Venison and Beer The Farmers' Country Showdown

Across the country,

thousands of farming families work tirelessly around the clock.

Bring them up, Isabel. Well done.

-Here they come!

-Shake it, baby! Shake it!

But there's one day each year...

Come on, girl. Out we go.

..where they get to leave the daily routine behind.

THEY WHOOP

These are show days...

Welcome to the Pembrokeshire County Show.

..when they come together as a community...

Salute!

..to showcase the fruits of their labour...

Had a quick look at the competition. I'm in with a chance.

..and try to win prizes for their breed champions...

Well done. Wahey!

It's show business, folks.

..and award-winning projects.

I got first!

You had the last two jars.

There will be highs...

..and lows...

No! No. No, no, no.

..for the dedicated farmers

who give everything to walk away a champion.

No way!

Living off the land was the only way of life, long before

convenience shops and supermarkets.

Today, there are a small number of heritage farmers that continue

to do this, using skills honed over hundreds of years,

to put food and drink on our tables.

Bridging the gap between field and fork, and keeping

their traditions alive,

are gamekeeper Jack Smallman and craft brewer Rupert Thompson.

Both will be selling at this year's Farnham Food Festival.

Petworth, in West Sussex,

lies in the heart of the South Downs National Park,

and is home to second-generation gamekeeper and butcher

Jack, and his wife, Jess.

It's 4am...

..and Jack is just starting work.

Deer-stalking means being out in all weathers, and for long hours.

I've got a family of the roe deer out here.

I've got a doe and twins, and there's a young buck there, as well.

It's, um, they're nice to see.

These are actually right on my doorstep.

Jack has gamekeeper rights over 1,500 acres of land,

where he tracks deer and pheasants.

We're an hour and a quarter from London,

and we are completely surrounded by wildlife out here.

The fallow deer, they do migrate.

Certain times of the year, I'll have anywhere up to

200 deer on the ground.

Jack doesn't farm a domesticated herd.

What he does predates the agricultural revolution.

The venison that we produce, it's all completely wild.

There's no human contact from the day that it's born,

until the day that we cull and manage the herd.

Only eats the best of the best. It forages naturally.

So, that's why we've got such a passion about what we do.

In the past, that's how people would've lived.

They'd have lived from the land,

rather than living from a supermarket.

They wouldn't know what a supermarket was.

Stalking the deer means Jack

is a firm favourite with the local farmers,

who want to protect their livelihood from the destructive herds.

The farmers are certainly looking for management to be done because

they're growing their crops, and when our deer go out there and start

harassing their crops and eating them, and having a nice time

of feasting and gorging on them, which is great for me because it

puts a lovely bit of weight on and great condition for my deer.

But we've got to try and work and get that happy medium.

Luckily, living close to work

means Jack can join the family breakfast.

With two-year-old Scarlett

and five-year-old Will.

Purple or pink?

That one? Oh, no, thanks.

So, did you have a good morning out this morning?

Yeah. No, I had a lovely time.

We got to the end of the drive and saw a few deer out there.

-There a lot about at the moment, then?

-Yeah, loads.

When Jack first met Jess,

he had a test to make sure she wouldn't mind being hands-on.

Well, the first time I met Jack and I went on our first date,

he gave me two dead chickens and said,

"Can you hold these cos we need to go and process them for a friend?"

Of which we did.

-And I was hands-on in helping.

-Wonderful first date.

Running the business together for nine years,

the pair have had to find the right balance.

Jack can get up any time between

3 o'clock in the morning to 6am.

And then he will go off stalking, or he'll be sending a van off

with a delivery, or going out into the butchery to start

the working week with the team out there.

My role is: Up at six with the children,

get them up, ready, breakfast, in the car and then off to school.

Maybe run some errands on the way home, and then I do paperwork.

And, at the weekends, we switch round,

and I'm in London all day doing the markets.

And the house is a tip, on my return.

It's family life.

-Bye-bye.

-Bye-bye, darling.

-Bye-bye.

-Have a nice day.

See you later.

Jack spends part of every day surveying the herd.

Though he will only cull when needed,

knowing how to balance this is a real skill.

I think you just...if you're spending so much time, as I do,

out in the countryside, and out on this particular piece of ground,

then you pick it up over the years.

I was fortunate enough that my father was a gamekeeper

on a local estate.

From day zero, I'm always out in the countryside.

I don't think we actually owned

a computer, when we were youngsters.

Directly 23 miles north,

in Tongham, Surrey, lies the workplace and life passion

of brewer Rupert Thompson.

Well, I love coming into the brewery,

and brewing is a very natural process.

Not every brew is quite like the previous brew,

and trying to get high levels

of consistency is actually not easy.

Like game-keeping,

brewing is a craft that was born out of necessity.

Well, basically, in medieval times,

you were very ill-advised to drink water

from anything other than a stream that was right at the top

of a mountain, because there could be all sorts of things in it

by the time it had gotten to your well, so you always boiled it.

And once you boiled water, you might as well put something in it

to give it a bit of flavour.

They would add all sorts of flavourings.

Heather is an example.

All sorts of botanicals.

And then, in Britain, we discovered hops, which had come across

from the Middle East in the fifth or sixth century.

Farnham, four miles down the road,

used to be one of the major hop-growing areas in the UK.

And Rupert is keen to reconnect

the business to its farming origins.

If you look directly over there, that is Farnham.

And the Farnham White Bine hop,

which we're growing here,

was first classified 250...

well, now, 253 years ago.

The link is as close as it could possibly be.

Brewers wouldn't exist without farmers growing the barley

that's converted into malt.

Nor without the hop growers producing the hops.

So, it is an intimate relationship.

One of the first things Rupert did when he bought the brewery

was to plant its own hop garden.

We wanted to emphasise, first of all, that we are a local,

very local business, and we're using local ingredients.

What actually we have there is a direct link

to a tradition that goes back 250-plus years.

And, at one time, all of this,

all of this land around here, would have been growing hops.

Rupert called on the knowledge and skill of local commercial hop grower

Bill to help him plant the crop.

Bill's been a huge help, right from day one.

And the general advice from everybody,

I suspect Bill was among them, was saying, "You must be barking mad."

And after that, which, of course, once we'd accepted that probably

was the case, we moved on to, "Right, OK,

"what are we going to do?"

We've got guys who are steeped in hop history,

whose fathers have done it, whose grandfathers have done it.

And they really know their onions, and they know their hops.

Success at the upcoming Farnham Food Festival will help Rupert

grow his hop-farming ambitions.

This is the garden - 3.5 acres, at the moment.

We've got the ability to expand there,

and my longer-term ambition will be to perhaps have ten acres.

At the moment, this will represent about 15%

of all the hops we require.

This is a really good example of what we're trying to get.

You've got to catch them while they're still fresh,

and then you have to dry them.

They finished picking here about seven o'clock on Friday.

And they'd put the last of our hops

into the kiln to start drying

at about 11 o'clock.

Once picked, the hops are turned over to master brewer

Miles, to work his magic.

It's more the sort of traditional way of doing it.

You know, so bigger breweries and some more modern breweries,

it's very, very automated. I think doing it manual's quite nice.

You actually see what you're doing, you touch and feel your product

a lot more. It's what's sort of unique about the brewery

as well, so.

Right, that's...

What Rupert's brought to Hogs Back really is...he wanted it to stay

a family business, him bringing that whole story about

growing hops in Surrey, and actually using them in a local brewery.

You know, we're very unique. We've got...

Our hops are grown ten yards across the road,

the hop garden's right opposite the brewery.

That's at the core of everything we do, you know, we're a local brewer,

we want to be part of the community as well, and that's...

You know, that's part of Rupert's values and all our values here.

The brewery's history bodes well for Rupert's future plans.

This is an old farm building.

At one point, in the past, it actually had pigs in it,

so it was a piggery, so there's a certain appropriateness

about it being a Hogs Back brewery.

Somehow, we've managed to get everything in.

I mean, it's very quirky and it's an old barn, it's a lovely building.

Whether it's the best place to brew in, not sure, but...

-There are some inconveniences, as well, but...

-Yeah.

-You know,

one of the key things is, we're almost, you could argue,

we're a farm brewer.

23 miles south, in West Sussex,

Jack is busy checking the lay of the land.

My deer-stalking rights goes round to the east here.

And then drops down around, through the valley below us,

and then runs back to the west for about another mile and a half.

We're really fortunate to be where we are,

right in the heart of the South Downs.

Out here, you feel like you're far enough away from it,

you're on your own, you're in the wild, in the wilderness.

With such a vast area to cover,

Jack's experience keeps him on track.

I'm always observing and seeing what movements and what trade there

might be, whether there might be some hoof marks from where they've

come back in, or gone out in the evening before.

And just checking to see what deer are moving at certain times,

and where they're going in, where they're heading for,

where they're resting up. And then, obviously, planning my

sort of ambush, I guess, for future days,

where they might be moving to and how I'm going to sort of

produce the cull that I'm looking to do.

So, it's reconnaissance, is the key factor within this game.

The fallow deer he is after

can weigh as much as 80 kilos,

and run up to 30 miles an hour.

A height can help give him the edge.

What we've got here is a wooden structure,

some that I've made up myself.

And what they're here for is, it's just to get us,

being this deerstalker,

off the ground.

Remove our scent from ground level.

They've got a great sense of smell.

They've got great eyes, great ears,

so they've always got advantages over us,

and this is the way that we kill two birds with one stone.

Being a qualified butcher, Jack can see the quality of his meat.

You get much satisfaction out of seeing the product from the field

right the way through.

This would have been running around on the Downs,

just over a week ago.

So, it's not a huge animal, so it didn't need huge amounts of hanging.

It's a proper animal for us in the butchery trade, because it's an

18-month-old pricket, so it's a young male.

It's the prime venison, really.

As well as supplying restaurants directly,

Jack and Jess sell at farmers' markets and food fairs.

I normally run the markets on the weekend,

so we have a team of guys up in London that help me also.

And this weekend, we have Farnham, as well, which makes it an extra bit

-of pressure.

-It's a bit all hands to deck.

They're keen to promote their meat as a healthy choice,

and one that can suit all pockets.

Back in the days where they used it, it was the meat for kings.

I think it's certainly progressed since then,

it's become much more affordable to the everyday consumer.

When we're trading at markets, we'll always try and do

three packages of meat, whether it be a mince, a sausage,

and - I'm just using this as an example - a braising steak.

Basically, doing what the everyday person...

We're all time-poor.

So, it's a case of, "Let's get a product that we can come in,

"enjoy and have a really lovely meal,

"but it's not going to take hours and hours to produce."

For those who might need to try before they buy,

Jack is planning to cook some burgers at the fair.

These are the burgers that we'll be selling at Farnham.

They're just pure venison with salt and black pepper.

They're very low in fat. High protein, low-cholesterol.

And venison being one of the lowest cholesterol red meats you can buy,

it opens us up to a different market.

Also, they're gluten-free, as well, so that helps.

It always pays to know your customers' tastes.

We have a lot of competitors starting all the time,

so you have to be forward thinking,

and you have to be phoning the restaurants every week,

otherwise, if you don't follow them you don't get the orders.

And that is where Jack's really good. He has a really good rapport

with a lot of the chefs that we work with.

The relationship of gamekeeper and chef goes back centuries,

when they would turn up with whatever was in season.

-Afternoon, Rob.

-Hello, Jack. How are you?

-Good to see you again.

Good. Just brought that sample, the venison burger sample.

-OK, very good.

-And some pigeon breasts.

-Lovely.

I always think that if you're passionate about your job,

and you're passionate about what you're doing, then you've got to...

-So, obviously, that makes me a foodie.

-Yeah, it's lovely.

I mean, that's the thing. We can look outside the fields here.

Our eggs come from a field down the bottom there,

the game comes from all the fields, from surrounding.

It's lovely, you know.

We get people like Jack. The first time I met Jack, he popped in

to the back door with some of his stuff.

And there we go. That's sort of how it all began.

Chef Rob is also a good source of advice for Jack's burger sales

at the festival.

-So, Rob, on Saturday...

-Mm.

-..I've got to go to Farnham Food Festival.

-Yeah.

I've got to go and see if I can cook a few venison burgers.

-Any tips?

-High heat to start, get a nice caramelisation on the outside.

-Yep.

-And then leave it to rest, as well. If you've got time.

-If I can.

-If you're not getting too slammed and too busy.

I'm thinking about the demand that there might be at the food festival.

Food festivals are...

-They're busy.

-But I'll do my best to rest them, if I can.

In Tongham, Surrey, Rupert is in HQ.

Planning for the future.

I'm looking at the sales report, to see how we're doing.

Usually depresses me, but on this occasion it's looking quite good.

Yep, no, it's OK. It's OK.

We'll be able to pay our bills this month.

Always encouraging.

As well as reviving hop-growing,

Rupert has more farming ambition in his sights.

We've started with a hop garden, but, at some point,

we may actually move the hop garden, lock stock and barrel,

over the road, where we'd have a little more space.

And we'd love to be in a position where we could grow

barley, and eventually we may be able to feed the spent grain

to pigs, which we'd also keep here.

And, that way, we've just shown

just how natural a cycle it is,

and how little waste there is from the brewing process.

Brewing has actually got a very gentle footprint

on the land, really.

Rupert has staked everything to buy the business.

It only takes a few things to go wrong and, financially,

it's difficult for us. We haven't got great, big reserves.

And, as a family business, it's our pockets that will fund it.

So, we're very conscious of that.

In spite of its size,

the brewery has to try and keep one step ahead.

There's a map here of the whole of the South of England.

And part of the reason for that is that we are very conscious

that, at one level, this is a very competitive market

that's actually in decline.

And, sadly, pubs are closing every day.

21 a week, at the moment.

So, it's a bit of a battle at times.

In a risky market, it pays to know your patch.

That's Guildford, Aldershot, Farnham.

See, we're very close to Farnham, as you can see.

And this is the Southeast. London up there.

And this is our heartland.

It's these local, core customers in Farnham that Rupert

is targeting, for the upcoming food festival in two days' time.

Our beers, and particularly TEA,

which stands for Traditional English Ale, are very well-known.

And, I think, well-liked.

And so what we're planning all the time is how we're going to expand,

but how we focus on our local area and make sure that

our customers are happy, locally.

Success at the festival will help Rupert realise

his future dreams of growing more of his own hops.

What we want to get at the Farnham Food Festival is feedback,

first of all. Actually, no, that's not quite true.

What we want to do is sell lots of beer first.

But, actually, equally importantly, we want to get feedback.

And it's about building our links with the local community.

It's making sure that they are aware

that there is a brewery local to them,

that is very much part of the community.

It's finally time to load the vans,

and ensure everything is packed for the festival.

Jack and Rupert have been working hard all year

to produce the best quality game and beer.

That's it. Done. All ready.

Both are aiming to continue to build local relationships,

find new customers

and sell their niche products.

The Farnham Food Festival is one of the largest celebrations

of food and drink in the southeast of England.

Transforming the main Castle Street into a bustling marketplace,

this annual event brings together farmers,

growers and producers, all looking to sell their wares.

This festival is a hugely important part of the community.

It brings the community together

in a really good, wholesome way.

We have beer producers, gin producers

and lots and lots of local foods on offer,

so it's just going from strength to strength.

It's 8am, and over 100 stalls

are getting ready for a busy day ahead.

Over 10,000 festival foodies are expected this year.

Hoping to woo those foodies and tickle taste buds,

Jack has brought a selection of venison,

and will also be cooking up some burgers.

£500 for a burger's a little excessive. Would you not agree?

Let's try a little dot in there.

Ideally, obviously, we want to do a nice bit of trade

with the hot food at lunchtime.

First thing in the morning, I'd like to try...

I'll just try and market a fair bit of the raw products.

Rupert is aiming to keep his local customers well lubricated,

and find new drinkers, too.

The final beers have arrived.

Good morning.

And to satisfy a wide range of tastes,

he's brought a variety of Hogs Back brews.

The funny thing about weather is,

there's a perfect temperature for drinking ale,

a little bit warmer for lager.

If it's too warm, if it's too sunny,

people actually stop drinking.

This is actually a great spot we've got, and that's important.

And for a bar serving beer,

it's quite important there's lots of space around so people can have

a drink and they're not getting crowded.

So, yeah, no, it's good.

Luckily, Jack has brought along some much-needed support.

Oh, my God.

If you haven't seen a little stainless strip...

A what? Yeah, there.

That's the one.

The last time I did a market, I don't know,

it would've probably been three months ago.

So, little bit out of practice, as you can probably make out.

Izzy's here. She's one of my sister's best friends from school.

-Yeah.

-So, she's kindly come and helped out today,

and we're sort of... It's a bit of an education, because it's sort of

Izzy's first time of selling our product, as well.

It's going to be an interesting day.

Rupert is also pairing up to cope with demand.

He and hop farmer Bill are due to give a talk on brewing

on the live demo stage.

-Rupert, how are you doing?

-Well done. Good timing.

-Very nice to see you. All right?

-Yeah. No, they're looking good.

-Good, good.

-They're the same ones, definitely.

Yes, they'll be the right ones, I think.

-We've got the right thing.

-Well, we've got a bit of...

We've got a respite, cos we haven't got an audience.

-Other than that...

-We're looking good.

-Fantastic.

Bill and I are meant to be doing the talk at ten.

But there's no point in starting until

there's a few more people here,

cos I think we're still just setting up.

So, feeling is that we ought to leave it for another

15 or 20 minutes, until more people have come in.

I also just want to make sure that

their intention is to have no seats.

Because, in the previous years, there's always been seats,

and I would've thought people would want to sit down.

So, I wonder if the seating man

has not turned up yet!

So, I'm just going to see if I can chase to get more chairs.

Jack has also thought about catering for all tastes.

We've got wild venison burgers as our hot food.

Just as a plain, plain burger. Onions in a bap, and away they go.

We give them a choice of red currant jelly, English mustard.

Then, obviously, we've got our raw product range.

I've just designed the layout now. We've got the haunch of venison

here on the bone, boned and rolled haunch.

Marinated shoulders here.

Chilli, coriander and garlic, which are a great seller.

And there'll be a range of products, there'll be the burgers, sausages,

mince, hand-diced, braising, you name it.

That's just to mention a few.

With the food fair officially open for business,

Castle Street begins to fill.

Yes, we do 2 for £5 on the burgers.

On the mince and the sausages, any three packs, mix and match.

We're doing 3 for £10.

Jack's venison is attracting the crowds.

Just south of Petworth.

The village of... Yeah. We're village of Duncton.

Right at the foot of the Downs.

I've got 1,500 acres of my own deer-stalking,

right on my doorstep at home.

So, it's all wild venison, which is fantastic.

And, at the end of the day, we're not just there to create a business.

It's actually doing land management,

and it's also creating a healthy population

of animals for the future.

-And it's a healthy meat.

-And it's a healthy meat, exactly.

-Thank you.

-You've learned your lines well, sir!

I'll come later.

-No problem.

-£7.66.

I've never had the liver.

Oh, I can't say I have, actually.

-The liver, Jack?

-The liver. Very, very good.

Treat it like you would calf's liver.

So far, I've just bought some venison.

Because venison is one of my favourite meats.

And, for the first time, I've found some venison liver.

Which I've never tried.

Both myself and my partner like liver,

and I'm told it's a bit like calf's liver,

so I'm really looking forward to cooking it.

The adventurous foodies are out in force today.

Those two? I've just literally sold my last packet.

-Is that all for you, sir?

-Yes, thanks.

-£15.70, please.

-Thank you.

-Lovely. Thank you very much, indeed. Have a great day.

I got the wild venison shoulder and a shank and some burgers.

And I just thought, you know, I'd like something a bit different, really.

I'll have to look up online how to cook it.

Being out of practice running markets,

Jack is feeling the pressure.

That's £5, please. Thank you.

Oh, my goodness. I've never known, yeah... It's always the way,

though, you sort of think you're all up together.

We've got bread rolls to cut, we've got burgers to fry off

and then we've got to do this side. So, we'll get there.

Things are less busy for Rupert and Bill,

who are trying to drum up a crowd.

Ladies and gentlemen, we'll be starting in a couple minutes' time,

so if anybody wants to hear about Farnham hops,

and Farnham beer,

and perhaps even sample some,

please come to the front now.

There's a few spare seats.

It'll be lovely just to be able to reconnect to a few people here,

with beer-making and hops,

because if you go back, I guess, 150-200 years ago,

this whole street would have been full of people

who were very much involved in the hop trade, in hop-growing,

and people locally would have known so much about it.

And it's just sort of bringing that bit of history back again,

I think, is a really nice touch for a contemporary food festival

in the middle of Farnham.

The Farnham Food Festival is such a success,

the council have a waiting list of sellers.

They have a ready-made audience who absolutely adore anything to do

with food and drink.

We're a foodie town, we really are.

You know, it gives me so much pleasure to see that we are doing

the right things for the residents,

and the retailers are happy because they're selling.

It's a twofold thing, you know,

and it's nice to see the families, just the happiness,

the joy of the day, really.

And the community coming together.

We are an artisan jelly company.

So, we were here last year.

And really it's just a great festival.

You've got a lot of artisan producers.

And a brilliant crowd, as well. Today has really been nonstop.

I think I've found time to go to the toilet once so far.

What I do is handmade biscuits, dogs' biscuits.

All really healthy, natural.

And this is the third time I've been at the Farnham Food Festival,

so really love it here. It's a really good vibe.

From what I find, is that people who come to a food festival really like

to get a treat for their dogs, as well.

Cos they're in that mood, you know.

So, that's why it does really well.

I'm local. I'm from the Farnham Pottery in Wrecclesham. And I've got

my daughter, Dot, helping me here today on the stall, because it's

getting really, really busy.

It's wonderful to have a really good local food festival

with lots of local producers. It's been a great day.

I like seeing how happy people are when we're, like,

serving them all the time.

-Yeah, it's fun.

-Lots of returning customers today.

Lots of people saying, "Oh, lovely to see you again," and,

"Remember last year," and so it's lovely seeing familiar faces.

Finally, the promise of free beer has worked its magic.

There's enough people for Rupert and Bill to kick off.

Can I introduce myself?

I'm Rupert Thompson of Hogs Back Brewery.

And Bill Biddell from Hampton Estate.

Bill is the last commercial hop grower in the whole of this area,

and then I'm going to talk about how we use the hops

to brew and make our beers,

and I'm going to give you one or two samples.

So, just to start with,

Farnham was one of the leading hop growing centres

of the UK, at one time.

And, at one point, it was reputed that you could walk

from Guildford to Farnham

and never be outside of the sight of a hop garden.

So, here is a hop.

As most people know, these are hops.

This is what gives you the bitterness in beer.

Grab it between your fingers and smush it around,

and then have a good smell of your fingers.

And you'll go, "Wow, that's a bit bittery.

"That's a bit fragrant.

"There's a bit of an aroma in there."

And that is what Rupert and the Hogs Back Brewery want.

They will only go into traditional English beers.

On the game stall,

the early morning rush has seen them nearly sell out.

Empty.

-Is it?

-Hello.

-We sold all of the... Have we sold all those sausages?

-Yeah, I'm just double checking.

-Just double checking?

-It's not looking terribly good for you, madam, I'm afraid.

-All empty!

Oh, bad luck!

-Sorry.

-It went quite quickly!

We passed the venison sausage stand and I said to my friend,

"I'm going to buy these sausages for my husband."

And they had like two packs left and she said, "No, no, no, no, no.

"Come on, let's go round and see what else there is."

And we've come back and they're all sold out!

My husband loves sausages.

I think he might turn into a sausage one day.

And they were a really good price, as well, and they look fantastic.

Venison with, like, redcurrant or something,

so he's going to be like, "What?! You didn't get them?!"

And Jack has got his work cut out on the grill.

So far, so good. The festival's really sort of taken shape,

and the hot food's starting to really hot up,

so we're really impressed.

Raw meat, as you can see, that's pretty much all we've got left,

so can't grumble.

It's my first time having a venison burger.

It's fantastic. Mm!

At the demo stage,

the thirsty audience finally get what they were promised.

So, what you're going to taste now is a small sample of green tea,

brewed with 100% Bill's Fuggles Hops,

so, a few of ours, as well.

And I would like to just say thank you all for coming along,

and a particular thanks to Bill.

Thank you, Bill!

The smell of it, oh, it really was strong!

And, yes, I enjoyed it all, yes.

And I remembered...

I knew all about the history of the hops in Farnham.

And many years they used to come in from London to pick...

The children used to come, it was like a holiday for them.

And they all used to pick the hops.

This is my first time here.

I've really enjoyed myself today.

Living in Kent, we've got lots of hops fields,

and it's quite nice to see somebody else's experience with them.

We've taken some hops away to take to school,

so the children at school can experience the smell of them,

because they've got to learn where we grow things.

We live nearby, and we live, basically,

live in between the Hogs Back Brewery

and the estate where the hops come from.

So, yeah, because we live so close,

we tend to use Hogs Back quite a lot.

Overlooking the festival,

and visible from all around the market town,

Farnham has its very own castle.

Farnham Castle is special, as a castle,

because of its continuous history of 900 years.

And, if you look at the walls behind me,

you can see how they've changed,

and it's looking...like peeling an onion.

You can take it from the 20th century, right back to 1137.

In the early days, as a traditional medieval fortress,

it wouldn't necessarily have been looked at with affection.

But now it's much more a part of the community.

Well, the castle was built by a guy Henry of Blois,

who was a bishop of Winchester.

He was an interesting character.

He was the grandson of King William I.

In the medieval times, the castle was used for entertaining,

as well as other things.

Not only for the people of Farnham, but also for important visitors,

particularly the kings and queens of England.

The prestige of a host

was dependent on the quality of their catering

and their entertaining.

So bishops famously put on very lavish feasts for their visitors.

Queen Elizabeth I was a regular visitor to the castle.

It was just the right distance from London, if you were travelling

to the south coast and to the ports, so this was a regular stop off.

At the festival, things have picked up at the bar.

£3.50, perfect.

Thanks. Cheers.

I think it was a slow start,

but you can see now that the people are coming up,

the beer is starting to pour.

Which I love.

The customer seems to be really enjoying it.

We're selling lots of beer.

It'll be like this for the next three hours, I should think.

-Could I have two? That size, of the Hogs Back?

-Yes.

-Is it Hogs Back?

-Where, in the little box?

We've got the Hogs Back bitter...

-Yeah, them, they're fine.

-The Hogs Back bitter, yes?

I think so.

I'm from New South Wales in Australia.

The beer is a very different here.

It's much...

..stronger, like a deeper flavour.

The weather's a little bit different than in Australia,

but, in Australia, we're coming into summer. This is just beautiful.

And the beer is great.

It's well into the afternoon,

and everyone seems to be in very good spirits.

-Hi. Can I help?

-Yeah, of course you can.

That went down quick!

-Have you had it before?

-I've never before, no.

-Haven't you?

-Very, very nice. Yeah, yeah.

-Good.

-And so easy to drink.

-Well, I'll tell you what,

what we do is we add some apple juice back

-to the cider, at the end...

-Yeah, yeah.

And it just makes it a little more natural and, yeah.

-It's very easy to drink.

-Yeah, yeah.

-Nice.

It's a terrible thing when you have something you can find easy to

-drink!

-Yeah, no, it's fantastic.

Very nice. You've done a good job there! Thank you.

I grew up here, so it's nice to support local events.

I've been to the food festival before, so it's, you know,

it's nice to support local farmers and suppliers and get good food.

Are you having a good day?

-Yes, lovely.

-So many lovely things, aren't there?

Right. Ooh! Cooking on gas here.

I'm Bernie and this is Coco.

It's really good to come to the food festival,

and support the people here.

She really enjoys it. She loves to be out and about.

She loves to people please.

It's nicer than her being at home.

And she comes to work with me once a term, I work in a local school.

And she's really good with the children.

So, yeah, she loves it, as you can see.

She's not nervous at all. 32, she is.

The festival has drawn over 10,000 people this year,

and given Jack and Rupert the chance to reach out

to local fans, and find new customers.

We've had a fantastic day at Farnham Food Festival.

It's been absolutely spot on.

Just how we...ever hope for.

We sort of... You come with high expectations,

you look at the weather forecast,

you look at your pitch, your location,

you think, "Mm, yeah, it should be OK."

This has been really good.

-How's it all gone?

-It's been great. We've been really, really busy.

We're down to the last few dregs of the barrels of beer.

If we run out of beer, in one sense, it's a great success.

So, Rupert is closer to expanding his hop garden.

There's a real fondness for the beers,

and the brewery, locally, and a lot of support.

And we've got a great team,

who do a really good job.

The Farnham Food Festival is drawing to a close for another year.

It's been a sell-out day for our heritage farmers.

It's always been our main goal to produce an exceptional product

to exceed anything else that's out there on the market.

And the feedback that we're getting from customers today,

whether they were past or present, they've all been very positive.

They've connected with customers who share their passion for the traditional.

Today's been a great day.

We've had a lot of interest, people were interested in the talk,

they've been very interested in the beer,

and we've sold a lot of it.

What more can you ask?

Their success today proves that doing things the way

they've been done for hundreds of years can still pay off.