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.

Related posts:

1. Promise of summer fruit, threat of a blackthorn winter
2. Bramley apples, an English culinary icon resurgent
3. Peach blossom

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.

Related posts:

1. Making Sense of Foot and Mouth
2. Waking up to food security
3. Pandemic potential: is intensive pig production responsible?

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.

Related posts:

1. Foot and Mouth’s Dread Return
2. Books, eggs and the illusion of provenance
3. Fairness for farm workers too

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.

(The increasing use of rapeseed for biofuels is worrying in the context of now rising food prices. Rapeseed biofuel is certainly not the green panacea it’s sometimes claimed to be – Peak Energy calculates that even if all the world’s arable land were used to produce rapeseed for biofuels, it would only provide enough to replace a third of our current oil requirements.)

A New Crop

Oilseed rape is a relatively new crop and has been grown on a commercial scale in the UK for only 30 years. It’s increasingly popular with farmers, fitting in well with cereal production. As a brassica it doesn’t share pests and diseases with cereals so makes an ideal break crop in cereal rotations, while it can be grown with the same machinery. According to the DEFRA annual farm survey, just over 220,000 hectares of rapeseed were grown in 1983, rising to over 500,000 in 2005.

Edible Varieties

Edible varieties (without the toxic erucic acid) were developed in the 1970s through conventional breeding, not genetic modification. GM varieties are now available though not grown in the UK and unlikely to be so until at least 2009 (according to DEFRA). Edible rapeseed is sometimes referred to as LEAR (Low Erucic Acid Rapeseed) or Canola (Canadian Oil Low Acid).

We’re used to seeing extensive fields of yellow rape in flower in the spring, but the previously obscure uses of this crop are suddenly coming into the public eye. From debate about the merits of rapeseed biofuels to cold-pressed rapeseed oil on the supermarket shelves, we’ll be seeing a lot more of it.

A Rapeseed Reading List

Related posts:

1. Rapeseed, a golden oil from yellow fields
2. The yellowing countryside
3. Know your crops

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.

The diverse information provided covers the technical, linguistic, historical and practical. You’ll learn that triticale is a modern hybrid of durum wheat and rye, that rye was originally a weed in wheat fields, that rutabaga’s name comes from the Swedish for ram’s root, and that Calendula (pot marigold) has been commercially grown since 2006 for uses including fast-drying yacht varnish.

Clear line drawings show ripe crops in outline, with useful details of distinguishing parts. No more confusion between bearded wheat (with its spreading, straggly awns, or bristles) and barley (with its tight brush of vertical awns).

Dr Francis carefully explains all technical terminology in a useful glossary, from aftermath – the short stems left after harvest – to winter crop – a usually higher-yielding crop sown in the autumn. The guide as a whole successfully combines clarity and readability with detail and rigour.

Anyone left hungry to learn more about farming in the UK should turn to the definitive Primrose McConnell’s Agricultural Notebook - UKUS- first published in 1883 but fully updated to reflect the farming industry in the 21st century.

Essential Reading

British Field Crops (A Pocket Guide to the Identification, History and Uses of Traditional and Novel Arable Crops in Great Britain) by Sally Francis UKUS

Primrose McConnell’s The Agricultural Notebook edited by Richard Soffe UKUS

Related posts:

1. The yellowing countryside
2. Harvesting rapeseed: black seeds for golden oil

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?

Tesco’s own on-line price check reports that the main supermarkets (Tesco and its rivals Sainsbury’s, ASDA and Morrisons) are all charging exactly the same for standard, own-label milk. This is unsurprising as milk is a classic known value item, one the few things we all know the price of and judge supermarket prices by.

[Quoted prices all for April 2007] The supermarkets are charging 35p for a pint, 66p for 2 pints, £1.15 for 4 pints and £1.68 for 6 pints, equivalent to between 62p and 49p a litre, of which Tesco has announced it will increase the price paid to farmers to 22p a litre (the Milk Development Council urges caution at comparing this price with existing prices, as the exact pricing structure is still unclear). These prices have crept up recently: Tesco quietly put prices up from 33p a pint in March, while ASDA was charging 32p a pint a year ago.

Tesco charges as much as 80p a litre in some of its shops. My local One Stop (owned by Tesco) is charging a massive 40p for half a litre (in a bottle that looks like a pint but is significantly smaller) while the local Co-op charges just 67p for 2 pints of milk from local farms (the East of England Co-op’s Exclusively East Anglian milk).

Tesco’s announcements come rather late for UK farmers from the retailer responsible for 27% of all the milk sold in the UK. But the news should be welcomed and will certainly benefit around 1000 farmers. Let’s just not let the hype obscure the availability of good, locally sourced and fairly priced milk elsewhere. The East of England Co-op’s milk is an excellent example of true provenance – their website provides a list of the farms producing it.

Trace your milk

It’s rare to be able to trace your milk back to the farm, but you can easily find out the dairy that’s produced it. Just find the EU identification code on the packaging (it may be in an oval or printed next to the use by date) and look it up on this list of UK dairy processors.

Related posts:

1. Supermarkets mixing British and imported beef

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.

Cold-pressed Rapeseed Oil

A couple of bold UK farmers are seeking to change this, producing cold-pressed “extra virgin” rapeseed oil from their crops. Hillfarm Oils, of Heveningham in Suffolk, and Farrington Oils, of Hargrave in Northamptonshire, are leading the way. Their oils have a distinctive nutty flavour, a far cry from the anonymous cooking oil most rapeseed goes to make.

We’re used to some sort of provenance on our olive oil (from the vague but appealing Mediterranean country of origin to the more exclusive single estate oils) and have fond (but often desperately idealised, as revealed by Sustain’s report on cooking oils) images of the productive olive groves.

Rapeseed doesn’t – yet – have the attractive associations of olive oil. It’s time we started making the connections between the bright yellow spring fields and the oil in our food.

Essential Reading

Related posts:

1. Harvesting rapeseed: black seeds for golden oil
2. Rapeseed, a golden oil from yellow fields
3. Know your crops

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.

In the opening paragraph of the Books are not Eggs piece, Philip Pullman unwittingly sets out much that is wrong with our food system:

Every week we go to the supermarket and buy a dozen eggs. We expect them to taste and look pretty well the same as last week’s lot. And we know that neither the hen who laid them, nor the farmer who collected them, had anything to do with deciding what price we should pay at the checkout, because that’s the job of the retailer; and we know that the price will have been worked out by balancing such things as the deal the farmer had to accept, the price the customer is likely to put up with, the wages of the shelf-stackers, and so on. Buying eggs is a transaction that takes place so often that we can tell at once if the price this week is twice what it was last week, or how much less the supermarket charges than the corner shop.

Note the assumption that eggs are cheaper in the supermarket. How happy this must have made the supermarkets, who spend millions of pounds persuading us that they’re cheapest. In truth, eggs, like potatoes, are often significantly cheaper in independent shops.

Related posts:

1. Milk – what does it cost and where is it from?
2. Twittered morsels: meat eaters, pig parts, knowing provenance
3. The making of Easter eggs: inside Cadbury’s Bournville factory

Of all the varieties of cooking apple, the Bramley is by far the best known and loved, its tart flesh erupting into creamy fluff on cooking.

An icon of English Fenland

The Bramley is an English culinary icon and particularly associated with Wisbech, in the Cambridgeshire Fens, where the large trees of old were traditionally underplanted with gooseberries (reported in the superb inventory of British foods, The Taste of Britain by Laura Mason and Catherine Brown).

The rich fenland around Wisbech still produces much fruit, though over 50% of the orchards have been lost since the 1930s. But hope is now at hand, with figures from the dunnhumby Academy at the University of Kent showing a 12.7% growth in sales in 2006. (dunnhumby run Tesco’s clubcard and the academy makes some of the vast database available to academics and food businesses.)

The Bramley resurgent

After decades of declining sales of British apples, Cambridgeshire apple growers are now planting new trees to meet this resurgent demand. These new orchards are wildly different from the traditional orchards of widely spaced grand old trees, with anything from 500 to over 1,000 closely packed dwarf trees to the acre and far higher yields. But this is what it takes for British apple growers to compete with global imports and keep their orchards viable.

Stores well, cooks well, eats well

Bramleys store well and are available throughout the year. Apple crumble is hard to beat but there are dozens of recipe ideas at www.bramleyapples.co.uk.

More to enjoy…

Don’t forget other less popular varieties of apple. The East of England Apples and Orchards Project celebrates and documents the hundred of other varieties of apples and other fruit that survive in both new and historic orchards, hedgerows and gardens.

More apple resources online and in print…

Related posts:

1. Rediscovering English apples
2. Eat British Cherries now! (if it’s July)
3. Exotic locals: apples’ journey from Kyrgyzstan to East Anglia