Our beef comes from the Burden Brothers family farm over in Eastchurch, just four miles from The Ferry House. We've been cultivating the land around Harty since 1968, with arable farming and over 2000 cattle grazed locally. We’re proud to say the farm has an official ‘Red Tractor’ assurance. This means the produce has been safely and responsibly sourced and comes from well-cared-for crops and animals.At the start of spring, our cattle are given around-the-clock care while housed in straw bedded pens for calving. After that, they’re taken to the Elmley Nature Reserve. Here they can roam freely on 3,200 acres of tasty, natural grass.

Our special relationship with the nature reserve means that the cattle have a place for natural grazing free from fertilizers or chemicals. This also supports local conservation efforts, with the cattle helping to maintain the grass to a good height and density, helping create healthier grasslands, greater carbon capture and more plant and wildlife biodiversity.

Harty is abundant with free-range game birds - it’s hard to miss them milling around the landscape and wandering the lanes when you visit us. You might also have seen that the Harty pheasant is the face of The Ferry House. You’ll see him on our logo and popping up on our social media now and again (one of our Coach House rooms is even affectionately named the ‘pheasant room’ by some of our team due to its bird-related décor!).

Pheasant and partridge are two of the signature ingredients on our menu, with all of the game served in our restaurant from the family shoot on the Harty Estate. We shoot week by week throughout the season (which lasts from September to January) and prep the birds ourselves. Our ‘Shoot Room’ dining area off the main bar pays homage to this with its themed décor.

Our Head Chef, James Pilcher, often home smokes game for some dishes too, so look out for that on our menus at intervals throughout the year.

We don’t only source our produce from our Kitchen Garden. Our chefs have been known to scour the landscape for hidden gems to add to our dishes. The Harty hedgerows, planted by our farming family, produce some delicious wild berries, such as elderflower and sloe berries. Samphire can be collected from the marshes, and sea vegetables can be found on the estuary shoreline just a stone’s throw from The Ferry House. Foraging this way adds to the fresh and seasonal flavours of our ever-changing menus.