42 Acres

( the story )

A regenerative estate near Frome where 173 acres of woodland, meadow and lake surround a kitchen that sources four fifths of its produce from within 42 miles.

where it begins

42 Acres is a working answer to a question about land. The estate at Witham Friary runs on permaculture and regenerative principles: two acres of vegetables, two acres of orchard, a woodland mushroom farm grown on logs, thousands of native trees, nearly a kilometre of edible hedge planted as a wildlife corridor. What comes out of that ground goes onto the table under what they call the 42-Mile Menu — 80% of produce, year-round, from within 42 miles, prepared whole-food, fermented, with nothing refined. You sleep in consciously restored farmhouses, barns and cottages, or full-board in the Hermitage. There is a seven-acre lake for swimming. It is the kind of place that has been written about in the Guardian, the FT and Condé Nast Traveller, and still feels like a farm.