Abbey Home Farm

The Chester-Master family don’t always do things the easy way. “To make a farm pay nowadays, most farmers concentrate on one venture,” Hilary explains. “We are doing the opposite”. And she’s not just talking about the way 1,500-acre Abbey Home Farm seems to produce every food you can grow in the UK on site, from honey to halloumi. It’s also a reference to the award-winning farm shop, the educational courses and the vegetarian café with a menu that changes daily as it follows the progress of the surrounding garden. This is not just a farm. It’s an entire organic enterprise.

In addition to this agricultural activity is Abbey Home’s thoroughly low-key and off-grid campsite. Or rather, campsites. After all, why challenge yourself with running one when you have the space to manage several? The main ‘Green Field’ site is popular with families, who love the space – only accentuated by sweeping views of the surrounding pastures – and the car-free safety afforded to children. It's rustic to say the least, with showers in rough huts made from the farm's own wood, but that's really part of the charm.

Alongside the Green Field is a smaller meadow for campervans and those desperate to pitch accompanied by their vehicles, while, elsewhere, you’ll find a shepherd’s hut, a yurt and a four-yurt camp for groups. Perhaps our favourite site is the aptly named ‘Magical Glade’, an exclusive hire spot in the woods a whole mile away with space for about three small tents. Since the wood was only planted in 1991, the trees are still relatively small, giving campers the best of both worlds: sheltered seclusion and sunlight.

Wherever you’re lucky enough to pitch, you’ll have to start by checking in at the farm shop, the hub of all things at Abbey Home. Head grower Andy chalks notes on a blackboard inside, so that guests know what’s going on in the 15-acre vegetable garden that surrounds the building, and you’re welcome to wander through it all on weekends. There are also tours of the wider farm on their summer open day, though, at other times of the year, you can follow the well-signed farm trail yourself, heading to a beautiful totem pole by the campsite and on past fields of short-horned cattle, sheep and chickens before entering the woods and returning down an old railway line to the shop.

The diversity and seasonality of the farm means there is always something new and changing. ‘Sprouting Broccoli and Spring Greens cropping well’, reads one of Andy’s chalk-board notes in April. ‘Good year for soft fruit and Strawberries,’ in July. This propensity for change seems to have seeped into the varied courses and activities offered and, more recently, even into the running of the campsite. Almost 20 years after the farm first became certified organic, the next generation of the Chester-Master family are beginning to take the reigns of the site. While the camping will still be an off-grid, campfire-friendly and eco-friendly affair, plans are apparently in the pipeline for a few new welcome additions. Whatever happens you can be sure it won’t be done the easy way. But no doubt it will be set about with the same laudable aim of making the countryside and the environment a better place.