Opened in November 2007, Back to the Garden near Holt in Norfolk is what I would call a ‘Farm Shop Plus’, founded on a fabulous marriage of ancient tradition and modern ideas and ideals. On the side of the ‘old’, it is housed in an atmospheric 18th-Century barn erected from local materials that boasts an extensive oak-beamed roof and intricate brickwork. Additionally, Back to the Garden is stocked with produce grown and reared on an ancient 1000-acre organic farm (that has been farmed by the proprietor, Delaval Astley’s family for some 800-odd years). By way of the ‘new’, the concept of ‘Back To The Garden’ was an idea that Astley had back in the 1980’s. Afraid his idea to launch an outlet dedicated to supplying the public with delicious, local, organic fare, all created and prepared on site was too progressive for the times, the plan has sat and quietly matured until now. This was perhaps a blessing. Today, Back to the Garden offers a superb choice in organic meat, fruit and veg, drinks and groceries that would easily rival any conventional supermarket. Last month The Times named it ‘Best Farm Shop’ in Norfolk in a feature entitled ‘The Great British Foodie Summer Holiday’.

 

 

All meat sold in Back to the Garden is free-range, organic and produced by them, with the exception of the organic pork and bacon. This comes courtesy of Peter Melchett at Ringstead, supplemented by Emmett’s of Peasanhall in Suffolk. We are told that the free-range geese and turkeys are happily growing fat ready for Christmas.

 

 

Back to the Garden has an impressive delicatessen stocking local and not-so-local artisan cheeses, cooked meats, tarts, quiches and pasta. Peter, who operates the cheese counter was lured out of retirement to work in Back to the Garden, such was his appreciation for the shop’s philosophy. Having once run a cheese shop in Brighton, he is, I am told, something of an oracle on all things cheese.

 

 

Products including local apple juice derive from Thornage Hall - a Camphill Community for adults with special needs. Thornage Hall is an organic and bio-dynamic farm, meaning that along with the rejection of toxins and pesticides and the like, the farming methods rely very much on natural ecosystems as a method of agriculture (seasonal water supply sources, natural fertilisation, etc).

 

 

Back to the Garden has a fully equipped onsite kitchen producing goods that are sold in the shop from the basic ingredients - a welcome alternative to pre-packaged, over-preserved goods that are ‘bought in’ to so many food outlets these days.

 

 

As well as everything sold in Back to the Garden being made or grown either on site or through natural, traceable channels to enhance the quality for consumers, the environment is considered in Astley’s philosophy. Obviously, the lack of use of herbicides and fertilisers is a great start, but in addition all the farm’s arable fields are surrounded by a six-metre margin to provide wildlife corridors and good nesting grounds. Of the 1,000 acres, some 300-acres are ancient woodland, which is coppiced to maintain the rich biodiversity within. Around 400-acres is pasture (grazed by their Aberdeen Angus’s), which is carefully managed and rotated to maintain its high quality soil and to maximise the growth of the plants in the pastures. Also a 160kw woodchip boiler, a sustainable energy source that operates as a carbon-neutral process, heats the shop and the house next door.

 

 

With such right-on politics positively seeping from every aspect of this business, I doubt you can get closer to tasting true ‘feel good food’ than you will from Back to the Garden. Naturally, it’s not all holier-than-thou - the pies and homemade cakes are pure diet-busting wickedness. Joking aside, Back to the Garden is a wonderful alternative to the strip-lit, airless Supermarket and a real trailblazer when it comes to local farm shops. Stocking just about everything you’d need from bread to kebabs for the BBQ, it embodies the future of food shopping through its connections with the past. Holistic, organic, healthy and wholesome. And it all tastes pretty damn good too.

 

 

Back to the Garden.

Letheringsett, Holt, Norfolk, NR25 7JJ.

Tel: 01263 715996.

Open Tue-Sat.