Helen Peacocke meets a Londoner whose new life in the country turned into a thriving pork business

As you drive along the winding lane to Todenham Manor Farm, near Moreton-in-Marsh, you would be forgiven for believing you were going the wrong way, that you couldn’t possibly be heading for a farm. Everything is far too clean.

You don’t have to watch your feet, in case you walk into a cow pat as you step out of the car, and the air smells so fresh and fragrant it’s difficult to believe this is a place where livestock live. Yet it is.

In 2005, the farm, the manor house and all the surrounding outbuildings were really run down and in need of tender loving care.

On visiting Todenham, Irayne and her husband fell in love with the area and were prepared to provide the Manor estate with just that.

Now the house and outbuildings stand proud and include a superb little butcher’s shop which is run by Jim Lewis, who has been a butcher for almost a decade.

The couple had bought the farm in what Irayne admits was a moment of madness. As townies, they decided it would be great to enjoy time walking the farm’s 700 acres and admiring their little bit of England.

The fields surrounding the farmhouse are green and lush and the trees are plentiful. Perhaps that should have been enough, but on looking out on the fields and meadows Irayne knew there was something missing. Livestock.

Although picturesque, the land looked empty without animals grazing the pastures. She knew that sheep and cattle roaming the grounds would complete their rural idyll.

Thanks to Barry, a local farmer who had tenanted some of the farm’s land for several years, this wish was satisfied.

With his help, it certainly didn’t take long for sheep and cattle to arrive. It was Irayne who decided they needed pigs, too, and arranged for a few rare breeds such as middlewhites, Gloucester old spot and saddlebacks to occupy paddocks close to the farmyard.

There are now 250 sows on the farm and apple trees are being planted between their sheds, to provide them with fruit in the autumn.

Irayne does admit that adding pigs to their collection of farm animals was an odd thing for a woman who had grown up in a traditional Jewish family in North London, but she wanted to make sausages from her own pork. She did make one big mistake by giving those first pigs names, but as she said: “You only do that once. Now they have numbers stamped on their ears.”

Irayne points out that, at this stage, she knew nothing of farming. “My knowledge was extremely thin on the ground, but I had this vision, which was something that terrified Barry. Girls from London aren’t supposed to have visions, especially when it comes to making sausages.”

It wasn’t long before Barry’s wife, Margaret, joined her in this quest to create the perfect sausage. After much trial and error and a mountain of misshaped links, they formulated a perfect sausage.

It was tested on friends until they knew they had got it right. At this point, butcher Jim Lewis joined them in what has proved to be an amazing venture and one that has won them countless Great Taste awards.

One of the main things about their sausages is that they don’t just taste scrumptious; they are made from quality cuts, not out of all sorts of unmentionables and mechanically recovered meat. Only shoulder cuts and belly is used to make the sausages, which are flavoured with freshly-crushed herbs and spices and put into natural casings.

Most sausages today are covered with cellulose or plastic casings and the filling looks like a pink blancmange, whereas Irayne’s contain meat that has been put through a proper mincer to obtain a flavoursome, chunky texture.

Another positive aspect of the enterprise is that there is an abattoir only three miles down the road. Because she wanted to understand the cycle the animals would go through, Irayne visited it while the word “sausages” was just an idea. Then her husband built the butchery and it was all systems go.

Her boxed meat tasting packs can be ordered at todenhammanorfarm.co.uk and are proving particularly popular.

After visiting the farm, I took Barnaby, my Border collie, to the nearest pub for lunch; the Red Lion at Long Compton.

Not only did this delightful pub welcome canines, it offered them a chance to have a “pigs ear” while their owners ate lunch.

Barnaby was in seventh heaven as he sat under the table, chewing a crunchy pig’s ear. And where did the pig’s ear come from? Todenham Manor Farm, of course.