FOOD & DR INK
f you love food and you live in Cambridge, then you know The Gog Farm Shop. And if you don’t, immediately fold this under your arm, hop on a bike or bus and make your way south of the city, past Addenbrooke’s, and start the long slow ascent up the rolling chalkland at the foot of the Gog Magog Hills. Turn into the farm’s driveway: crunch your way on the gravel past the railway sleeper beds of grasses, bee-loud
potato crop and as far as they could see were mushrooms – the whole field was literally covered with mushrooms. They ate them themselves, they gave them to friends and they started a little honesty box at the roadside by the gate – proper old-school farming,” Charles laughs. “And from the proceeds of that, Mum bought some chickens – and they got started.” In the late 70s, Charles’s father decided to start selling meat, and set about improving his own butchery skills. “My mum was particularly interested in making sausages: even back then, we were thinking the stuff that goes into sausages is absolutely awful,” Charles recalls. Adapting a family recipe, Lesley began selling her creations, which proved extremely popular and led to The Gog’s perma-famous scotch eggs – a recipe that hasn’t changed since its first incarnation, and which is well worth trying if you’ve already finished your scone. Thanks to Colin and Lesley’s hard work, supported by Colin’s sister Jean, ‘Bradford’s Farm Shop’ spent the next few decades building up a loyal base of customers from Cambridge and the surrounding villages.
flowers and the clutch of Big Green Eggs; smile at the collie sleeping in the shade, order a cheese scone and a flat white, find a space to sit and then carry on reading. Honestly – it’s worth it. We’ll wait. This year marks 100 years since the first of the Bradford family set foot on the heath’s chalky soil. “My great-grandfather, Fred, returned from the first world war in August 1919,” says Charles Bradford, sat in his neat office at the back of the farm, drinking a flat white. (See! They’re good.) “He came back and took over Heath Farm, and the Bradfords have been here ever since. That’s really what we’re celebrating this year. It’s kind of the essence of what we’re about. Then my grandfather, Charlie, who I’m named after, he took over farming here. And my dad, Colin, was actually born in the farmhouse.” It was the land that gave the Bradfords the unexpected opportunity to add to the farm’s offering. “One day in the late 60s, my parents came out to check on the
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C A M B S E D I T I O N . C O . U K
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