It all started on a split shift in a pizza restaurant in Oxford, slipping out for a cheeky pint between shifts, that always did wonders for our imagination. Frustrated by the direction in which we were heading, we decided there must be a better way – and we had an idea...

Jacobs & Field is the edible creative product of myself, Johnny Pugsley, and friend Damion Farah. In the summer of 2009, we found ourselves looking for a new creative challenge and decided to work together to build a foodie haven, which we eventually found on The Old High Street in Headington. With over 40 years between us working in various restaurants and bars, we decided that a new approach was needed. Our love of simple honest home-cooked food brought us to design and create an informal space to buy products and also to come and meet friends, kick back, relax and eat in-house.

Four years, many pints, two awards and a bag of pork scratchings later we had another idea – Jacobs Inn.

Our idea was all about having good people, a love of honest rural cooking, locally-sourced meat (we haven’t told the two pigs in the back garden quite how local yet), and a welcoming space to enjoy our wares.

So, put to task, we built a deck and pontoon out of reclaimed timber, a wood-fired oven and a smoker for our homemade chorizo. We built a pig pen and a chicken house. The chickens moved in about three weeks ago and laid their first egg within 30 minutes.

Our pigs arrived a fortnight ago and spend most of their days on their backs waiting for their tummies to be rubbed! Now we are starting on the inside. There is a lot to do.

One evening, while in a local pub debating the merits of keeping the 1980s patterned carpet in the toilets, we probably had one pint more than we should. Returning to find darkness had fallen, we realised we had omitted to put the chickens to bed. Have you ever tried catching 10 chickens in the dark? Needless to say it was a late night.

We hope to open the doors to Jacob’s Inn, late July. There will be a relaxed deli atmosphere in the front bar, where guests can have a proper coffee, a pint of good ale or grab anything from a homemade sausage roll and a dollop of our Jacobs & Field ketchup, to eggs royale, or a loaf of artisan sour dough to take home. The dining room with be serving lunch and dinner – rural British cuisine with fine winers and beer. All of our homemade chutneys, jams, ketchups and hampers will be on sale around the pub, so if you like what you are eating you can take some of it home with you.

We are excited about bringing Jacobs & Field to Wolvercote. The local residents have been very supportive, and we can’t wait to open. But, as Morse said, “there’s always time for one more pint”.