Open Day – Sunday 25th August 2019
The Cutting Edge (Bridport Times, July 2019)
We write monthly for the magazine Bridport Times. To see this article as originally published, view the pages on Issue.
Written by Ben Scriven
Organic farms are sometimes seen as trying to hold back the inexorable march of progress. People may perceive them as, at best, romantic traditionalism and, at worst, luddites clinging to obsolete practices. However, as society has grown more aware of some of the consequences of industrial agriculture, many of the traditional practices that were lovingly sustained by organic pioneers are being rediscovered by agriculture as a whole. Timeless lessons are being looked at anew and used to address issues of water pollution, food security, nutrition, soil degradation and erosion, flooding and nature conservation.
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Woolly jumpers for woolly grazers (Bridport Times, June 2019)
We write monthly for the magazine Bridport Times. To see this article as originally published, view the pages on Issue.
Written by Leila Simon
Sheep grow wool. It is perhaps the feature which defines them most for people who are not part of the farming world. We need to shear them every year, taking off their wool and leaving them cool and comfortable for the summer, and making flystrike much less likely. Wool is also a valuable product: once vital to the English economy it was eclipsed first by cotton and then by artificial fibres. More recently, society is beginning to see its value again, using it not only as an eco-friendly alternative to polyester and nylon clothing, to start reducing the pollution of the oceans, but also as a replacement for glass fibre and plastic bubble-wrap. It is used in a wide variety of forms from building insulation to packaging: we send our meat boxes out packed in wool and we have our own wool spun as knitting yarn (see Bridport Times September 2018).
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A Borodinsky of sorts
A gentleman came to our shop one day, and gifted us with a loaf of bread he’d made from our rye flour. Borodinsky, he called it. It was shared out at Elevenses the next day, and we were all enraptured. Sweet and slightly sticky, this bread is a delicious assault on the senses, and Rosie became determined to re-create it. A traditional Russian bread, the particular characteristics are coriander seed and malted rye flour. This is Rosie’s variant, using the ingredients easily available, and a spoonful extra molasses makes up for not having any malted rye flour.
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The Spice of Life (Bridport Times, May 2019)
We write monthly for the magazine Bridport Times. To see this article as originally published, view the pages on Issue.
Written by Ellen Simon
When I was a child, the only other farm in the village changed from being a mixed farm to an entirely arable farm. I don’t recall exactly when we stopped seeing the cows walking past the house for milking morning and evening and stopped seeing the milk-churns every day waiting on the solid stand of railway sleepers for collection by the milk lorry. Looking back, I can make an intelligent guess about it: I think it very likely that the farmer’s choice to stop dairying tied up with that collection of milk.
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Ben’s birthday pancakes
Wholemeal pancakes are the next step up in pancake making. A richer flavour, as well as a richer product, these are our go-to birthday breakfast treat (although we also indulge whenever we’ve got an excess of eggs and milk!)
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