Some weeks ago I watched Rick Stein’s Food Stories on TV and have enjoyed several episodes. In the first one where he goes to Cumbria, he quotes the poet William Wordsworth’s description of the Lake District as “a republic of shepherds and agriculturalists” by which he meant “the sons of the hills“, as he called them, were in charge and not the upper classes. He goes on to say this is still a county of small farms owned by the same families for generations, I really liked that.
He then visits a sheep farming family who have worked a northeastern corner of the Lake District for over 600 years! There he meets the farmer James Reybanks, who is also a best selling author, who passionately believes we can produce better food, and preserve the planet, by going back to the traditional non-intensive farming methods of his forefathers. He reads a quote from his book ‘The Shepherd’s Life‘:
“There is nothing beyond this. Nothing higher. Nothing more profound than these simple things. Nothing matters more than trying to live our little life on this piece of land. This is my inheritance to my children. This is my love.”
Rick then asks James what he’d like to talk about first, eating his sheep or rearing them. To which he replies…
“To me the two things go together. I think that’s the great tragedy of a lot of modern food, we’ve separated eating from production of food. And those two things shouldn’t be separated. The way food is produced adds enormously to the flavour, and the health of it and the quality of it.”
He continues…
“We really need people to really want to buy what we’re doing, to support us, to pay a little more in the shops for the right kind of farming, the right kind of system.”
That’s what my wife and I have been trying to do more and more, especially since we moved out to the countryside. For example, we’ve been buying our sourdough bread from a third generation, family-run bakery; our milk is from local farms and is delivered in returnable glass bottles twice a week; our eggs are normally from friends in the village who own some chickens; in the warmer months, our ice cream is from a local diary farm who have diversified; our vegetables sometimes come from a small, unmanned-farm shop with an honesty box. Everything is within a 10km radius.
We may be paying a little more for some items, definitely not for others, but the difference in flavour, the benefits of eating healthier produce and knowing we’re supporting the local economy rather than a multibillion pound supermarket chain makes all the difference to me.
My Excerpts 