Landgoed de Brouwketel

Landgoed de Brouwketel is an estate of about ten hectares in the Huissensewaard, the river floodplain of the Nederrijn near Huissen, where the residents keep a small flock of sheep and farm a field and an orchard beside river nature.

The lamb is what we checked. In 2023 the estate slaughtered the three ram lambs born that spring to its flock of four ewes and sold the meat fresh, in mixed packages of fillet, chops, stewing meat, shank and mince with extra soup bones, cut by a butcher who does the slaughter himself. The sheep graze all over the estate, in the orchard, beside the garden and among the beehives, and in summer they get hardly any extra feed. The estate has no organic certificate, which its own website points out; what qualifies the lamb here is that grazing.

From 2019 to 2024 the field was a self-harvest garden that members joined by subscription and harvested themselves from May to December. Since 2025 the garden has been in transition, so there is no membership to join and very little produce is sold outside the estate. The lamb packages were ordered by email and collected at the estate; the newsletter is the way to hear whether lamb or vegetables are offered again.

The hay meadow is never fertilised and is mown late in the season, so meadow birds can finish nesting first.