Welcome to our website & blog, we're a small ticket only supper club focused around homemade, local & homegrown ingredients, influenced by our travels & experiences. Join us for an evening of amazing food and good company.
Like an old tractor that’s been stood at the back of the shed for 18 months our supper club has been dormant during the pandemic. Now though it feels like the right time to dip the oil, kick the tyres and see if she’ll rev into action.
So in a bid to tentifuly turn the key and strike up the engine we’re embarking on a special request from some friends for a private dining evening for two. This seemed like the perfect way to test the system, see how it feels after such a long break and get ready to rev the engine up to full speed for something exciting in a week or two…..watch this space we’ll announce that date very soon!
In the meantime we’re putting in place the finishing touches ready to welcome our first guests for 18 months, and if all goes to plan the engine will fire into action without any hiccups and the supper club doors will swing open once again.
So for obvious reasons our supper club has been closed for business since March, which was a massive blow after putting so much into getting up and running in January.
But we’re not the type to let the grass grow under our feet and during that time we’ve been on a whirlwind ride to say the least. Such a ride that it’s a job to even know where to start telling the story.
As many of you will know Odile and I ran two separate businesses, opposite one another on the high street in Louth. A butchers and a Nail Salon, I’ll leave it to your imagination who’s was who’s!
Right at the beginning of COVID Odile’s nail salon was closed by the national lockdown, and my butchers shop was just too small to operate safety and efficiently so also closed.
Fortunately at the butchers we had an online platform and it made sense the utilise it to operate a local delivery service. Odile and I decided we could operate this between the two of us and reduce the risk to staff, customers and ourselves in the process. Staff were placed on furlough and we set off into the unknown hoping for the best.
We couldn’t of imagined how well it would have worked and after a few weeks it became apparent to us that COVID wasn’t going to be a short lived thing. As much as we could continue the business, work together and see a way forward it was very clear we couldn’t support the luxury of having staff and there was no way that we could reopen the butchers shop and make it viable.
It was time to take some tough decisions, and there were many tears shed in the process. Odile was in the position of being able to reopen but with social distancing and her salon being so small only one person could work, meaning either she went back to work and made her friend Catherine redundant, or let Catherine go back to work and forgo an income herself. Meanwhile I had to break the news to my staff Ryan and Aarron that there was no longer a job for them.
Odile took the heart breaking decision that the best way forward for her and Catherine was to give Catherine the salon business, so the she could carve out a living for herself and Odile would join me in taking the butchery business forward.
Now we really had to put our shoulders to the wheel and it became apparent very quickly that we needed to adapt the business and commit to going totally online. This ment we could expand the offering of the business to include cheese, vegetables, fish and more. It made total sense now to rebrand the business to better reflect what we were doing and The Mansion Farm, Online Farm Shop & Deli was born.
There’s a long journey ahead, a relocation from the high street back to the farm, not to mention the day to day running of the business, oh and Christmas!
But it’s such an amazing opportunity to build on what we’ve created with the Secret Passage Supper Club, with a business that sits alongside it, while working together and pursuing our dream of being self sufficient. We know it’s going to be hard work, but we’re so excited.
During this time we’ve been overhauling the dining room ready for reopening the supper club sometime in 2021 hopefully, which you can read all about in our previous blog post.
As for many people, it’s felt like being on a treadmill, with no respite, our holiday was cancelled and we’ve not been out for a meal and things like the cinema or a weekend away seem like a lifetime away.
So we decided once the last brush stroke of paint went on in the dining room that we had to do something special to celebrate.
A night out! At home!
We needed a bit of escapism so we pre prepared a meal, packed a bag, and checked into the spare room!
After a candlelit bubble bath we got dressed up, did make up, hair and spashed on some aftershave before heading down to the Secret Passage Supper Club, table for two!
Dinner commenced with breaded calamari, with homemade lemon and tarragon mayonnaise
Followed by honey glazed 36 hour belly pork, confit carrots, red cabbage purée, sous vide mashed potatoes, purple sprouting broccoli and a cider, sage and onion gravy.
Dessert was a pear and pistachio frangipani tart served with our world famous homemade evaporated milk ice cream.
Not ones to do things by halves we had to have a cheese board! Oh and nearly forgot we had a matching wine flight too!
What a fantastic evening it was and just the trick after what’s been such a difficult few months, but best of all there was no bill to settle when we checked out!
Let’s hope the next time we have the dining room in full sail it will be for a table full of supper club guests! Until then we wish you a very merry, and safe Christmas and a prosperous New Year.
Well its been a bit quiet in our dining room over the last few months, due to the ongoing COVID19 pandemic.
Unfortunately we had to cancel all the dates we had booked, and are unsure when we’ll be able to safely restart our supper club.
We’re hoping that it’ll be the summer of 2021, but due to the intimate nature of our events around our communal dining table We’re keen to hang fire until we can go ahead in full sail as the whole evening is as much about the ambience and dining experience as it is the food.
But in the meantime we’ve been taking the opportunity of some downtime with the dining room to do a bit of decorating.
Now those of you that have already attended one of our supper clubs will know we’re quite keen to keep the decor of the dining room a secret, so it remains a surprise for new attendees, this is why the pictures of our improvements are a little cryptic.
Because we’ve had such a long stretch to complete the refurb, we’ve pulled out all the stops, we’ve freshened up the paint, renewed the curtains and even popped a new carpet down. Don’t panic though we’ve been careful to keep and enhance all the bits you know and love.
I’ve spent many hours up the scaffold tower like Michaelangelo painting the ceiling, and Odile has been busy carefully selecting fabrics and carpet as we’ll as making sure all the colours match.
Of course it goes without saying we’ve also been playing in the kitchen with some new dishes too.
So we’ve been making the best of the situation, as the old farming saying goes, make hay while the sun shines.
The dining room refurbished is now complete and it only felt right that we should take it for a test run…..so last night we ran a very special supper club for two! We had a fabulous evening pretending we we away and even stayed in the spare room! It was such fun that we’ll do a blog post on it soon.
We can’t wait to welcome you back to the Secret Passage Supper Club as soon as it’s safe to do so, but until then take good care of yourselves
So..our new arrivals settled in, from their big coop they could see the original four and chat from a distance whilst we could be happy knowing they couldn’t pass on any nasty illnesses or mites. It was amazing how fast they blossomed…..their pink bits, wattles and combs, started to redden, feathers started to sprout all while egg laying never stopped, what amazing little creatures they were.
It wasn’t all plain sailing though a couple of the newbies suffered from ……..well I’m going to call it agoraphobia! I had to lift them out to eat then they rushed back inside, these particular little souls didn’t last long, they stopped eating and died within weeks. I’d done my best for them but the shock of going from intensive to free range was too much. Rescue chickens are known as ‘spent’ hens meaning there’s nothing left in them, for these two that may have been true but for the other seven life was just beginning.
They soon moved in with the original four and the ‘pecking order’ began. Hens can be cruel when it comes to living together all the best sayings come from hens….. ‘hen pecked’, ‘pecking order’, ‘no spring chicken’, ‘don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched’, ‘ruling the roost’, you get my gist here. They had plenty of space so although there was the odd fisty cuffs, everyone could get out of the way and they got along just fine.
The new girls had the best time, eggs were plentiful and as I could sell the eggs the girls helped pay towards their keep. They sunbathed together and hung out in their own little groups, like school children in the playground. They all had their own little personalities, one in particular that stands out was a little blonde hen we called Fatty, from day one when she arrived we noticed her claws were desperately over grown and she could hardly stand, i fetched the dog claw cutters but couldn’t get through her claws. She pecked her corn frantically. Jim got his wire cutters and I held her as he managed to cut them so she could stand properly, as I placed her on the grass she hit the corn bowl nearly too fast for the naked eye to see, corn sprayed out and the bowl tipped over, she was a comfort eater and I could sympathise. I soon realised Fatty was not just a comfort eater but a eater of every kind she just LOVED her food! First at the feeder, fastest consumer of treats, she would even muscle the dogs out of the way if they had snacks and scoff them down, the flowers in the garden disappeared, the bulbs were dug up and I think we could have trained her to sit on command for a worm, Fatty’s waistline or lack of it reflected her love of food but that was fine she was happy .
Beryl was probably the smartest hen we had, she took herself off each day and ate the food that was provided for our longhorn calves in the next field. As they ate their food, bits dropped to the floor and Beryl dodged their little feet and cleared up. She was also partial to raisins and would tap on the kitchen window for our attention.
The little rescues continued to grow feathers and enjoy life, scratching, pecking and dust bathing, life was good. As the weather started to change and winter approached I worried that rats might get under the coop, Jim raised their coop on stilts and they had a plank to get in and out, this was brilliant because they could also shelter underneath when it rained! They had no problem learning to use their plank as I covered it with treats!
Over a period of 2 years eating, drinking and enjoying their retirement the little ‘spent hens’ passed away one by one peacefully and although it upset us deeply, we knew they had had an amazing end to their lives.
However tragedy struck December 2017 when I went to feed the remaining girls their corn one snowy morning and couldn’t find them, I searched all over for them and eventually discovered the last ones we had were gone, except for some feathers and blood.
They had been killed and taken by a fox.
My poor little hens, life is cruel, but I took some comfort in reality the fox must have been hungry as she’d taken them, probably had cubs to feed and I shouldn’t be too hard on her..but that was the last straw for me, I was done with chicken keeping, I couldn’t protect them so I wasn’t having any more.
Several years ago now we decided to take the plunge into producing our own eggs, I first bought two hens plus a small coop and all the things required to look after them for Jim for his birthday, one problem though, I had a massive bird phobia! It soon became apparent though if I didn’t try and overcome my phobia, the eggs wouldn’t get collected and drinkers wouldn’t be filled or the feed topped up as Jim needed to leave very early for work and sometimes didn’t get home until dark when the hens were back in bed, that’s without letting them out at dawn and shutting in at night.
Margo & Gerry
I discovered that chickens, on the whole are not flappers, flapping is what freaks me out. So slowly I collected eggs, filled drinkers and filled feeders, poo picked, let them out and and shut them in at night. I did everything EXCEPT touch them. Jim checked them periodically for mites or lice, everything was going fine.
We found out by research that we would need to worm them, about twice a year. Luckily you can buy layers pellets with wormer in so that was easy and even better we didn’t need to withdraw from eating the eggs! So Margot and Gerry our first two bluebell hens, recommended as a good docile breed for first timers, settled in and life was good, we enjoyed amazing eggs and it seemed this was a good plan. Until one day sadly Gerry died, after about nine months, we just found her sleeping in her nesting box but actually she had passed away.
We were really sad but knew we hadn’t done anything wrong, Jim always says ” if you have livestock then you have deadstock” something that has stayed with me since. We didn’t want Margo to be alone so we got two more Bluebells, this way if one died then two left would be together.
Margo in the herbs
The three lived happily together providing us with lots of lovely eggs which we soon realised we couldn’t get through by ourselves, so we began to box sell the spares to family and friends this way the girls helped to pay towards their keep.
Soon three became four as Jim’s sister, who had been left with a single hen when one from her pair passed away, decided we should have her with ours. I came home one winters eve to find a lovely brown chicken in the coop with our three blue bells….cheeky!
Beryl
Beryl, the little brown hen was half the size of our huge silvery blue ones and super friendly and we were soon to discover regular little brown hybrid hens are very docile and forgiving Beryl gave me more confidence and I found I could pick her up and cuddle her, something I never could of imagined before. Because of my new found confidence I felt we had masses of space and if we had a bigger coop we could have a few more…… beware chickens do this to you.
I had been seeing a lot of British Hen Welfare posts where poor intensively farmed hens were rehomed after giving their all to the egg industry and then being destined to the soup factory having never felt the grass under their feet, seen a blue sky or bathed in the warm sun! It broke my heart, you can see where this is going cant you!?
“We could have a few rescue hens” I said
“I think 4 is enough ” Jim said.. “but look at them” I showed him a picture on my phone
“They are all bald and pale and we could give them a really good home and they could have a really happy life.”
“The coop’s not big enough”
“I’ll buy a bigger one”, “they’ll need to be quarantined in case of disease, they can live in bigger new coop until we know they are okay, then mingle them”
“How many are you thinking?”
“Two or four maybe (hes weakening I can feel it)”
“Okay I’ll think about it”
That’s a YES as far as I’m Concerned!!
So I signed up to British Hen Welfare Trust and they let me know that there was a rehoming weekend in about a month in Newark. Exciting preparations began, new bigger coop ordered more drinkers and feeders, remember I’m the girl with the bird phobia and didn’t want hens. My new girls would be here soon for their new happy life.
The month passed and my friend and I set off to collect two, no four definitely four, I could manage that easily, the coop was more than big enough…..that means I would have eight…..yes yes eight is fine, I have four already I might as well have eight!!!!!!
We arrived with our box to collect four, remember that four!!! I gave my name and the lady ticked me off the list, “come and have look” she said.” I looked at a sea of tiny bald little hens, pink and pale like forced rhubarb, claws all curled round like corkscrews huddling together confused and frightened. These forever giving birds were destined for the food chain having given everything they had and more, my heart was breaking. ” How many can you take” the lady said.
“Eight” I blurted “I can take eight” tears streaming down my face!
They were only half the size of a regular chicken so eight halves equals four, chicken maths, it’s different to regular maths.
“I’ll pop one extra in ” she said “sadly sometimes the stress of the rescue and travelling is too much for them, so don’t be surprised if you lose a couple”
“Okay I said”. Hes going to kill me , remember four!!
So we all traveled home they were as quiet as mice in the box and when we arrived home some dedicated little trooper had laid an egg in the box! We unloaded them into their new coop and run and they had their first experience of grass, sun and sky. They huddled together for a bit before they started pecking bits of grass, instinct is a wonderful thing. Then Jim arrived home, I went to greet him and break the news, nine not four. “How did it go” he said
“Well ” I said. ” the lady said some might die due to stress, so I got a couple more.”
“Oh” he said “you got six?”
“Sixish.”
By this time we had reached the new arrivals,
“Christ, look at them, poor little buggers” Jim said, he didn’t see numbers, but saw what I saw, tiny pink bodies enjoying their first taste of ‘life’…. nine was fine!
This year we’ve decided to really go for it with the vegetable garden and try and extend our growing season as much as possible to provide lots of amazing produce for the supper club. Previously we’ve always seemed to get to the autumn with a load of stuff not quite as ripe as we’d like, so hopefully with a few tricks we can improve on this.
One of the first things we’ve done it install heating to the polytunnel and greenhouse. Not to create a sub tropical paradise, but as a frost guard, we tend to a few late frosts here so hopefully being able to protect against them will remove some of the worry once the seedlings have to move out of the house to start hardening off. We have opted for gas to provide the heat as our garden is off grid and it’s very efficient at raising the temperature in a larger area such as the polytunnel. There’s some great little gas heaters available online, and ours seems to be very fuel efficient.
So seeing as we have somewhere safe for our plants to grow on, we thought we’d have a go at starting things a bit earlier. With the aid of heated propagator the tomatoes, chillies, peppers and aubergines all went in beginning of January. Something we’d not thought about though was daylight hours, or lack of, which would make our seedlings straggly and weak. After a bit of investigation we’d found the solution, a grow light. Wow what a difference this makes the seedlings are growing on beautifully, looking strong and healthy, even if the neighbours do think we’re grown cannabis! Currently we’ve got it running on a timer for 12 hours a day, to bring them on nicely but not get them too carried away as it wont be long before they’ll have to manage with real sunlight in the polytunnel.
So for the time being things seem to be coming along well at the moment and it’ll soon be time to start popping some more bits in, and get the early bits used to some real temperatures and day light. Keep your eyes peeled for how things progress.
Well….I’m glad you asked.A supper club is a fantastic way for anyone who loves cooking to share their passion for it, basically you feed people who are equally as enthusiastic about enjoying your food.
We’re never happier than when we’re in the kitchen muddling around, and we love creating fabulous food to enjoy, but it’s always struck us as a bit of a waste to keep our skills to ourselves, and let’s face it there’s only so many friends that you can feed.
For several years we’ve wanted to do some kind of pop up restaurant type thing, but have been at a loss as to how to do it and if it’s even possible. With both of us working in public facing businesses and the food industry we were keen to create an opportunity to cater for people, but on our terms, for our own enjoyment, with a reduction in the HR, red tape and associated hassles that go with running a small business.
This is where we stumbled on supper clubs, while listening to the radio of all things. One day we had our local food radio program on and being interviewed was a guy who held supper clubs, wow we thought! On listening more he explained how there was a platform online called We Find Food, or WeFiFo for short who help host these things in an Airbnb for food kind of way. Well you can imagine our excitement, we went straight on the net to have a look. Suddenly it all fell into place, we could host a supper club, in our home, cook what we wanted, when we wanted and get paid for it…. jackpot!
On further investigation we found that by signing up to WeFiFo we could list our event, publish our menu, set a few house rules if we wished and in return for a commission they’d insure us, help market our events and offer us all the support we’d need.There were full instructions for the requirements, which do involve registering with your local Environment Health department, who were incredibly helpful and is certainly not something that should put you off. So there it was, we’d decided our first menu, set the date and published our event, now began the nerve racking bit….will anyone actually book on. Within an hour we had our first booking and by the next morning we were nearly fully booked our 8 seats, and that’s the thing this can be as big or as small as you like, we chose 8 as that’s the number that fit round our table, and we also chose not to eat with our guests, but again that’s up to you. So now the real work began!
Thanks for dropping by our blog! We hope to share our foodie experiences and supper club with you along with a journal of our growing year in the garden and the odd recipe or two! J&O
There were full instructions for the requirements, which do involve registering with your local Environment Health department, who were incredibly helpful and is certainly not something that should put you off. So there it was, we’d decided our first menu, set the date and published our event, now began the nerve racking bit….will anyone actually book on. Within an hour we had our first booking and by the next morning we were nearly fully booked our 8 seats, and that’s the thing this can be as big or as small as you like, we chose 8 as that’s the number that fit round our table, and we also chose not to eat with our guests, but again that’s up to you. So now the real work began!
Secret Passage Supper Club 