New Kent Food and Drink Product of the Year Finalist: J Myatt & Co's Rhubarb Fizz

We are a family-run fruit farm, who specialise in growing the finest quality soft and stone fruit. We supply beautifully selected produce that is hand-picked at the optimum time, to release the best flavours. We grow a variety of crops including rhubarb, raspberries, blackberries, plums, cherries, greengages and apricots. We are constantly trialling new varieties of soft and stone fruit, selecting for quality, flavour and season extension.

J Myatt & Co was established in 1993 by John and Kim Myatt. We started at Decoy Farm growing strawberries and took on parts of Mockbeggar Farm in 2004. Since then, the farm has expanded its soft and stone fruit enterprises, now supplying a wide range of high-end customers and supermarkets. Our daughters have joined the family business, Alex in 2017, and Hannah in 2020, giving us the opportunity to diversify. Although our main farming business supplies supermarkets with some of the highest quality fresh fruit in the UK, winning multiple awards, not all is suitable for our customers due to being out of customer specification, therefore we have just launched a sparkling wine, Myatt’s Rhubarb Fizz.

Our farms are located on the edge of the North Kent Marshes. This is a beautiful part of Kent, with rich soils and excellent growing conditions for our fruit to thrive, although most of our raspberries are now grown in substrate. We have automated irrigation systems, which enables us to be as accurate as possible, supplying the correct quantities of food and water for optimal plant growth and health. The water is supplied by winter-filled reservoirs and left as natural as possible to encourage a wide variety of wildlife habitats.

Other areas managed for wildlife biodiversity are hedges, windbreaks, and field margins as well as special flower mixes being planted to encourage bee and insect activity which, in turn, helps with natural pollination.