"Husbandry is all-encompassing – and fundamental to the business of looking after the soil. Or, to put it another way, looking after what most people consider waste. Husbandry is looking after our muck, the mess we make around ourselves, and turning it into productive gardens."
When visiting a food producer, you don’t generally expect to leave feeling moved, kind of shaken to your core in how you see food and where it comes from. But to call The Husbandry School a mere ‘producer’ is selling them a little short. This hidden gem in Bickington, Devon, is where Carole and Jonty Williams somehow weave together ancient land management principles, social justice-driven philosophy and a pioneering education scheme, all on a fourty-nine acre plot that they began working with ten years ago.
We were lured there with a view to swoon over their amazing produce that graces the tables of a number of fine restaurants in Devon and beyond – talk of South American tubers, tomatillos, weird and wonderful herbs and more edible flowers than you ever knew existed sprouting out of the Devon soil sounded too good to miss. Devon-born chef Merlin Labron-Johnson had urged us to visit – he’s a long-time family friend of the Williamses, having grown up with their son, and the couple regularly send up a goat, a sheep, or some beautiful blooms for him to prepare in his Michelin-starred restaurant, Portland (you can see their produce regularly bigged up via his Instagram account, if you're curious for a peek).