At Peach, we believe that great food and flavour comes from eating the freshest and most seasonal ingredients.
With Asparagus being one of our favourite spring ingredients, we took a trip down to Barfoots, a beautiful farm on the South Coast to try some of this year’s first British asparagus.
Barfoots is a privately owned family business, which started in 1976. When we asked John Barfoot why they chose the South Coast, he said “The truth is that we didn’t choose it… it chose us”. The long, high light levels, warm soils and spread of soil types ,make it the perfect place to farm a number of delicious ingredients.
The reason we love sourcing our asparagus from Barfoots is because, like us, they do things properly and don’t take shortcuts. This means that they respect our environment, the community and reduce their carbon footprint. As their Chairman, Peter Barfoot said, “To farm successfully you need to be a custodian of nature, and farm today like you are going to farm forever”.
When we arrived at the farm, we were taken to see the first of this season’s asparagus that was being grown under 20 acres of “walk-in” tunnels. We also saw how all the asparagus is harvested totally by hand.
Being a warm day, the heat under the tunnel was extraordinary. We learnt that on a hot day, Barfoots often have to harvest twice a day as asparagus can grow 12 centimeters overnight! This means some of what we saw today, will be ready for harvesting in the morning.
Although counties like China and Peru have the perfect climate to produce asparagus en masse, Farm Manager, Nathan Dellicitt told us that British asparagus tastes best because it’s slow grown
After we had our first bite, we couldn’t have agreed with him more. It was indeed a taste explosion and we can’t wait to serve it to all our guests in the coming weeks.
Our next stop was to the 80 acres of covered “cloche” production. The farm was a beautiful sight with the sea and the Isle of Wight in the background. There is no doubt Barfoots asparagus is indeed, grown with love.
We want to make the most of this year’s short British asparagus season, which typically lasts until the end of June. To do so, we will be launching “Dip Your Own” in all our pubs on Saturday 11th April. It is the perfect way to taste the best of British asparagus and enjoy one of this season’s most delicious veg! Dip the best of this years asparagus into a beautiful homemade hollandaise sauce and shaved egg and parmesan. It will only be on offer for six weeks so don’t miss out!
