Badgers Hill Farm and Cidery is in Chilham, a beautiful, small, Kentish village, with oak beamed Tudor houses, itself nestled in an area with its own natural beauty.

Claire and Bruce run the farm and cidery, along with a farm shop, open between March and December. This is a working farm with attractions for the little ones, an ideal place to take your children to for a morning or afternoon visit, whilst you stock up on some of the locally produced, quality items on sale here.

Claire told us that they'd been squeezed out of producing fruit - for sale as unadulterated fruit - by the supermarkets - and had, along with several of the other farmers in the area, had to find other means of making a decent living; so, the farm shop and their cidery was formed. It sells items that are produced both on their own farm and by others who now have to find other means of getting their quality produce into the market place at a fair price to producer, retailer and customer.

We found the following, locally produced fayre, for sale at Badgers Hill, amongst other items,:

• Pippin cider - home made cider, from their own Cox's Orange Pippins. See below for more information on this.
• Free range eggs, including chicken, goose and quails eggs.
• Kent honey. There's something you may not know about honey - if you suffer from hay fever, try eating your locally produced variety, it may help alleviate the symptoms, so Claire told us.
• Benenden Sauce, from Harrington Foods.
• Jams and marmalades.
• Locally made fruit juices, including Core pear juice and Duskins apple juice.
• Their own range of water features. As manufacturers, you can expect to get a quality water feature at manufacturers prices at Badgers Hill.

We purchased:

• Another bottle of Benenden Sauce - you really should try this, it's excellent with salads and pasta and other dishes, a very versatile sauce made in small batches by Harringtons Foods, another local producer.
• A quart of Pippins cider, home made from Cox's Pippins grown on the farm itself. Now here is something you really should try. This cider is excellent, we simply have never tasted cider quite as good as this anywhere else in the country, never mind the county. Dry, medium and sweet varieties, with the unique flavour derived from Cox's Orange Pippins, an apple that really should itself, get far more shelf space in British shops - and overseas for that matter. We can't praise this cider enough.