A Slice of Bread and Butter
The voice of The Bread and Butter Thing - with stories from the frontline of the cost of living crisis from one of the UK's leading food charities.
A Slice of Bread and Butter
The Rainbow on Your Plate: Hammonds' 125-Year Food Legacy
Ever wondered what happens when a 125-year-old family farm meets a modern food charity? The magic that unfolds is changing how communities access fresh, nutritious food across Britain.
This episode takes us behind the scenes with Jon Hammond and Richard Grant from Hammond's Farm, a fourth-generation family business growing everything from traditional root vegetables to colourful purple carrots across their 2,500-acre farm (that's over 1,200 football pitches!). Their passion for quality produce is matched only by their commitment to ensuring good food reaches everyone who needs it.
The conversation challenges our preconceptions about food appearance and value. As Jon eloquently puts it, "somehow we've managed to get ourselves into this place where we think it matters what food looks like." Their partnership with The Bread and Butter Thing demonstrates how "wonky" vegetables – those that might not meet supermarket cosmetic standards but taste absolutely delicious – can bridge the gap between food abundance and food access.
What makes this partnership so powerful is the shared commitment to "eating the rainbow" – enjoying diverse, colourful vegetables regardless of shape or size. When Hammond's supplied yellow and purple carrots, it created excitement among TBBT members who might never have had the opportunity to try such varieties. This diversity isn't just about culinary adventure; it's fundamentally important for balanced nutrition.
The episode also reveals fascinating food facts (did you know the "carrots improve eyesight" myth was created to hide the invention of radar during WWII?) while tackling serious issues around food affordability and accessibility. When healthy calories cost twice as much as unhealthy ones, collaborations like this become essential bridges to nutritional equality.
Join us for this heartwarming conversation about British farming heritage, food innovation, and how partnerships can transform communities one wonky parsnip at a time. Discover how Hammond's isn't just growing vegetables – they're cultivating hope.
Welcome back to a slice of bread and butter with Mark and the food team from the bread and butter thing. We're a charity that delivers affordable food to the heart of struggling neighborhoods to help nourish communities and act as a catalyst for change. We provide access to a nutritious, affordable range of food, which means our members can save money on their shopping, feed their nourish communities and act as a catalyst for change. We provide access to a nutritious, affordable range of food, which means our members can save money on their shopping, feed their families healthily, as well as access other support too, right in the heart of their communities. And this is where we share a slice of life of somebody involved in bread and butter and hear about how they connect with us. And this week it's John and Rich from one of our suppliers, hammonds.
Speaker 2:It is, but before it is, it's Justin, hayley and Rona from the food team. Hello, hello. So they all know Hammonds and they all know John and Rich, so I thought it'd be useful to get them to come and have a chat.
Speaker 5:So, we'll have a listen to John and Rich and then we'll come back. I'm John Hammond. I'm a director at Hammond Produce and Tea Hammond Farms, based here in Nottingham. I'm Richard Grant, commercial manager here for Hammond Produce, again based at Redhill.
Speaker 4:So we're a mixture of businesses based very much around growing food in the UK. So we have a farming business covering around about 2,500 acres so it's just over 1,200 football pitches Growing a range of crops roots, brassicas, so cabbages, rhubarb weird things squash, pumpkins. We grow it ourselves, we pack it ourselves, we distribute it ourselves.
Speaker 2:And what's your day-to-day?
Speaker 5:Rich. So here I will run the commercial team dealing with the multiple retailers manufacturers, farm shops, food service businesses, selling the product and then managing the commercial aspect of the transport business. We all have a massive interest in just about every aspect of that part of the business.
Speaker 2:Has it grown that way? Is that the thing? Now You've got to do it.
Speaker 4:All We've chosen really to take control of as many aspects as we can, because service level is everything to our customers, and if we've got control over as many bits of it as we can, it's then our fault if we mess it up At the same time.
Speaker 2:You've kind of got that control of quality right.
Speaker 4:For sure your crops are. They a steady supply throughout the year. So we have a mix of things that we have to supply to our customers year round. So we grow in various different places across the uk to give us seasonal availability and we need to bring small amounts in for the crops that we grow from europe to fill the the gap between the UK season. But also we have very seasonal crops. Our pumpkins and squash are basically for Halloween, spring green, a spring crop, certainly for retail, and our rhubarb runs from January, coming out of forcing sheds, through to about August. Sometimes we have not enough and sometimes we have way too much, depending on what the weather's doing and what our customers are demanding.
Speaker 2:So I met you. What was it now? 18 months, 12 months, it's more than that.
Speaker 5:Is it yeah?
Speaker 4:Time flies, doesn't it?
Speaker 2:You guys have been fabulous ever since. Tell us a bit about what we do together, Rich.
Speaker 5:So we are able to look at supplying yourselves with caps and parsnips predominantly. It's not just small fry, it's six to ten tonne really at a time to give you guys as much distribution as possible. Going back to when we first met, we spoke about what you guys had delivered up to that point. I think it was quite humbling at that stage, before we really made an impact on what food means to people. I think we take it for granted. Really having the ability to do what we have done and continue to do is, yes, it's special, it's fantastic really.
Speaker 2:I know what you mean about that. Take it for granted. I worry about stopping and thinking about it because it makes my head boil a bit if I do yeah, I mean to survive, and there are a lot of people that are only just surviving.
Speaker 4:We need clean air, clean water and decent food. For most of us, they're a given. In this country, we switch the tap on and clean water comes out and we can go to a supermarket or whatever it is and buy decent food. There's an ever-growing part of society that, for absolutely no fault of their own, are finding that accessing decent, quality, fresh food more and more challenging, and for us to be a part of a collaboration that allows people who've found themselves in a tough place for a bit to access great quality, fresh food, then we've been absolutely delighted and, as Rich says, humbled, to be part of that.
Speaker 2:We can't do what we do without people like you helping us. That's the critical thing in this right. We don't have the food and we don't have the communities. We've just found a way of bringing the two together.
Speaker 4:We do whatever we can whenever we can, and we try and provide a product that we are proud to provide. I think there's a misconception that lots of food products that appear in this space, in your space, are end of life or not that great quality, and that's not what this is about for us that's a really interesting point as well.
Speaker 2:So some of the stuff that we get I guess the general public could call it wonky which we're a massive fan of. I remember the first weeks, john. I've never seen parsnips that big before and I think it's a weird thing.
Speaker 4:so food is a weird thing because, out of just the three of us in the room, if we were presented with three trays of apples some green ones, some red ones and some small ones all three of us would choose a different apple because our perception is that that's the nicest. And the reality is, with most foods, by the time you've taken a peeler to it and chopped it up into the pieces that you want to cook, it tastes just the same as the ones that might be bright and shiny on a supermarket shelf. It's just that we've managed to get past the perception of that's not perfect, and I'm not saying that we're sending you multiple retail quality carrots and parsnips every day. We're not but what we are sending is stuff that tastes amazing.
Speaker 2:It's a really really tricky one to square, but I think we can all agree that if we have that selection in the supermarket, we always go to the back of the shelf for the longest date. We always pick out the straightest and prettiest product. Do you think we're conditioned that way or is it just the way we are? People accuse the supermarkets of doing that, and I actually think we do it too, and have done it from day one. I remember back as a kid at a green grocery you'd still be there with a bin of potatoes and you'd be picking out the ones you want.
Speaker 4:The reality is that we're all preconditioned to buy the things that we like, and the brighter, the shinier, the prettier, the best fitting anything is the thing that we're going to buy and food, clothes, whatever it is. The headline is that we need something to cover our body and we need something that's fresh and nutritious to put inside our body, and it doesn't actually matter really what it looks like, and somehow we've managed to to get ourselves into this place where we think it does wonky still around in all the stores, but it's not being the be all and end all that everybody imagined it would be.
Speaker 2:I don't think it's changed the quality gradings that people take has it.
Speaker 5:Fundamentally, whether it's wonky or class one, it you know, it's gone through the same life cycle. It's cost the same to grow and wash and grade and haul everything. The perception is completely different because it's the same product. It's just looks different, so it's.
Speaker 2:It's quite funny how the perception is different we have members that see your parsnips turn up and they'll talk about them. And if somebody's going bloody, I look at that and it's an upgrade and all the rest of it is. But it's fresher than your supermarket, this one and they're taking a real pride in it.
Speaker 5:You know the feedback I got from Justin. We'd sent them some yellow and purple carrot and I think it about blew their mind because it was like what is this? This is fantastic and you know, for your members and your volunteers it was snap one it's purple, through the middle snap, the other it's yellow, and they were having great fun opening them going. This is just incredible. Let's have more of this.
Speaker 2:You think about the kids that are engaged with that People?
Speaker 4:use a posh term for it, but dietary diversity, but it's literally families being able to afford to try new things. It is wonderful to see and, as you say, as in terms of diet it's really important that we all try and eat the rainbow. The more different colored food, fresh food, we can have in our diet, the better it is for us and to be able to access. That is really really important.
Speaker 2:I don't know if you guys have heard of this, but the Eat Well Guide, this government-sponsored thing to try and show you what you should be eating on a daily basis and stuff, and priced it up and it's so bloody expensive. We're trying to look at this space and say, well, how do we actually get our members, or people like them, the ability to be able to actually eat that plate? Instead of it being an eat well plate, there should be an eat well voucher, so it only goes on the right ingredients. There's something like this for kids. Call it healthy start voucher, but there's something about the entire family being fed in the right way that matters it.
Speaker 4:It does. I mean it's a while since we've done a significant number of farm visits. We did 15, 20 farm visits a year pre-COVID with junior school kids from largely Nottingham City Centre and the ability to introduce them to how things grow and how the soil works and how the weather affects it and so on was was absolutely wonderful. But cooking or food tech disappeared out of schools in the 90s and early 2000s. There is literally a whole generation of parents that haven't had the opportunity to learn how to cook from scratch. Covid has helped them and all of us, because it gave us the time to learn it. But somehow we've got to retain that time in our busy schedules to try and cook from scratch so that we can use some of those fabulous ingredients that are here on our doorstep, grown in Britain, grown by British farmers, and are actually really, really good for us.
Speaker 2:One of the things that we find is good produce good ingredients, healthy calories, twice the price of rubbish calories. So how do you actually square that? You've got to make a living and you've got to keep this place sustainable to get the stuff on the shelves. How do you find it when people talk to you about the affordability of?
Speaker 4:this stuff. It sort of really touches the nerve with me. We're as a business, as a, as a sector, we're not accused, but but there is a certain amount of really touches the nerve with me as a business, as a sector, we're not accused, but there is a certain amount of concern about the level of food inflation that has been over the last five years, really driven by a whole raft of different things that have happened. So start the Ukraine war, put fuel prices up, fertiliser prices up. We've had three minimum wage increases, including the NI change in the last Dare.
Speaker 2:I say Brexit.
Speaker 4:Brexit. Of course, the cost of producing food has gone up Basic food, fresh produce for us. But accessing great quality fresh produce is still and remains some of the cheapest food you can buy, and the cost isn't actually in the purchase price. The cost is in the time it takes to prep and unfortunately we're so so so time poor. We're all being not forced but drawn down an avenue of ultra-high processed or semi-processed or pre-prepared food that is quick and easy. Some of it delivers the quality calories that we need a lot of it, doesn't we need to eat the rainbow. We've got to have a wide range, balanced diet that includes all the nutrients that we need for for healthy living let's talk about hammond's, because you are now 125 years old.
Speaker 2:as a business, we are.
Speaker 4:My great-grandfather, thomas Hammond, was the eldest of a family of seven. They were factory workers living in Arnold in the late 1800s. Quite a poor family. They couldn't afford to keep him at home and sent him off to London to stay with a relative, and he lived over a pub in Rotherhithe in the Docklands in the late 1800s. He went there at the age of 12, came back at the age of 15, and they say never to smoke, drink or swear again, such was the horrific experience that he'd had.
Speaker 4:But he came back to Arnold, started working on a market garden for a guy called Thomas Dable, worked his way up to be foreman and then in 1900, mr Dable said he wanted to retire and Thomas asked him if he could buy the business He'd saved £100, which I guess at the turn of the century was an awful lot of money. And we have the piece of paper that says I, thomas Hammond, promise to pay you, thomas Dable, the sum of £400 as and when I can. So Mr Dable lent him £400 to buy the business. He paid it back in two years and on the 25th of March 1900, the Hammond family started farming on 12 acres of land in Arnold. And the rest, as they say is history. We're now fourth generation. Myself and my brother run the business. My father and uncle are still very much involved on a day-to-day basis, despite them being in their 80-somethingth year.
Speaker 2:And despite your best efforts, no, no, no, no quite the opposite.
Speaker 4:The older generation has a wonderful, wonderful set of expertise and, most particularly, experience that, in an industry that you only see something once every 12 months, to have somebody that's seen it 60 or 70 times is absolutely priceless. So we're 125 years old this year. We've launched a new website, we've increased our social media presence, which, I have to say, we're not particularly good at yet, but we're learning our way, um, and we're all on a journey with that for sure.
Speaker 4:It's a wonderful thing to be able to celebrate nice so what's your role in the celebrations rich?
Speaker 5:so the socials is something which is just ever growing. We started the website development in january. It looks fantastic, actually, really, really chuffed with it for the anniversary. There's thousands of pictures we need to troll through to create more of the story, which we continue to do I mean massive credit to rich.
Speaker 4:There's one particular post that that went out in may. I think. It sits at 1.6 million views and it's literally a track to doing a job in a field.
Speaker 5:Yeah it is, it's, we're taking the fleece off, aren't we? I'm jealous. It's a real slow burner. And then all of a sudden it went to something like eight and a half thousand likes and however many million views, and we were like, well, what we've posted before and after is far more interesting than what we have shown.
Speaker 4:So it was really really bizarre.
Speaker 5:Or so we thought. It's been a great baseline for us to show what we do and add that education to it.
Speaker 4:Education is so important that education to it. Education is so important and I really, really believe that there is so much misconception about food and farming. The more we can be open and honest and the fact that it is grown in Britain by people who really care and have a passion about it and however it makes it into your fridge, it is the best food that you can buy pretty much all over the world. We need to all get involved with that and really celebrate it.
Speaker 2:Did you have some interesting stories about carrots Age?
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, I've got loads of interesting stories about carrots, but my favourite is a little quiz for any listeners what is the connection between carrots and the invention of radar? Anybody know Rona knows. So there's a well-known story that eating carrots improves your eyesight.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:And me and Rona have had this conversation today. She's like I eat loads of carrots and I still wear glasses. Yeah, I do, and when we've looked it up, it is a popular myth, but it was very much encouraged during World War II to explain why pilots had such good eyesight and why they were so successful at night, and it was actually to obscure the fact that we'd invented radar, which is a brilliant story, I think, and definitely a reason to eat carrots.
Speaker 3:Well, what I was surprised to find is the world's longest carrot. Any idea, a guess?
Speaker 2:Or is this going to be like the ridiculous marrows that are like stupid sizes, so I don't know. Two foot.
Speaker 3:Two foot's a good guess, but you're way off.
Speaker 2:Mark, do you guys already know or something? Have you just spent the morning Googling carrots?
Speaker 1:I have yeah we wouldn't Google carrots.
Speaker 6:Don't remember the exact size, but it was gigantic. I remember it was like five metres or something.
Speaker 3:You're right, it's 5.8484 meters, so it's over 19 feet a carrot yeah, it's bonkers and, believe it or not, it was very near to where Hammonds are actually. It was Mansfield Woodhouse in Yorkshire, so, and this was found in 2007, I mean, that's one.
Speaker 6:I mean, I don't know how that needs to be found, because surely you see, it, it if it's five metres long See it from space, I know right.
Speaker 1:Somebody was probably trying to put up a conservatory and thought they'd hit a water main or something.
Speaker 3:You've got a few carrot sticks there, haven't you?
Speaker 2:Well, at least Justin managed to loop it back and mention Hammond, so thank you for that. You met John and Rich two years ago.
Speaker 3:It's going on three years, I think, and they're just the loveliest people. The farm is just as you'd imagine rolling fields, beautiful countryside and they're passionate farmers. They care about the produce they grow. They are incredibly passionate about what they do. They just work all the time and it's great when you go there to just go around and see how things are growing and developing and obviously you get to learn about how complicated growing food in the uk is. Everybody just gets their carrots, go home, they boil them, do whatever they want with them, and obviously that's your tea. But actually growing is just so complicated and a day's worth of rain has an effect. A day's worth of no rain has an effect and you know, the environment just plays such an important part and there's so many factors that you don't realize.
Speaker 3:If you're growing crops regularly, then you know you need to replace the the nutrients within that soil so that they've got strategies to to replant different things over seasons, to to make sure the nutrients are there when you regrow the crops. Otherwise you don't get good crop. So there's just so much more than meat they are.
Speaker 2:So did you google carrots or parsnips or rhubarb?
Speaker 6:I did google carrots. Apparently carrots were purple and white, maybe or yellow, until the dutch decided to make them orange and as I'm dutch. Yeah, I was like, this is my people.
Speaker 1:But apparently it was all a fable, so it's a good story that I just claim it anyway, I think, and also apparently carrots are the second most vegetables after potatoes is what I read online today.
Speaker 6:Did you know?
Speaker 3:that actually carrots all taste the same. So whatever colour you get, there's no difference.
Speaker 2:Okay. Well, yeah, I'm going to go down a rattle with that one, because taste is only one element of how you actually experience things, though, isn't it when you eat?
Speaker 3:Of course, because it's all about texture and how it looks and what you put with it or on it.
Speaker 2:I've got to say With a honey and mustard glazed.
Speaker 1:Oh yes, yeah, nice or maple. I don't do honey, so maple or something like that.
Speaker 6:My mum used to make them with sugar and cinnamon, and they were so good, Nice Now that sounds nice.
Speaker 1:I always like an excuse to put cinnamon on anything new.
Speaker 3:So I think I might have to try that. I've got to say this year we've had a lot of parsnip as well, which we haven't in previous years, and I've got to say that's been a bit of a joy, but they've been massive.
Speaker 2:And I've got to say the members have commented I was going to say bigger than last time because I was actually mentioning to John about those two kilo parsnips. You're saying they're bigger.
Speaker 1:They've been getting up towards head size. Yeah, I've got a carrot tattoo.
Speaker 2:That's how much I like carrots, so you've got a carrot tattoo. Yeah, I've got carrots, and peas, peas in a pod give peas a chance.
Speaker 3:It is a fact, but I didn't know I was getting really personal facts now, the strangest one I've seen today, apparently the uh. The person who voiced bugs bunny didn't like carrots I've seen that too yeah, I thought that was quite ironic every leg.
Speaker 1:We've all been on the same way oh no these were just things we knew we've got a good fact about hammonds, which is that not only did they give us really good veg, they actually bring it for us as well, don't they, and drop it off completely free yeah, and that's a biggie for us, right?
Speaker 2:because?
Speaker 1:the haulage is costly yeah. So we doubly appreciate them and also they. They are you know from listening to them really passionate about people getting access to their food and to a good range of food as well. It's not just we grow it and we like it. From that kind of angle, it's a heritage organisation, isn't it? It's 125 years old and they actually do. Yeah, do really care, which I think you've got to if you're going to do a job like farming I was going to say I'm veggie, you're vegan age.
Speaker 2:It really resonates with me because all they do is veg right yeah so it was a really easy farm to visit for me. I've been to many others that aren't as easy to visit. But what I really liked about what John says, because we hear so much about the eat well plate and all the rest of it and he just says eat the rainbow. And I love that yeah it's great. So simple to get it across in it, because you don't have to overthink anything.
Speaker 1:Just get diversity in the color of your plate yeah it should be good and it doesn't mean m&ms well, I'm thinking skittles, yeah, because you actually you can't cheat that and go. Yeah, well, you can get a rainbow with beige. Because you can't. It's all beige, isn't it? And it's nice a bit of beige, but it's not technically in the rainbow.
Speaker 3:So it surprises me, because their job is 24 7 and farming never ends that they've got the time to go beyond that and I think that's one of the challenges we find as a food team, isn't it that people are too busy because there are so many pressures with retail and getting your crops right and just deliverance, to find time to actually support us and think about? It's not us, it's not what we do, it's the people out there that are really finding it hard and giving them that time, that opportunity. Bringing it into us, like you say, just makes such a massive difference yeah, I mean they.
Speaker 2:They couldn't get their heads around the access piece because they're like you know, veg is but actually it is cheap until you can't actually get to it and they're in a world where they've got veg in abundance. So to go into a kind of urban area where there's no supermarket and not readily available fruit and veg on the shelf sort of thing, that's kind of alien to them. But I think we've done quite a bit to help them with that understanding. But I guess it breaks another urban myth right, because they're not just grumpy, cynical farmers, they're really positive and are engaged with stuff like what we do.
Speaker 3:And there are lots of farmers out there who are, and we'd encourage more of them to come and speak to us and see if they've got more food that they can give us, that we can feed our members with.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think the idea that they think it's abundant and it's not from an arrogance, it's not from well, we've got loads of money or whatever because farms are rich. It is all about perspective. And if you don't struggle for food, you don't necessarily know or appreciate how difficult it is. If you don't struggle to access certain types of food, you don't struggle to access certain types of food, you don't appreciate that you do need your eyes opening to it by somebody else, don't you? And even just hearing you say like, oh, if you live in a city and you don't get access to a supermarket, that doesn't seem like it would be a thing because there's a proliferation of small shops like rona. You live in the city centre, don't you? And there are little co-ops and stuff, but you can't do a full shop there. And you certainly couldn't do a full shop there if you're on minimum wage or only working part-time or not working at all or just sometimes.
Speaker 6:It's regardless of what your income is, it's your outgoings and how many people you've got in your house if you'd like to know more about the bread and butter thing and what we get up to, you can find us at team tbbt, on instagram, twitter, on linkedin or online at thebreadandbutterthingorg and tiktok and if you have any feedback or thoughts on the podcast or would like to come and be our guest, drop us an email at podcast at breadandbutterthingorg.
Speaker 6:Lastly, we're always open to new members at all of our hubs. If you or somebody you know would benefit from our affordable food scheme, you can find your nearest hub on the Become a Member page of our website.
Speaker 1:And please do all those things that podcasts ask you to do Like us, subscribe, leave us a review, share us with your friends and chat about us on social and chat about us on all your socials too, you three, I mean, I would have done that if I knew.
