Kent Farmers’ Markets

Kent Farmers’ Markets

With Benjamin Dent, chairman Kent Farmers’ Market Association

With around three quarters of Kent as famland, woodland or wetland, the game that lives there has recently been shooting up the menu as a fabulous natural food source.

Naturally available is wild venison, wild duck, woodcock, hare, rabbit and pigeon, with even the odd wild boar
or feral pig. Generally, pheasant and partridge are reared and released into the wild by most shooting estates.

Produced in Kent member Godmersham Game, last year’s Taste
of Kent Awards winner in the Kent Meat Retailer of the Year category,
has made a big impact in Kent since
the family run business was first set up just outside Canterbury in Mystole.

Phil and Pam Miles provide top-quality game and game products to their customers, with most of the game sourced within Kent – from pheasant, partridge, mallard, teal, wigeon, pintail, shoveller
and pochard to wood pigeon, wild rabbit, hare and venison. Godmersham also makes venison sausages and burgers,
game pies and pudding.

The couple say they have noticed a trend for game alternatives at Christmas time, with more and more Farmers’ Market customers asking for “something different.”

Phil says: “The most popular alternative to turkey is haunch or saddle of venison, with pheasant running a close second. When we ask our customers why are they changing, the vast majority give the two main reasons as taste and cost.”

Maidstone-based Kentfield Farm, owned and run by Ian Barwick, produces a range of game pies as well
as offering seasonal game birds from its Famers’ Market stall. Its speciality at Christmas is the ‘Bird, in a Bird, in a Bird’ – popular combinations being pheasant, mallard and partridge, or mallard, pheasant and teal.

For larger combinations, Wendy Evans who does the deboning, stitching and trussing at Kentfield Farm, says chicken, mallard and pheasant with either pigeon or venison is her pièce de resistance and she alternates the light and dark meats for a stunning visual effect when the joint is carved.

Kentfield has also just raised its
first herd of wild boar and so wild
boar sausages will be appearing on the menu this month.

Kieron Toole, of Kieron’s Game, shoots wild game across the south east, mostly
in his native Kent. He also does all the preparation and processing of the wild meat himself on his unit near Tonbridge.

Mainstays of his stall include various cuts of venison and venison sausages and burgers, plus occasional wild boar, which he makes into sausages. Partridge, pheasant, rabbit, hare, wild duck and pigeon can be found, depending on the season. Kieron also farms his own guinea fowl on a small scale so you can buy some whole fowl from him.

VJ Game specialises in high-quality, locally sourced game such as venison, rabbit, duck and pheasant and also smokes its own game, meat and fish
and makes its own sausages too.

Keep an eye out on this section for next month’s feature: Christmas Market

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