Trip to Hewitt's Farm

After planning to go for ages, spent a lovely sunny Sunday at Hewitt’s Farm in Kent with my family.

I woke up two hours before everyone else to get the picnic ready, breakfast laid out and the over-excited munchkins up and dressed – of course I still had to shout from the door to get everyone out of the house.

The kids rode with their gran and uncle, so me and hubby had to take the van by ourselves (yeah!). We started off by heading off to the Flamingo Park boot sale which is on the way where I picked up some books (for 20p each) to replenish my winter reading stash which is all but gone:


Fashionista is now a teacher, so she managed to pick up some teaching materials and books for her class.

We eventually got dragged out of the market by my dad and followed him to Hewitt’s as he engaged in his usual boy-racer antics on the way. We got there to find that the lack of rain recently has meant there hasn’t been much of a strawberry crop and what did grow had all been eaten. Disappointed, but not disheartened we headed for the pea field which my mum and mother-in-law attacked with gusto. The kids had a blast picking peas - which were gloriously sweet - and stuffing their little gobs and Little Man caught ladybirds which were everywhere.

Little Man watching horses

I decided I wanted a basket each of raspberries and blackberries. On looking for them though we ended up taking the long route round the apple, pear and plum orchards which are open for picking in the autumn. Usually there is a tractor with hay bales to sit on which takes you round the farm, we didn’t see this this time and I wonder if it is still in use (perhaps in the kids summer hols). This was always our favourite part of the trip as children

By this time we were all exhausted, so headed for the picnic area (which charges £5 per car, so we piled all our food into one car of course). The food was wonderful. Mum made tender tandoori chicken legs, fashionista made her famous chicken sandwiches and I made chickpea curry, lamb burgers and mint sauce and brought along potato salad and coleslaw (hungry yet?). I brought along mangoes and watermelon for afters.

I wanted to go back and look for raspberries, but had to admit everyone was exhausted. So we made our way back across the river to London on the Woolwich ferry which the mother-in-law and the kids also loved.

Once home, everyone prayed Zoher (the midday prayer) and had a nap while someone else (no names of course) put the left-over food away, put the dirty clothes in the wash, took some newly acquired beads apart for a project insh’Allah and responded to e-mails. I really should have taken that nap.

The peas kept mother-in-law busy for a very short while (she shells very fast).

And I kept myself busy with the enormous cherries I bought from Hewitt’s farm shop.

We had a wonderful day and it was so heartening to let the kids roam free without any restrictions and really get messy and have fun. I intend to take the kids back in autumn insh’Allah when the orchard fruits are ripe and to pick sweetcorn (hopefully the tractor will be back out). Next time I might have lunch at nearby Orpington Park which is beautiful and full of shady spots and also free.