The Tracing Paper

“Cherries on Tree” at Park Farm orchard
from Ida@Sustain’s Flickr

Recipes Online

Cherry recipes from UK food blogs

Recipes in Print

Jane Grigson’s Fruit Book
Wild Food by Roger Phillips

Mid-July and it’s the height of the all-too-brief British cherry season.

For their sublime aroma and intense sweetness, and for the sake of our desperately declining cherry orchards, do whatever it takes to find and eat some British cherries over the next couple of weeks. We’re losing our cherry orchards at an alarming rate and the only way to save them is to eat more British cherries.

Finding British cherries

Henrietta Green’s Foodlovers Britain is running the CherryAid campaign to promote and support the British cherry, leading up to British Cherry Day on Saturday 19th July. Particularly useful is the directory of Pick Your Own and farm shops selling cherries.

The wonderful and distinctive Common Ground also celebrates cherries within its Orchard Path “journey through trees, blossom, fruit…”

The Romans to thank

Cherries have been cultivated in Britain since their introduction - like so much else - by the Romans, but almost all our once extensive cherry orchards have been lost since the War. Of the 30 to 40 thousand acres of orchards 60 years ago, we’ve now under a thousand acres left.

Cherries were grown across the south and west of the country, with the greatest concentration of orchards in Kent - close to the hungry London market and the growing expertise of the continent - since the 16th century. British cherries are almost exclusively English cherries - though much grown in nearby Herefordshire, I can find no record of cherry production in Wales.

Traditionally grown as large standard trees, harvesting cherries was a laborious process involving long ladders, scissors and sieves. Like other commercially grown fruit, almost all modern cherry growers now use dwarfing rootstock for smaller trees. Harvesting is far easier and the trees can be netted to protect the valuable fruit from hungry birds. A few old orchards survive, such as the illustrated Park Farm orchard, where the custom of letting sheep graze beneath the trees also continues.

Sweet and sour

A little like cooking and dessert apples, cherries come in sweet and sour varieties, though the sour are now very little grown. There are dozens of varieties of both types - the Brogdale National Fruit Collection has 306 varieties of cherry in cultivation, from Alba Heart and Aldridge’s Unknown to Yellow Spanish and Zweitfruhe - all descended from two species still found growing wild in Britain.

Prunus cerasus is the parent species of the sour cherries, while Prunus avium (known as the gean or mazzard) is parent to the sweet varieties. The fruit of Prunus avium can be as delicious as any cultivated cherry but the birds generally get to them first. Legend has it that the wild trees still grow along old Roman roads, where passing Romans discarded the stones.

Eating cherries

What to do with cherries? It’s hard to resist just eating them, savouring them one by one. But the food blogging community has plenty of suggestions for more adventurous uses of cherries, from traditional Kentish cherry batter (better known by its fancy French name, clafoutis - cooked and blogged by Alex at Eating Leeds and Cook Sister!, amongst others) and madelines with cherries to lemon and cherry posset to Girl Interrupted Eating’s inspired Wild Mallard Duck with Balsamic Cherries and Lentils.

Farewell huffkin, long live the cherry!

Another traditional confection, the cherry huffkin - a flat, round tea-cake with a hole in the middle filled with hot cherries - seems sadly extinct. By eating more British cherries, we can help make sure the cherry doesn’t go the same way.

Postscript - The huffkin lives!

Happily, it appears that the huffkin lives on after all. In his travels round Britain with a fork, Matthew Fort tracked down a baker who’s recreated the huffkin - Martin Flynn of Oscar’s Bakery at 3 Limes Place, Preston Street, Faversham, Kent. There’s talk of the distinguishing dimple in the top but no suggestion that it might contain cherries.

Just when it all seemed to be mercifully over, foot and mouth disease has returned in the UK.

The government had declared August’s outbreak over, the restrictions on livestock movements were lifted, farming and the meat industry were getting back to normal business at a busy time of year, the reports on August’s outbreak had been even published. Now all the fear and uncertainty is back.

Debate about whether it’s time to vaccinate is intensifying. Many consider vaccination long overdue and point to the new outbreak as tragic evidence. The case is presented convincingly at Warmwell, where it’s also reported that the government is considering vaccination.

Defra, for the time being at least, remains opposed to vaccination on the grounds of the risk of spread of the disease and the impact on trade in meat, though they have ordered 300,000 doses.

Keeping up with foot and mouth developments

Warmwell remains the best source of in-depth discussion and examination of foot and mouth disease, the arguments for vaccination, the impact on farmers and more.

Defra has a page on the latest situation, with links to detailed pages on the restrictions etc.

The Guardian’s Newsblog has regularly updated postings of events as they happen(ed) and views as they’re aired on the 13th September, 12th September. Matthew Weaver combines concise reporting of the facts as they emerge with discussion of postings on blogs and even FaceBook groups.

Finally, I’ve posted a constantly updated summary of blog postings about foot and mouth at FeedReel.

The re-emergence of foot and mouth disease in the UK last Friday is a tragedy, most of all for the blameless farmers who have seen their livestock struck down, but also for livestock farmers across the country; the meat trade, from hauliers and abattoirs to butchers and pie-makers; rural tourism businesses; and everyone who enjoys good British meat (eg Superfood) or simply cares about the farmed landscape. Much of our most cherished countryside, from heaths and moorland to valley pasture and ancient grassland, has been shaped by livestock and depends on regular grazing.

Just 5 days in from the first outbreak, it’s far too early to guess how the epidemic (it’s officially an epidemic once there’s more than one outbreak) will unfold this time, but there is at least cause for hope: DEFRA appears to be handling the situation far better than MAFF managed in 2001; a likely source of infection has been identified; and there have only been 2 localised outbreaks - 6 had been identified at the same stage in 2001, with suspected cases reported from Devon to Northumberland.

The mainstream media are following developments closely, but there’s no better source of comprehensive information and informed comment on FMD than Warmwell.com, an independent website established by Mary Critchley early in the 2001 epidemic. The variety of information collated by Warmwell ranges from scientific reports to personal accounts of what’s really happening on farms. The site has been updated, apparently daily, since 2001 and has extended its interests to cover a wide range of farming and animal health issues.

For a grisly reminder of the last epidemic, Warmwell has an archived transcript of Muckspreader’s Not the Foot and Mouth Report for Private Eye, still the best accessible account of the events and mistakes of 2001.

Early August and the harvest of the winter sown oilseed rape (Brassica napus, its edible varieties also known as canola) is well underway in the UK. The spring-sown crop ripens later and will be ready for harvest in late August and September.

From Spring Yellow to Harvest Brown

Rapeseed ready for harvest is a drab brown, a far cry from the bright yellow fields of the crop in flower, and often has a distinct cabbage smell, a reminder that it’s a member of the Brassica family.

Spring-sown rape ripens unevenly and must generally be dessicated or swathed a week or two before harvesting to ensure ripeness of all the seedpods. Both methods kill the plants to allow ripening to continue without further growth or maturation - dessication is achieved by chemical means (generally Diquat spray), swathing is a mechanical alternative.

Rape is combine harvested to yield its tiny black seeds, destined to be crushed to produce oil for food, industrial uses and, increasingly, biofuels. A growing number of farmers are cold pressing the seeds themselves to produce extra-virgin rapeseed oil. The meal left after crushing is high in protein and used for animal feed.

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Ever wondered just what’s growing in the fields? Most crops are grown for food - either for us or for animals - but how do the crops in the fields relate to the food on our plates?

Some crops - potatoes, carrots, onions - are easily identified, especially close to harvest and by anyone who grows veg at home.

But how many gardeners grow sugar beet or even wheat? How to distinguish the various grass species of cereal - wheat, barley, rye, oats, triticale? What are some of the more unusual crops - hemp, linseed, echium, miscanthus - actually used for?

Judging from the Google queries that have led people to my post on the yellow fields of oilseed rape now colouring vast swathes of the countryside, there’s plenty of curiosity about the crops in our fields.

British Field Crops (A Pocket Guide to the Identification, History and Uses of Traditional and Novel Arable Crops in Great Britain) - UKUS- written and published by Sally Francis, will answer all these questions.

This excellent “pocket guide” (for those with large, agricultural pockets!) covers over 90 crops, all grown on farms in Great Britain, with descriptions and drawing to aid identification, as well as information on the history, cultivation and uses of the crops.

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Check prices now

Check today’s price of milk in Tesco / Asda / Sainsburys / Waitrose - Ocado with mySupermarket.co.uk

The Rising Price of Milk

Two weeks ago, Tesco was widely praised in the media for announcing two initiatives: To increase the price UK dairy farmers receive for milk, while not raising the price of standard milk to consumers; and to introduce a higher priced “localchoice” milk from smaller local producers.

But yesterday’s Guardian attributed the surprise rise in UK inflation, at least in part, to the rising price of milk.

Have consumers already swallowed the price rise that will pay for desperately needed higher returns to farmers, while the supermarkets take all the credit?

And Tesco’s PR department must be delighted with all the publicity for something that other supermarkets are already doing. ASDA, Sainsbury’s, M&S and Waitrose already have direct or close relationships with farmers supplying their milk, while the East of England Co-op is just one example of a retailer selling milk from specific local farms at reasonable prices.

So what is the price of milk?

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No crop dominates the British arable landscape quite like rapeseed (Brassica napus, also known as oilseed rape, the edible variety as canola).

From the very beginning of April, previously mundane green fields of this member of the cabbage and turnip family suddenly erupt into luminous flower.

Across lowland England, great swathes of countryside are painted yellow. Rape covers around 3.5% of England’s farmland and approaching a tenth of the countryside in some counties, such as Bedfordshire.

What is all this rapeseed for?

Of all the major crops, it’s probably the one with the least obvious connection to our food. Indeed, much of the rapeseed crop is put to industrial uses, from the production of lubricants and adhesives to cosmetics and gardening products. Many varieties aren’t even edible, containing high levels of the toxic erucic acid.

But the main use of the oil rich rapeseed crop is for the manufacture of cooking oils, margarine and processed foods, with much of the by-product used as animal feed. Globally, rapeseed is the third most important source of cooking oils. It’s essentially a commodity crop, the products it goes into culturally divorced from the productive fields. Continue Reading »

Philip Pullman once wrote that books are not eggs, his point being that every book is different whereas we expect every egg we buy to be the same. Agreed, books should not be treated as a commodity, but nor should eggs. Every egg is an individual creation, laid by a hen of some particular variety, fed and kept in a particular way, in a particular location.

I was reminded of this comparison of books and eggs, and the telling assumptions implicit, on a recent rare visit to my local Tesco (looking at the labelling of their meat, on which more later). Many of the packs of meat carried photos of genial looking farmers surrounded by apparently happy animals in beautiful countryside. All very well, and I’m sure these pictured farmers are doing an excellent job, tending their livestock and the countryside, and producing good food.

But how much of Tesco’s meat comes from these pictured farmers? This is an illusion of provenance. Returning to the comparison with books, it’s rather as though a bookshop sold all its books under Jane Austen’s name, simply because she wrote some of them. We deserve to be told more about how our food’s produced and where it’s from.

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