Family firm T Soanes & Son have been farming chickens for more than 70 years. Phoebe Stone pays them a visit in Yorkshire to discover the realities of rearing free-range poultry

Delicious. 2017 PRODUCE AWARDS WINNER

Meet the producer.

Outside, chickens are free to dustbathe and forage for food

PHOTOGRAPHS JOAN RANSLEY

WHAT OUR FINAL JUDGING PANEL SAID

“Tremendous flavour with a robust, dense texture. The juices are rich and savoury”

If I asked you to conjure up a vision of a free-range chicken farm, you might imagine something like Tony Ireland’s plot in Driffield, Yorkshire – the old brick farmhouse, doors and windows painted primrose yellow, with a brood of bantam hens shuffling across the lawn. His family have been farming here since 1905, but there’s more to this operation than meets the eye. Tony is a supplier to T Soanes & Son Poultry, who rear more than 5 million chickens a year in Yorkshire across 12 farms, including two dedicated free-range sites. Why does a burgeoning business continue to rely on small free-range farms such as Tony’s? The answer is surprisingly simple – as is how their birds are reared.

The Soanes family enterprise began in 1947 on a 30-acre farm much like Tony’s, with Tom Soanes selling chickens at local markets and delivering them in wicker baskets. His son Clive expanded the business, acquiring more land for additional farms. Today Clive’s son Andrew keeps an eye on the operation.

Despite growing to five family-owned sites, plus contracts with neighbouring farms, provenance remains all-important. All Soanes-branded chicken packaging is labelled with the farmer and his farm, and the responsibility for overseeing them all is down to manager Mark Ireland (no relation to Tony, incidentally). “The bulk of our farms are no more than seven miles from the factory”, he explains. “In the poultry industry we’re a minnow in terms of the number of birds we process, but because we’re small we can have that level of traceability. I know all the farmers and visit all the farms every week.”