Raffi Boglione is learning fast. He picks soft fruit and helps his parents feed the chickens at Haye Farm, near Axminster, Devon, and he is an expert egg finder, rummaging in the straw of the portable hen coops parked out in a field. “I don’t know many four-year-olds who can hold two eggs in one hand,” says his proud father, Harry, as Raffi displays his haul.
In the next field are the Gloucester Old Spot pigs with their latest litters. “They are sisters and always give birth at the same time,” Boglione Sr says. “They are incredibly tame and lovely, and share their piglets as well.”
He may have a fondness for the sows, but there is no room for sentimentality when it comes to their nameless progeny; they are destined for the abattoir. Their meat will supply River Cottage, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall’s nearby venture, the Petersham Nurseries Café, in southwest London, and its new offshoot, the Delicatessen, which opened last week in Covent Garden.
With his slight figure, matted dreadlocks — a legacy of 3½ years spent surfing on the northern beaches of Sydney — and occasional Aussie upward inflection, Boglione is not what you often see at young farmers’ clubs. (At 26, he could still just be a member.) The same goes for his background: he grew up at Petersham House, Richmond, where his parents, Francesco and Gael, were friends with Mick Jagger and David Bowie.
Behind the house — and the now famously stylish nurseries, bought by his parents in 2000 — was a farmer who rented land on Petersham Meadows and raised cattle and chickens. “I used to wake up every Saturday morning and go straight down to the farm, waiting for him to turn up.”
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That early love never left Boglione. In Australia, he lived on an organic smallholding, raising chickens and growing vegetables. In 2012, with his girlfriend, Emily Perry (also a Brit) and baby Raffi on board, he returned home. He worked in the kitchen garden at Petersham for a while, but the couple soon decided they wanted to escape London. So Boglione found a job as a farmhand at Lower Hewood Farm, in Dorset, owned by the artist Alexa de Ferranti, who runs it as both an organic farm and a cultural centre.
This corner of the West Country, it would appear, is a hub of posh neo-organic farmers: Romy Fraser, the founder of Neal’s Yard Remedies, owns Trill Farm, just down the road from Haye, which offers vegetable growing and peg-loom weaving courses, and you can go glamping or learn to forage at River Cottage, a few miles away.
There are also plenty of like-minded smallholders growing organic veg. “It turned out we really liked the area,” Boglione says. “It is great for a young, vibrant farming community and politically driven — I wouldn’t say radical, but people who are thinking, ‘OK, we are doing this, but what else can we do to make a bigger impact on food and farming systems?’”
While working for de Ferranti, the couple spent a year or so searching for their own place. Trawling the internet, they came across Haye Farm. “It had rather dull pictures, but it was a good size, so we thought we would go and have a look,” Boglione recalls. “As soon as we turned up, we thought, this is the place.” The previous owner had scaled down his farming activity, so there were only about 15 head of cattle roaming the 65 acres. “It was a blank canvas.”
The couple bought it in 2014 for £1m, and acknowledge the considerable financial contribution of the Boglione family. “We are lucky,” says Perry, 31. “We did put up a strong business model, though — that was one of Harry’s first thoughts. He wanted it to be financially viable, because so many of these smaller farms may be idyllic, but they are not making money.”
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No Marie Antoinette-style indulgences for young Harry, then? “I think I would rather have gone to a normal bank,” he jokes. “My dad’s tough — I get financial scrutiny on a regular basis. It gives you that extra driving force that says, ‘This isn’t a game.’”
Because the farm is not very large, it gets only single farm payments from the EU, and Boglione isn’t too bothered by the prospect of these ceasing after Brexit. “It needs to be a financially functioning business that isn’t dependent on subsidies.”
Boglione is dyslexic, so Perry takes charge of the extensive paperwork that farmers must deal with, which she fits around looking after Raffi and his one-year-old sister, Allegra. “But we swap if I feel like I need to get out on the farm too,” she says.
They also run a B&B on site, and have three full-time staff, one part-timer and a WWOOFer (a volunteer with the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms programme), with more WWOOFers due this month. “August is our busiest time, as everything is coming to harvest — beans, courgettes, beetroots, carrots, you name it,” Boglione says.
The couple are kept even busier by his parents’ new ventures: as well as the recently opened shop and Delicatessen in Covent Garden, they have two restaurants in the pipeline for later this year. “The chefs have been coming down here, and we have been working on various recipes and doing a bit of butchery to see exactly how we want the animals to be cut up for them,” Boglione says. “It is quite a high volume, so we want everything to be streamlined for the abattoir.”
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They are also working on recipes to see what vegetables to grow. “My dad is keen on using a lot of Italian veg, like cooking chicory, and Italian salads that are a bit more bitter.” There will be products for the deli, too, including wild garlic pesto and jams.
With all their plans for the farm and further commitments to the Petersham brand, as well as keeping their existing customers happy and running the B&B, I wonder how they find time to sleep. “We don’t sleep,” Boglione says cheerily. “We have a young kid.” Hopefully Allegra’s chubby little hands will soon be big enough to pick up some eggs.
To book the B&B at Haye Farm, visit hayefarmdevon.co.uk; petershamnurseries.com