5 minute read
THRIVE, NOT SURVIVE
Mary finds out more about a new recipe box business which is using homegrown, delicious regeneratively farmed beef
VICKY HOWE AND her husband farm 1,000 acres near Sleaford. It’s a mainly arable farm but obviously the soil still needs looking after to make sure it stays fertile; you need to put back what is taken out. And the best way to do this is to combine the arable crops with a beef herd. So that is what they have done.
Initially they were going to just rear the herd and then send them to be finished elsewhere but Vicky quickly decided that this was not best for the animals or for them, financially. The herd is moved daily around 150 acres of grass (which changes yearly). This looks after the soil as it is trodden, so causes it to regenerate and grazing the grass neutralises the carbon output. This is the perfect crop rotation as the arable crops are grown on the grass the following year.
All their cattle are free range, finished on grass, fed fresh grass every day and live outside all year round. So, as well as being extremely good for the soil and helping with the crop rotation the meat quality of this method of farming - regenerative - is excellent. High in Omega 3 (scientifically proven) and delicious tasting meat which is carbon negative.
So what do you do with these cows now you have decided to finish them yourself? You start a recipe box business, and that is just what Vicky has done. Of course this sounds very simple but it is far from being that. But Vicky has method behind her madness. Her background is in catering and business. She is a cordon bleu chef and a farmer’s daughter with an agriculture and food management business degree. Before moving back to Lincolnshire she worked for Waitrose so has a strong business/food background.
And she used this background to set up a kitchen at the farm 17 years ago and supplies school lunches to many of the primary schools in Lincolnshire; 5,000 meals a day across the county. Most of the meals are prepared at the farm and the rest from school kitchens. From their bespoke kitchen they cook, then deliver the meals which
are freshly prepared every day. All ingredients are British and farm assured and much of the beef comes from their farm. Not many counties can claim to be feeding their children grass fed, free range beef.
As the Howes already had a kitchen set up it was very easy for them to start the recipe box business. It was all very well the primary school children of the county enjoying their beef, but it would be nice for the rest of us to have the chance too. And, of course, red meat is not something we, or the children, should be eating every day.
Vicky is very interested in gut health so was keen to produce gut friendly recipes. ‘If we choose to eat meat - as many of us do - we should eat the best quality meat and that is usually regeneratively farmed, free range meat. I have planned recipes to eat our beef twice a week. Usually a quick meal during the week with either a roast or steak at the weekend.
‘If we look after our gut health our immune system is boosted which helps produce hormones that influence the way you think and feel. We have a local supplier of kimchi and kefir and use this a lot in our recipes. Seaweed is really good for us so we use seaweed salt and we use a lot of bone broth (prepared in our kitchen) as it has wonderful healing properties.’ Virtually all of their vegetables are British, with most of them coming from within 20 miles of the farm. Vicky has sourced her ingredients carefully. Only lemons and the like come from abroad. The recipe box business is very new - ten days old when we spoke - but it is generating a lot of interest and excellent feedback. New meals are going live each week but do be aware that many of them will be seasonal. You won’t be offered asparagus until it is in season, which is the right way for us to eat. Slow cooked meals are in development (Vicky is just working out the packaging) and more are in the pipeline.
‘I feel so fortunate to live on a farm,’ she says. ‘A couple of years ago, we came up with the idea of wanting to sell products from our farm directly to customers. It was something we both felt really passionately about, and still do, especially as the way we rear our cattle is, we believe, really quite special. To be able to share a flavour of that and offer foods that I genuinely feel so passionate about is so very exciting.’
Everything you need for your recipe is in your box (apart from oil). This means you don’t have to buy the more obscure ingredients and nothing is ever forgotten. Vicky has made sure there is a minimum prep time needed and the recipes are straightforward to follow. Cooking times vary and what is most interesting and impressive is that there are often ingredients in these recipes which are quite unusual, so perfect for experimentation with very little thought or effort.
The business is quickly growing with a subscription option now being available which might make the perfect Christmas present. You can opt for weekly, fortnightly or monthly deliveries which don’t necessarily have to be the recipe boxes. Freezer packs of steaks and the like are also an option as well as family meat packs. Bone broth will soon be available (perfect to add to gravies and casseroles) and small packs of mince too. Chicken will soon be available, reared on the farm shortly following the same ethos as the cattle; pasture raised, free range, moved daily.
Vicky has put a lot of thought and energy into this fledgling business. All packaging is recyclable and Woolcool is wrapped around the food to keep it fresh. This is compostable, ‘great to put on the garden too,’ says Vicky. She comes up with the recipes herself and makes sure portions are a healthy size.
The boxes are packed on the farm and delivered nationwide. Prices start at £5.38 a head with free delivery over £45. There is an introductory offer on at the moment.
www.thriveboxes.co.uk
