Back to our roots: and why food production is alternative entreprenuerialism

Author and Founding Member Beth is leading a year-long project focusing on uncovering the foods, growers and producers in her local area and charting their stories and the personal impact on her wellbeing of living a life more connected to her environment and the seasons.

Here she invites us to join her in creating mini-projects of our own.

“If your Sunday lunch consists of 

beef from Australia, 

runner beans from Thailand, 

potatoes from Italy, 

carrots from South Africa, 

broccoli from Guatemala and 

fruit from the USA and New Zealand, 

the ingredients could have travelled 49,000 miles. 

All of these ingredients are also produced in the UK.”

These words made me cry.

They come from the book, Thirty Miles, by Ian Walker. He was a London chef who vacationed in North Wales and ended up spending three months researching local foods, farmers and makers.

And it has inspired me to do something similar.

Launching Thirty Miles and More: a Global Invitational Project

In the words of Kurt Vonnegut, who reportedly said he ‘went out to buy one envelope’ to: meet a lot of people, see some great looking babies, give the fire engine a thumbs up irl, ask a woman ‘what kind of dog that is’, in essence… to fart around… welcome to this, my food-research and life-living project that is less about the food and more about the ‘farting around’!

I’m so thankful to Beth Macleod, another UA/AE member here, who shared that post about Kurt’s fartuous-one-evelope-buying-excursion, and her response to it, on the UA Discord server: 

"I love it, in that it reminds us of the power of connection, leaving our computers / desks, getting outside. It’s one of the reasons I go to the supermarket and local shops, rather than buy online."

And it is in that spirit of get-out-there-ed-ness, that I begin on my own journey of more than thirty miles.

And I invite you to recreate or reversion the project wherever you are in the world, sharing your updates with me in our Unplugged Ambition server.

Local food builds community

I’d love to venture out there, get to know more food-related-people in my immediate community, and do some serious ‘farting around’ in the process!

I wanted to invite you, as I track my journey here, to join me. So each of us, in our respective locations, can share in the local, in-season food farmer/maker/provider search, as applicable to our own locations and climates.

So if you are an audience that would enjoy this journey with me, I say, let the ‘farting around’ commence!

The food less-travelled

I felt moved to do better. Or at least KNOW better. 

Is the only thing between me and the food less-travelled, knowledge? 

Knowledge of what’s actually grown in the UK.

Knowledge of what’s actually in season in this area around me, and when.

Knowledge of where/who to buy it from, at prices that are sustainable for me.

How about you?

• Do you feel like you know what’s grown in your own area or province or country?
• Do you feel like you know what there is to look forward to being in season, on a month by month basis? 
• Do you feel like you have a clear knowledge of what’s being imported into the country, and why?
• And do you feel like you have any relationships with the people through whom these items are being made available? Are you happy with the level of your relationships or lack-there-of?

On a scale of one to ten, ten being a lot, where would you put your level of farting-around, in your daily or weekly acquisition of food items?

There’s no right or wrong here, it’s just the kind of questions rolling around in my own brain. 

Disconnectedness from seasons and nature is a Western phenomenon

I do feel that NOT being in touch with nature is more likely to be a “western-world” problem, than basically anywhere else not considered “western”... so would be interested to hear a few other takes on this subject, from other places around the world.

For example, I spent 8 years on and off in Eastern Asia and remember vaguely the coming and going of various fruits as they were in season. You’d have your fill of something, til you couldn’t stand the sight of it anymore. Which was fine, because by then it would be out of season again and unavailable til next year. Unless in canned form. And it was usually cheaper that time of year too. What there was to look forward to, and when, felt much more at the surface of people’s general consciousness. 

The closest thing I can think of in Western culture is the general awareness of pumpkins in October.

If you live in the “West” and can think of way more than pumpkins, I take my non-foodie non-farming hat off to you and would welcome the broader awareness and insights you can bring to this table! Beats lonely night chats with AI on the topic. 

Building a global map and directory of foods

I really would like to build a broader awareness and appreciation within myself, around not only food but the people who make it. And if the people I meet along the way are happy for me to, I’ll share their details here so that others in North Wales can benefit from the findings.

I’ll be collating lists of what’s in season, each month. 

I’ll be noting lists of what pantry items are made in the UK.

I’ll be sharing funny stories of the farting around that happens, and the fantastic people I meet.

And I'd love you to join me!

Looking for a challenge with practical steps to it?

If you’re in the mood to join along and expand your food awareness, here’s the steps I’ve taken so far:

Step 1. Get an accordion style file folder. (I got mine from B&M for 6 quid)

Step 2. Label it how you like. (mine says FOOD)

Step 3. Insert labels inside, to indicate a space for each month of the year.

Step 4. Start ripping your cook books up. NOOOOO…. wait…

It’s a long story and may make for another post soon, but after many hours of TRYING to see if I could rip my cook books apart and file the individual recipes by seasonal ingredients… hours of hair-pulling out research, I realised I first needed to scrape together a list of what I think is in season here, in July.

So I did that with the help of AI. I’m currently shopping with that list in mind, still at Tesco mind you, but it’s a place to start. 

So far?

I bought some radishes. That’s the one thing I’ve done differently.

There’s layers to this.

My mind wants a complete and utter overhaul all at once but I gave myself permission to start small. Just by buying ONE thing in season, with the awareness and intentionality I wouldn’t have had before, and giving myself permission to buy it from Tesco, if that’s easier at first, than finding out when and where is the local farmer’s market and actually being FREE on that day with my hair showered and feeling fit-for-human-consumption-while-being-a-self-confessed-farter-arounder.

So for now, this project, for me, looked like adding radishes to my cart. 

I usually ignore radishes. So it’s a win for Team Radish.

It might look different depending on where you are already at with your own level of awareness, and how in sync you feel you already are with the natural rhythms of harvests and fresh market days.

Do you feel like writing and letting us know where you’re already at and what you think the next step up would look like, for you?

And if you’re into growing or making, do you ever sell any of it? Have you made it to a fancy farmer’s market already? And have you ever considered “guerilla” farmer’s marketing what you make? 

I don’t know what the red-tape around this kind of thing is like in the UK, but a friend recently told me of a 10 year old who puts fresh eggs out by the road, for sale on an honesty system. 

Reminds me (even though it’s completely different) of that episode of To the Manor Born, where she sells re-packaged cheap honey, as fancier home made stuff, at the side of the street, to the Twitchers who have descended on the place to glimpse a rare bee-eater.

And I have vivid memories of buying apples from the backside of an open truck along the side of the road, in one Asian country (if I can find the pic I took of it maybe I’ll get it up on here later down the line!). 

It’s just an opinion, and one that I’d like to be dis-abused of, but it strikes me that the “guerilla” farmer’s marketing game has perhaps been honed much better, in most other parts of the world. 

It may have seemed backward to be selling apples to passersby, out the backside of a truck, but she had a QR code taped to the edge, for ease of payments. The juxtaposition of a good old fashioned way to sell food-wares combined with cutting-edge technology of QR code payment systems… well, let’s just say I HAD to buy some apples, just for the experience of paying for them at the side of the road through a QR code. 

Honestly, sometimes I think we expect food, in all its journey to us, to be fancier than it needs to be.

Including food cookery books and recipes. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a visual person and love an inspirational food photograph. But maybe even there, we’ve developed ourselves away from what matters - not the way it looks, but how it got here.

Have a radically radish-ful July

In the style of Peg Bracken’s illustrated (by Hilary Knight) Hate to Cook books, this post is adorned with a humble but honest radish. 

And equipped with a recipe/idea for a salad using UK-grown/made items and the July item of the month: fresh radishes.

Here’s what Peg had to say about veggies in 1960:

“Vegetables simply don’t taste as good as most other things do. The food experts know this, too, deep down. You can tell they do, from the reliance they put on adjectives whenever they bump into a vegetable. “And with it serve a big bowl of tiny, buttery, fresh-from-the-garden beets!” they’ll cry. But they’re still only beets, and there’s no need to get so excited about it. 

Never make the mistake of combining two rather repulsive vegetables in the hope any good will come of it. Two wrongs never make a right. Once I knew a lady who cooked big carrots and hollowed out their middle and filled the resultant canoes with tinned peas. 

In order to make most vegetables fit to eat, you must cover up the basic taste of the vitamins with calories… oil, vinegar, and a lot of other things we shall come to name presently.”

And so here I present my Radish salad for this month, radical in that it goes in the face of Peg’s excellent advice to NOT combine things that taste horrible, namely: beets, radishes and pea sprouts. The reason for this radical ignoring of excellent advice is that we have excellent locally available calories, in the form of Rapeseed Oil and Black Garlic Ketchup, with which to ‘cover up the taste of their vitamins’.

July’s Radically Radish Salad

Locally grown Lettuce / leafy greens / rocket / watercress / cabbage mix of your choice

Radishes - Washed, sliced thinly (however many you want)

Boiled Beets - sliced or chopped (the amount is up to you, to your taste)

Green pea sprouts or sprouts of your own choice and making (I’m using a jar and sieve top from bioSnacky)

Butterbeans as filler (tinned but you could soak and cook from dried)

For seasoning/dressing:

Mr Hugh’s Extra Virgin Rapeseed Oil (Made in the UK, their label says: “All our crops are locally grown on our farm with seed from our farm. This means our production results in very low food miles while sustaining and supporting British jobs.) (looks like they are based in Norfolk… anyone here in Norfolk? A day trip to their farm would be fun one day!)

Anglesey Sea Salt

A dollop of Halen Môn Black Garlic Ketchup (made in the UK by the Anglesey Sea Salt company)

Apple Cider Vinegar - from Biona (if you want to create a vinaigrette dressing combining the above)

PS (UPDATE) since writing the above and feeling bad that in two weeks, I hadn’t found anyone local who grows radishes… I did a bit of legwork and found this lovely shop in Llanfairfechan, called Nood Food which I’ll visit tomorrow and see if they have radishes… also Tyddyn Teg which has a monthly veggie box scheme… yay, somewhere to fart around to and get the skinny on for you all, over today and tomorrow! 

And hey, if you are in the UK or similar climes, are radishes something you harvest in your garden in July? How easy are they and when do you have to think about planting them? (THAT, I’m finding, is a whole other ball of wax and maybe will need a separate accordion folder for!)

Image Credits: https://www.pexels.com/photo/radish-slices-on-white-surface-4197983/

by Karolina Kaboompics https://www.pexels.com/@karolina-grabowska/ Karolina is in Poland and has a cool supply of great pics…. And it looks like she’s all for authenticity, I found her on linkedin and clicked *follow* https://www.linkedin.com/in/karolina-grabowska-359093a2/ and let her know her image is appearing inside our community when this post gets published. Fun stuff!