Field to fork dining as Lime Wood hotel joins forces with Ringwood’s no-dig Four Acre Farm

INGREDIENT-led food is set to become a key focus of menu planning at Lime Wood Hotel and its celebrated HH&Co restaurant as the team forges closer links with the no-dig Four Acre Farm in Ringwood.

Lime Wood’s chef director Luke Holder said the new partnership is allowing the kitchen team to work closely with the community interest farm in order to narrow the distance between field and fork.

He said: “Seed, sow, grow – reserve and preserve is the whole way we approach our dining concert here at Lime Wood next year. It has taken years to develop our relationships with these wonderful growers and producers but we are also up-skilling ourselves in processes of fermenting and preserving so we can use more of what is available.”

Four Acre Farm in Crow is run by life-long friends Kate Forrester and Mollie Taylor, who invite locals along to get involved in the growing and harvesting process. As the caretakers of four acres of farmland, the pair share a passion to inspire and educate on how to produce food, while regenerating land and reconnecting people with the natural world.

Having already planted more than 4,000 trees to form a new native mixed species hedgerow, and 130 fruit trees for a new orchard, their goal is to repair soil, create new and diverse habitat for thousands of species and provide chemical-free food for the community.

Four Acre Farm works alongside natural systems, using a no-dig system to provide weekly veg box schemes for local residents, selling in local shops and supplying restaurants.

Now Kate, a former private and event chef, is working with Luke and his team to deliver the very best, seasonally available produce, with menus adapting to embrace gluts of produce that are in abundance within a short period of time.

Every Wednesday, Kate arrives at Lime Wood Hotel in Lyndhurst with an array of produce for HH&Co’s chefs to mull over and conjure up new dishes. The team discusses menus after the delivery, meaning a hero ingredient, such as new season asparagus, could appear multiple times in different forms across the menu to really celebrate the produce when it’s at its best.

The produce from Four Acre Farm is not only used in the kitchen at HH&Co, but across the hotel and in Herb House Spa’s Raw & Cured.

Luke said: “The key positioning for us next year is the relationship we have with Four Acre Farm. Its’ a no dig policy grower with a really low environmental impact which is great for us and great for the planet. They work with rare seed hunters to grow lots of lost varieties that are no longer commercially viable.

“We have had some amazing pumpkins this autumn, but the problem is when you do small production farming everything comes in huge gluts. So the question is, how do you cope with that produce?”

The team at Lime Wood have been experimenting with fermentation and preserving since 2020, but next year the plan is to step things up a gear by creating a larger fermentation kitchen that enables them to take everything coming from the farm.

Luke encourages his team of chefs to spend time on the farm, planting, harvesting and getting closer to the product, to cement the relationship between kitchens, farmers and gardeners.

He said: “Having a relationship with Four Acre has been wonderful but it’s taken two years of learning – what does grow? What doesn’t grow well? What is successful? When you are doing no-dig farming it is not all mono cropping, you need to adapt and learn.

“All the corn was eaten by the mice last year so we had no corn; this year we had a stuttering of corn. But in those moments you learn what works.

“It is also about trying to ensure that our little community around us, like Kate at Four Acre, is supported during the time when there is very little coming out of the ground. So we are trying to work out how we can support her and provide her with a consistent income.”

To find out more about Four Acre Farm, visit www.four-acre.farm

For more information about Lime Wood Hotel and HH&Co Restaurant, visit www.limewoodhotel.co.uk