Jo’s Blog: Milk, Honey and Meadows

This month’s theme? Milk, honey and meadows. A little nod to abundance, nature doing its thing, and the brilliant local businesses making delicious stuff in harmony with the land. From doorstep milk to wildflower gin, here’s a taste of what Kent has to offer right now.

Plurenden Manor Farm – Milk the Old-Fashioned Way
With deep farming roots and over 15 years on their current site, Plurenden’s team do dairy the way it should be done. Their cows graze outside all summer on species-rich pastures, then eat home-grown forage through the winter – and yes, the milk really does taste better for it.

It’s whole milk, pasteurised but not homogenised, so the rich cream still rises to the top – just like it used to. Add doorstep delivery and their own butter, yogurt and cream into the mix, and you’ve got a delicious revival of traditional dairy.

Nightingale Dairy – Milk on the Moo-ve
On the flip-side, Kent’s first mobile milk and milkshake vending machine is a very modern beauty – and what’s inside is even better. Nightingale’s milk comes from native rare breed cows raised on a small family farm, where calves stay with their mothers and regenerative, nature-led farming is the norm. Happy cows = award-winning milk. In 2024, Nightingale scooped silver in the Taste of Kent Awards’ Dairy Product of the Year category and gold for Start-Up Food & Drink Business of the Year. Well deserved, and well worth a taste.

Foxes Honey – Sweetness from the Summer Flowers
Foxes’ award-winning Wildflower Honey is pure sunshine in a jar – made by bees foraging on local meadows and hedgerows bursting with summer bloom. It’s unprocessed, unadulterated, and packed with flavour and natural goodness.

But it’s not just about the honey – it’s about the pollinators. Without bees, our countryside wouldn’t thrive, our crops wouldn’t grow, and our cows wouldn’t have lush grass to munch on. Every spoonful supports a healthy, biodiverse landscape.

Maidstone Distillery – Conservation in a Glass
Infused with meadow botanicals foraged from their local nature reserve, Ranscombe Wild gin is like a walk through a wildflower meadow – fragrant, floral, and refreshingly different. Even better, 2.5% of profits go directly to support wild plant conservation through Plantlife, who manage Ranscombe Farm nature reserve.

It’s a delicious way to raise a glass to the land that sustains us – and to those working to protect it.

Whether it’s milk in your tea, honey on your toast, or a gin and tonic in the garden, it all starts with people working with the land, not against it. This May, I’m raising a glass (and probably a spoon) to Kent’s countryside – and the brilliant folk keeping it buzzing.