Organic bacon made without nitrates. Here’s what you need to know.
Fosse Meadows: What is it?
When it comes to chicken that tastes as good as it has been farmed, you’ll be hard-pressed to find better than Fosse Meadows. Owners of this fourth generation farm, Nick and Jacob, share a passion for genuinely brilliant food, both in flavour and quality. Their goal is to produce a bird of excellent flavour and succulence, and raised with compassion and artisanal farming standards.
Fosse Meadows USP is that they grow all of their birds to a minimum of 81 days – which is up to four weeks longer than free-range standards. This means the birds are naturally slow-grown to maturity, which is important for their welfare and also because it helps to develop the deep flavour and succulent texture of the meat.
Whatever you’re after, whether it be a whole chicken for a festive feast, chicken breasts for your mid-week meal or a kilo of wings for your weekend BBQ, Fosse Meadows’ has you covered. They also rear 100% grass fed lamb, hogget and mutton. And work with local farmers to bring you 100% grass fed beef and free-range pork.
Just in case you don’t want to just take our word for how great they are (which, of course, you should), in recognition of its excellence, Fosse Meadows chickens was positioned No.7 in The Observer Food Monthly’s ‘Annual OFM 50: Everything we love in the world of food right now’. They also won a Good Housekeeping award in 2015, and have come highly recommended by chefs and food writers.
Fosse Meadows: How sustainable is it?
Think of small flocks of chickens grazing on grassy wildflower pastures, roaming freely through the hedge rows, scratching around for insects in the clover fields and at the bottom of trees and hedges. This is the idyllic picture of farming at its best – and more importantly, the reality of Fosse Meadows.
Chickens, like most animals, don’t want to be locked inside. Encouraging the flocks to be outside helps to promote their natural behaviours. However, the traditional French breed chickens also have access to mobile sheds during the daytime when bad weather occurs and overnight for protection from foxes.
When it comes to their birds, Fosse Meadows takes the phrase ‘you are what you eat’ very seriously, feeding them a diet made up solely of ethically sourced cereals that are free from routine antibiotics, additives and growth hormones.
Fosse is currently trialling 100% soy free chicken, which means their bird feed steers clear of all soy. This is a great move for several reasons, their motivations being:
- To stop deforestation and destroying rich biodiversity
- To avoid the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides typical in the farming of soy
- To reduce food miles and their carbon footprint
This meat is now available to try alongside their free-range products.
