The Farm Shop & Produce
The Farm Shop
Acres Down Farm Shop is located on the family farm on the outskirts of the village of Minstead, which is owned and managed by husband and wife team, Richard and Wendy.
Our animals are free range
Natural - slowly matured
Low food miles
Foraging naturally in the Forest
100% traceability
Home Reared.
The shop stocks a wide range of fresh farm foods, including: Home Reared, Beef, Pork & Lamb, Speciality Sausages and Burgers, Free Range Eggs, Freshly Baked Bread, Vegetables & Fruit
Local.
Our shop is also a culinary treasure trove; stocked full of many great local and regional products, that we have taken great delight in hunting out ourselves!!
Visitors to the shop can enjoy a relaxed environment as they browse the wide selection of goods on sale. To complement our meat, we also have vegetables, cheeses, chutneys, jams, marmalade, honey, bread flours, sauces & stocks, cakes biscuits and ice cream.
We are keen to support other small, independent producers like us.
British.
We know our meat is fully traceable.
“From farm to fork.”
As the recent supermarket scandals have shown – traceability can be a very murky area and things are not always as they seem.
We have been farming for many generations and that’s what it’s all about.......BRITISH FARMING!
“ Home reared from our Farm and Forest - taking free range natural meats to a whole new level.”
Produce
Beef
Our Aberdeen Angus herd is slowly matured on the forest over a minimum period of 3 years. They are born on the forest and continue to live a stress-free life sharing the forest with ponies and humans. A varied diet helps to cover the nutrient requirements of the animals and to maintain their resistance to disease and parasites so minimising medical intervention.
Their lineage is fully traceable from the day they are born, the providence of our meat is therefore guaranteed.
Their final journey to the abattoir is as stress free as possible, after all, this is the only journey they ever make in a trailer. The meat is hung for at least 3 weeks to traditionally mature to enhance the tenderness and flavour
Pork
Our pork is from our Gloucestershire Old Spot/Landrace cross pigs. Kept on the farm and also de-pastured onto the forest in the Autumn at “Pannage Season”. This is were pigs will eat up fallen mast includes chestnuts (sweet and horse), acorns, beechnuts and hazel nuts, and is an excellent source of fat and protein
The acorns are highly poisonous to the New Forest ponies and cattle who roam in the forest for the majority of the year - our piggies have a chemical tolerance to the toxicity of acorns and spit out the toxic skins and enjoy the rest of this tasty morsel. So in doing such a grand job at pannage, hoovering up the acorns from the forest floor, the pigs also enhance the intensity of their flavor at the same time!
New Season Pannage Pork will be in shop early December 2023!
Lamb
We have a small flock of Charollais and Suffolk sheep. We aim to lamb in late March / Early April and keep the ewes and lambs in the barn until they are ready to rejoin the main flock - this helps with bonding and keeping our lambs safe from foxes..
The sheep graze exclusively on grass, on our hilltop at the farm, which helps give the meat it’s sweet delicate flavor.
The flock is sheared every year - this is done for two main reasons - to collect the sheep’s wool for sale, but more importantly to relieve the sheep of the heavy wool which may cause them to overheat in the summer!
