricot, absolutely no heat in it.”

• A postman butterfly on porterweed.

In the cooler months, Farrell puts the greenhouses to sleep and travels to south-east Asia. If what he brings back is a success, he sends samples to kitchens. “I tell them what they want,” he says. “It’s kind of backwards.”

Some things never make it to restaurants. He won’t be sharing the long peppers, used in lots of stir-fries, or the few keffir limes he grows: “For me they’re like truffles.”

• Thai herbs

This summer, Farrell will be back behind the stove to cook a series of lunches in the greenhouses. There will be Dorset seafood and locally reared meat, but the rest of the menu is up to the garden. “I might want to cook one thing but the herbs will suggest something different,” he explains. “They say, ‘Look, we’re ready! You’ve got to use us now.’” HO’N
Follow @lukiefarrell for details of the greenhouse lunches

NamaYasai farm
Lewes, East Sussex

Supplies London restaurants Koya, Umu and the Clove Club, and operates a veg box scheme

• Robin Williams and Ikuko Suzuki in the field.

Summer days are long for Robin Williams and Ikuko Suzuki at NamaYasai farm. Harvest typically begins between 2am and 4am, but sometimes as early as midnight. “Whatever’s necessary to make sure the van is on its way before 8am,” says Williams, who takes pride in the fact that chefs receive his produce within hours of being picked. Shuko Oda, executive chef and co-founder of Koya in London, notices the difference in quality: “Robin and Ikuko have a different attitude to farming.”

In 2005, having quit his job in IT, Williams started growing Japanese vegetables based on the practices of “natural agriculture”, so without any pesticides, with minimal watering and pruning, and letting the weeds grow with the vegetables. “It’s not that I follow it religiously,” Williams explains, “but the less work we did the better.”

Supplying restaurants was always a core part of the business. “Some chefs build a menu almost entirely on what we’ve got available, even if it’s only for a few days,” says Williams. Oda confirms that Koya’s blackboard of daily specials is often based on supplies from NamaYasai. She especially looks forward to receiving mugwort (“really bitter, but reminds me so much of Japan”) and kabocha (Japanese squash). Occasionally Koya will request vegetables and Williams will look into if they’re possible to grow. Koya staff also visit to help out with harvest, have a just-picked lunch, and learn more about the produce. It’s a nice day out, but for Williams, with just one full-time staff member and six seasonal workers, volunteers can help save a crop.

• Kabocha squash seedlings

Williams keeps detailed records of what’s been planted and sold; he knows that in 2010 Koya bought mainly Japanese ingredients, but by 2013 it started taking alexanders, cuckoo flower, lovage and blackcurrant leaves. Now, about 40% of the crops grown across 15 acres are Japanese ingredients. Williams is always planning, whether adjusting sowing patterns or researching new crops, especially ones that can take them through the lean winter months. Last year’s success was purple daikon. He has high hopes that this year Koya and other restaurants including Umu and the Clove Club will like badger-flame beets (“beautiful colour, good taste, and beetroots have been growing in popularity”), Turkish rocket (“strong flavour, resilient in with the weeds”), any haskap (honeyberries) that escaped the pheasants, and aronia, a tart late-season berry popular in eastern Europe. HO’N
@Robinsansai

Fern Verrow
St Margaret’s, Herefordshire

• Jane Scotter.

Supplies Spring at Somerset House, and sells veg boxes and flowers locally and at Spa Terminus, London

I am walking around Narnia in near biblical rain like only happens here on the edge of the Black Mountains. I am at Fern Verrow, the holy grail of British fruit, flower and vegetable gardens, wandering around the 12 acres Jane Scotter grows for Skye Gyngell’s Spring restaurant in London.

It is the unique relationship between the two women that defines the farm and the restaurant. “We’ve had five years working together,” says Scotter. “Skye understands, she gets it. It’s not always easy for the chefs, though the upsides far outweigh the downsides.

• Clockwise from top left: Planting notes, Waldmann’s lettuce, blackcurrants, a bearded iris

“I have elderflowers with beautiful flowers and berries, so I net them and we have 50kg for elderberry and pear ice-cream. I’ll send 500kg of gooseberries this year. If Skye asks me for things I will always make it happen.”

The respect is mutual. “My relationship with Jane and Fern Verrow feels incredibly personal,” says Gyngell. “Jane is a grower but also an artist. Her energy, enthusiasm and commitment spurs me on.”

The pair share an obsessive attention to detail. Scotter is always researching new flavours for Spring, witness growing liquorice which takes two to three years to reach maturity. Or the puy lentils she is trialling, the suitcase of bean seed she brought back from California, her thoughts about fresh chickpeas.

Gyngell was the right person at the right time. Scotter used to drive her produce from Herefordshire to Spa Terminus in Bermondsey every Friday to sell to a few food devotees. But she had recently been unwell.

“We were finishing our cookbook when Skye wrote to me. She said she was opening a restaurant and wanted to work with a farm. I knew her reputation for using produce. At first we’d drop her off a few things on the way to the market. Then we worked on some spreadsheets. We had the book launch and my last day selling at Bermondsey. Two weeks later we were delivering to Spring. I couldn’t have driven to London any more. Two days after the last market I was ill, having radiotherapy.”

• Lettice the lurcher in the potting shed.

The pair are also working at Heckfield Place in Hampshire on a plan to convert 400 acres into the UK’s largest biodynamic farm. This is the slow work of decades. For now, though, there are gardening apprentices to train in the rain, obsessive weeding to do, lurchers to unleash, yet another 72 trays of autumn seed to sow. AJ
fernverrow.com