Hartley Lands Farm

Mole End Farms

Mole End Farms grows top fruit on approximately 100 acres across 5 sites in Kent:- Cranbrook, Wateringbury, Marden, Goudhurst and Chart Sutton

About the Farm

Hartley Lands Farm at Cranbrook is an organic fruit farm measuring approximately 47 acres (19 hectares). Of this approximately 36 acres is planted with fruit trees.
There are four restored natural ponds and a reservoir to store irrigation water for the farm. The remainder are managed as conservation areas to provide the bio-diversity essential in organic production systems i.e. a home for natural predators who feed upon the crops insect pests as well as offering a wealth of habitat for native wildlife.
The farm ponds are stocked with native coarse fish and is run as a day ticket fishery.

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How We Started

Hartley Lands Farm is owned by Paul and Sara Ward, the sole directors of Mole End Farms Ltd.
In the early nineties Paul and Sara bought their current home which included four and a half acres of mature, but neglected conference pears as well as wild flower meadows. This awakened an interest in fruit farming and in 1994 they decided the time was right for a complete career change. The idea germinated that organic production of top fruit was possible, if not extremely difficult. Currently 90% of the UK organic fruit market is supplied by imports sending the environmental benefits of these production systems abroad.
They therefore purchased an existing top fruit farm locally and proceeded to convert it to organic standards.

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Business Aims and Principals

• Our principal aim is to produce a high quality food product in a fully sustainable manner with the absolute minimum impact on the surrounding environment.
• To utilise and maintain the farms natural ponds whilst at the same time enhancing the the wildlife habitat and creating as much bio-diversity on our farm as possible.
• To market, package and promote our products using the most environmentally sustainable means.
• To sell as much of our product locally, thereby minimising the "food miles" they have to travel.

Even if we were not producing to organic standards our aims would remain the same.

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What is "Organic"?

There are many certifying boards responsible for policing organic food production within the UK, these are monitored by the United Kingdom Register of Organic Fruit Standards which in turn is monitored by the International Federation of Organic Agricultural Movements (IFOAM). All of our land is registered with the Soil Association.
There are strict standards on production systems, inputs and environmental actions to which a registered organic grower must adhere. These standards extend far beyond what is written on the packaging:
"Grown without the use of chemically manufactured pesticides and chemicals"
Produce cannot be labelled as "Organic" unless it is certified and the land has gone through a conversion period to cleanse it of any remnants of inorganic contamination, restore soil fertility and microbial bio-diversity

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How we grow our fruit

Conventional top fruit production relies upon the substantial use of chemicals to produce the blemish free produce that you find on supermarket shelves:

• Fertiliser
• Pesticides
• Fungicides
• Herbicides

To be fair most growers carefully monitor the use of these products and only use what is necessary to sustain an acceptable crop load. Organic fruit production uses a minimal number of approved natural products for the control of both disease and pests. For example seaweed extracts, to improve leaf and soil quality, sulphur to protect the fruit and foliage from disease, soap solutions for the control of aphids and some other damaging insects Soil fertility has been maintained by the use of clover grass leys, mowing and mulching with cuttings and where necessary the addition of natural composted manure and approved organic fertilisers. Weed control has generally been achieved by mowing and mulching, appropriately timed cultivation is also employed. Conservation and bio-diversity are essential tools in organic production systems, as many areas as possible around our farm, are managed exclusively for wildlife flora and fauna to sustain and encourage a bank of beneficial insects and protect an ever-diminishing variety of wildlife habitat.

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What we grow

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Mole End Organic Farm-Pressed Fruit Juices

Our main intention is to produce organic fruit for the commercial market. As this market is driven by cosmetic considerations as much as taste, particularly by large supermarket chains, a fair proportion of our fruit is considered not suitable for sale even though it tastes as good as the rest of our fruit. In previous years we had to sell these cosmetically inferior fruits for juicing. However from 2000 on we have made our own fruit juice. This page describes the process and lists some of the places you can buy it.

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Why our Fruit Juice is unique

We believe that our ranges of apple and pear juices are unique products because:

• We press only our own fruit we do not buy-in fruit from outside.
• All of our crops are produced to Soil Association organic standards and are grown without the use of artificial chemicals, pesticides, fungicides and fertilisers.
• The vast majority of the our fruit travels only a few hundred yards from where it is picked to be placed in cold storage, maintaining optimum condition and flavour.
• We can trace each batch of juice to where it came from on the farm.
• After grading, the juicing fruit is kept chilled up until just before the time it is pressed. As far as we are aware we are the only organic fruit juice manufacturers using only our own fruit and pressing it so soon after removing it from the cold store.
• The pressing takes place in our packhouse, adjacent to the cold stores and as soon as we are happy with the blend we bottle and pasteurise within the hour.

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Grading & Milling

All of the fruit used for juicing is graded. Fruit that is suitable for sale commercially is boxed, any fruit unsuitable for juicing is discarded and the remainder is prepared for juicing. First the fruit is milled into a pulp or "pomice" using a Voran electric mill.

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Pressing

The fruit is pressed in the traditional method.The pomice is placed in cloths to make "cheeses" of milled fruit. The cheeses are piled on top of each other and then pressed by hydraulic press to extract the juice.

As you can imagine this is a very labour intensive process but it allows us to exercise exact quality control over our juice.

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Bottling and Pasteurisation

The juice is bottled as soon as possible and then pasteurised. This gives our juice a shelf life of two years. The juice can be kept fresh in a fridge for up to four days after opening.
The pictures show the juice being bottled, with bottles ready for pasteurisation in the foreground and the bottles after pasteurisation waiting to be labelled

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Varieties of Juice

• Our apple juice is a 50/50 blend of dessert and culinary apples, we adjust the dessert variety with each batch to ensure that the flavour is always tangy. The varieties blended in the dessert category include Egremont Russett, Cox, Falstaff, Golden Delicious, Worcester Permain, the culinary apples used are Bramley, Grenadier and Howgate Wonder.
• The apple and pear is a 50/50 mix of Conference pear and Bramley apple, this gives a less sharp taste than the apple with the subtle hint of pear.
• The pear juice is a Conference/Comice blend, pleasantly aromatic and slightly sweeter than the other two.
• We also produce individual varieties:- Discovery, Worcester, Falstaff and Spartan. These are "short run" varieties and are available seasonally. Cox/Bramley, Pear, Apple & Pear and Apple & Blackberry are available all year round
• We constantly sample each batch to ensure that it is just right, before we commence bottling.
• Each bottle of apple juice contains 3lb of fruit and the pear juice 4lb.

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Where to buy our juice and fruit.

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Credits and Links

This site is mentioned in:

• Go-Fishing UK
• VL Leisure
• Hook Links

Sparks Oast Farm is a B&B 20 minutes drive from the fishery.

Other things to do around Cranbrook

This site written by David Campfield

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