my choice of bread at the moment? lip licking,  mouth watering, stomach filling, salty topped  Focaccia bread from Alex Gooch, artisan baker Hay on Wye. Delivered  twice a week by Alex’s dad,  Wednesday and Friday mornings to Vans Good Food shop, Middleton street, Llandrindod Wells.  [It sells out fast, mind,  and I wouldnt tell you about it, if I wasnt feeling happy about having just  placed a regular  order for it!]

Plus,  in the larder: Bacheldre Mill strong malted five seed flour – I adapted their  sundried tomato recipe for the bread machine last week and was well satisfied.

However, when you go look at the main picture at first it  doesnt look too promising.

“About 85% of the wheat used by UK flour millers is home-grown, although the precise proportion depends on the quality of the UK harvest.  The main sources of imported wheat within the European Union are Germany and France, whilst Canada is the main source for the rest of the world.  Canadian wheat is generally imported for breadmaking purposes, because it has excellent characteristics and gluten strength which work well in a blend with UK wheats.  French wheat is generally used in the manufacture of French style products where softer flours are required.  German wheat usage fluctuates according to the quality of the British crop.” NABIM

But then I read   from their website that Hovis bread is now made from 100% british wheat and they get a decent writeup in Treehugger

in a 2008 ethical consumer magazine review, three organic mills came out spotless (unlike Hovis).

1) Glebe Farm grow and mill their own flour in Cambridgeshire and it is stocked by the Oakchurch farmshop in Staunton on Wye, Herefordshire.

2) Little Salkeld Watermill in Cumbria say they are “committed to the production of high quality flour using British grain”, and have an online shop.

3)Bacheldre flour from Bacheldre Mill near Montgomery, Powys   is stocked in Vans Good Food shop in Llandrindod Wells. They said to the bbc in 2006(?)

‘Most of the wheat comes from Dorset and is organic but we also grind the wheat grown on Bacheldre farm which is used to make wholemeal flour.’

Later in 2007 they said this,  in an interesting blog called Moonbites

“Sourcing our grains from the UK it is OK for a number of months after harvest, depending mainly on the weather and the quality of the crop. We have had supply for the whole year before and it is all about maintaining standards. Currently our Organic Strong wheat is from Surrey, and is a variety called Paragon. Our Plain soft wheat is from Scotland and is a variety called Maris Widgeon, an older tall grass variety which used to be grown for thatching. We use grain that is grown next door to us at Mellington Farm, about 5 fields up, and even though it is not organic, it is important to us to keep the heritage of the mill and mill local wheat. It is a variety known as Malacca. The rye has been sourced from this country before but a lot of the time it has come from Germany. Regarding Spelt, there are very few farmers in this country growing this, mainly due to the expensive plant that is required to de-hull the seed, which is a shame as we would love to use more homegrown. Currently our Spelt also comes from Germany.”

I was interested to read about the thatching wheat – I heard that there is a farm in Powys that supplies thatch straw for the National Trust, and as a by product also grinds the wheat and makes bread , but I haven’t worked out which one it is – does anyone know?

my daughter in Ceredigion brings us organic bread and flour from Felin Ganol, I seem to remember her saying that they grow wheat too, so things may have moved on from the website where they say “we try to buy cleaned, organic grain which contains as much British grown wheat as possible. Once our grain cleaner is restored we hope to be able to include locally grown grain in our grists.”

Waitrose own brand flours include Leckford estate strong breadflour - 20% canadian, 80% grown on their leckford farm

So thats it for now – there is some delicious organic bread flour milled in Powys, mainly grown in the UK, and some fabulous real bread baked in Hay on Wye; not bad for basic food miles and great for food enjoyment. And as for super market bread ;  where Hovis leads, others may follow?

and if all else fails, we can always go into the woods and gather acorns?

Nothing starts early up here in the hills of Powys but if we cross Offa’s dyke into Herefordshire we can see the buds and shoots a couple of weeks sooner. Its great to have the sunshine after all the long cold weeks of cold and wet, and to anticipate tasty green stuff soon.

I’m not an expert gardener, but I have got some raised beds with brick edges that I started last year where our small rough lawn used to be. I was amazed with the sweetness of purple sprouting broccoli from the garden a few weeks back; somehow a few plants survived the snow. This year I will definitely be thinking much more about growing food for the winter! I’ve got some exciting seed varieties from The Real Seed Catalogue (more about them another day )

I’ve been talking to local plantsman Dave Burridge from RENEW about this article from forager John Wright in the River Cottage newsletter

March at River Cottage
If I had to choose the low point of the mushroom hunter’s year it would have to be March but it was the March mushroom famine that spurred me, thirty years ago, to see what else nature might provide for my tea.

It is hardly the month to look for fruits and nuts but it does supply a surprising abundance of salad vegetables such as Black Mustard, Winter Cress, Ground Elder and my favourite, Hairy Bitter Cress (you will probably find the last two waiting to take over your flower beds).

This is also the month when that most famous of wild ingredients, Wild Garlic, makes it first and freshest appearance. It is an endlessly useful plant but I think that Wild Garlic Pesto takes some beating. Instead of pine nuts, it is well worth searching out some Pignuts, which will need slicing and toasting, to make a thoroughly wild job of it. By the sea, Alexanders are at their best just now but their strongly aromatic flavour is not for the faint-hearted.

All these things can be found at other times of the year but there is one very special wild food that can only be found in March: Birch sap. I make my first tap in the second week and usually collect throughout the month. It is satisfying work but you need an awful lot of sap, about ten litres, to make around 100ml of the rich syrup. Terrific on Chestnut Flour Pancakes though!

Here is what Dave said

Birch sap wine is a northern European thing, first brought to this country big time by Prince Albert (Victoria’s consort). He had whole areas of Scotland making it by royal appointment. Large areas of birch forest all over Europe and Scandinavia have been killed off by indiscriminate extraction of sap, so be careful.

Only take sap from a big tree in March (when sap is rising) and never take more that a gallon per tree. Plug up hole afterwards. The wine is seriously strong and does funny things to you. People have been known to go totally loopy on it, beware!

I am doing a wild food walk at the beginning of April if you or anyone is interested. * Wild forage is also something I’ve been doing since childhood as it was the traditional thing to do where I grew up. Now it’s becoming popular again, which is good, but we have lost so many of our wild plants that we now have to pick with care. Only harvest stuff growing in abundance and only take a few leaves off each plant, never the whole plant unless there is loads of it, like nettles.
Good picking.
Dave

* we’ll be advertising Daves Wild Food Walk on both the Llandrindod Transition town and the Mid wales permaculture network websites

MMMM; birch sap syrup sounds totally yummy, could this be the Powys answer to Maple syrup? It would be great to have even more local sweetness in the Powys diet, besides the marvellous honey of course.
Here is a good set of pictures of how to collect birch sap. I am not sure if i want to try making birch sap wine howver; it sounds as if it might be one of those acquired tastes, like retsina?

I totally agree with Dave about the careful picking, that was how I was brought up as well – in Kent in the 50′s – we could get cob nuts, hazels, chestnuts, and lots of berries – and we used to go for big Mothering Sunday and Easter primrose and bluebell picks with our Gran but she was always very strict with us on how to pick and how much to leave and not hurting the plants. Dave too grew up in the 50′s in the South East, in Hertfordshire and then on the Surrey/Kent border and remembers the chestnuts and bluebell woods.
What a pity that chestmuts don’t grow very well here – such a nourishing winter treat.

Dave also remembers digging for delicious pig nuts. I have a vague recollection of eating them but I don’t think anyone showed me how to find them myself. They are a bit rare in the wild now I believe. This reminds me to mention that Dorienne from Transition Rhayader has written a report for Glasu on wild food in Powys. This report is packed with interesting information. I noticed that she mentioned pignuts as a possible crop at the Doldowlod Walled Garden.

Now I am going out in the garden to inspect my ground elder corner for signs of life

Happy spring wishes to everyone

What I really want to write about is health.  I have been on this restricted diet for nearly two months and I can already feel a change in my overall health.  In case there is any doubt, I feel worse, not better ! I can’t definitely pin the blame on the diet because my dip in energy levels and general sluggishness could be attributed to other things but my senses tell me that the diet has a lot to do with it.

I’m probably going to bore you now because I’m going to compare ‘before’ the Powys Diet and ‘after/on’ the Powys Diet.  If so, I’m sorry.  A ‘before’ breakfast would have consisted of fresh fruit (bananas, grapes, pineapple etc) with nuts, seeds and grains – my ‘after’ breakfast is usually toast and marmalade.  My ‘before’ lunch would have been salad with meat or egg – my ‘after’ lunch is generally soup and bread or, just lately because I’m tiring of soup, sandwiches.  My ‘before’ dinner would have been vegetables with fish or chicken – my ‘after’ dinner contains vegetables (but not many healthy greens) and I have had to substitute red meat for the fish or chicken.  It is plain that my consumption of fruit, nuts, seeds, salad vegetables, chicken and fish have gone down, or ceased altogether, while carbohydrates and red meat have increased.  I have always tried to follow a ‘Mediterranean’ type diet, said to be one of the healthiest in the world, and I can’t do that if I only eat locally.  I am now faced with the dilemma of which is more important, my health or reducing my carbon footprint.  I know which I would choose but for the time being I am going to continue with the ‘diet’ because even though there is a big downside I can’t ignore how much I am learning in the process.   And spring, with its fresh crop of fruit and vegetables will soon be here (I hope).

Now to more cheerful matters.  My grow light experiment has proved to be a success but I have had to buy a heater for the greenhouse in order to continue the growing process.  The downside is that I am probably using far too much electricity keeping the systems going.  I have been unable to measure this so far but intend to get more ‘scientific’ and in the future monitor energy use.  At the moment I have parsley, tomatoes and cucumbers under the grow light; broccoli, lettuce, tomatoes, lobelia and strawberries in the greenhouse; melon, coleus, petunias, tarragon, bay leaf, sweet peas, pansies, peppers and celery in the kitchen awaiting germination. I have also bought a Bean Sprouter and have already harvested Alfalfa, Fenugreek and Red cabbage sprouts.

Bella Rosso lettuce plant in greenhouse (sown 12/01/10 from last years seed)

As you can see, I am trying my hardest to make a success of this diet but, unfortunately, there are no substitutes for some foods that we, in this country, have got used to and which are important for health. 

In trying to reduce my food carbon footprint over the past two months I have so far discovered:-

[a] there are no perfect answers – everything is a compromise.

[b] ‘growing your own’ is one of the most important things one can do.

[c]  it is only when you actually ‘do it’ that the message strikes home.

I am hoping things will be easier as the year progresses and the better weather comes.  I keep reminding myself that this is a great learning experience. 

Bye for now

Aeshna

Be the change you want to see in the world”   -  Gandhi

We had no problem in our house though, in fact our milk turned up several hours EARLY twice that week! It comes from Victoria Dairy in town, which is owned by Bartonsham Farm Dairy in Hereford. It’s delivered to the doorstep in proper glass milk bottles, at 3am usually, from the farm to dairy and dairy to our house, a forty mile journey. They told me today that they had just watched the weather forecast, and when it looked bad, set off earlier in the evening.

It was great, no disruption at all except on the coldest night when we lost one pint because one of the bottles froze solid and cracked open. Even glass bottles aren’t what they used to be are they? When did they become so thin?

The Brecon and Radnor Express Thursday January 14 2010 carried an article by Mr Roger Bright from Knighton about the winter of 1947.

With buses and trains buried in snow drifts up to 30 feet deep, ports frozen and towns cut off by snow, food supplies were running perilously low in most parts of the country, but as 78 year old Roger remembers, Radnorshire emerged relatively unscathed.
“Most of the farms in the county were being supplied with food and fodder by helicopter during that winter but in the towns, surprisingly , produce arrived by train as did the post on a daily basis via the old mail trains, nothing seemd to stop them coming through.
The milkman who had a dairy at the bottom of his road used to walk around Knighton carrying his milk and people used to hold their jug up at the door for him to fill up.
We also ate lots of eggs as people bought them in the summer when they were cheaper, cooked them and stored them in izing glass for the winter.
There were also two bake houses in Knighton at the time and the staff walked around the town delivering baskets of bread to residents on a daily basis.”

There’s such a lot we can learn from the past in those few sentences; especially about the Heart of Wales train line, from Swansea to Shrewsbury, which has stations at Llandrindod and Knighton. Could we get produce delivered by train if the lorries and tankers stopped? At our Transition town meeting this week, we heard how a group called Calon Cymru have a vision of a new agricultural and woodland economy for the necklace of towns along the Heart of Wales line – and how boxes of smoked fish are actually being delivered along this railway from producer to restaurant for the £3 price of a ‘dog’ ticket.

I haven’t managed to buy any milk from a Powys dairy herd as yet, though they do still exist, just about. Forty years ago the Victoria dairy here in Llandrindod was independently owned, got its milk from Radnorshire herds, and delivered six rounds – now they are down to two, and are wholly owned by Bartonsham’s in Hereford – the coming of the supermarket in the eighties was one of the problems; at first they took the local milk from Victoria Dairy, then sudenly cancelled their order with one week’s notice.

To end on an optimistic note; micro dairies startups have got into the news, and the Food Programme last Sunday was devoted to the subject. Here is a good article The Real Milk Club,WHY WE SHOULD WELCOME THE AGE OF THE MICRO-DAIRY? about all the benefits of small scale milk production.

On Tuesday (12th) went shopping for butter, cheese and milk. Couldn’t find anything produced in Powys in any of the shops but J O Davies’ in Llandrindod had butter and cheese from Carmarthenshire and Pembrokeshire so that is what I bought. Amazingly, I found some white wine produced in Montgomeryshire in the same shop but at £11.99 a bottle reluctantly had to leave it where it was. Nice to see it there, though. I will probably try to make my own later on in the year. I wonder if there is a recipe that produces a nice, not too fruity, medium-dry white wine? That would be ideal.

Today (12th) I started my grow light experiment. I sowed 6 lettuce seeds left over from last year (haven’t bought this year’s yet) after checking over the past couple of days that the temperature is suitable for seed germination. Apparently the time to put the seedlings under the grow light is when they show through the soil. Once my first batch are through I will sow a few more so that hopefully I will have a succession of lettuce plants for salads. If this little experiment works I will do things on a bigger scale and try peppers, tomatoes etc. I will have to get a small heater for the greenhouse for when the seedlings have to be moved in there but, I assume, things like cabbages, cauliflowers and broccoli can be moved straight into the garden after hardening off.

What joy ! On the 17th three of my six seedlings put in an appearance but having used last year’s seeds this may be all I get. Once they are erect and have thrown off the seed case I will put them under the grow light. Hopefully they will thrive.

More news next time,

Aeshna

“ Be the change you want to see in the world” – Gandhi

Things are hotting up – literally ! I ordered a grow light over the Internet on the 4th and it arrived on the 7th which I considered to be pretty good considering the foul weather conditions we are experiencing at the moment. I have set it up in an old white melamine covered wardrobe in my spare bedroom and tested it to make sure it doesn’t emit so much heat that it melts the wardrobe !! It appears to be perfect. I am able to maintain a fairly constant temperature of 62 F (slightly more when the central heating is on) which should be OK for growing seedlings, I think. Once the snow clears and I can get to my compost I will trial a few pots of seeds and see how I get on. I am a little concerned that using this may result in a bigger carbon footprint than if I bought my lettuce etc from Spain but I don’t know how to measure and compare so, for now, will just cross fingers and hope.

I am finding the Powys Diet very easy to maintain but only because I have so much food stocked in the freezer. It would be far more difficult if I was having to buy food from day to day. This week my total food bill has been £9.28 so it is cheap as well. All I have bought are the basics – flour, butter, tea, milk and margarine – and all I have had to give up so far is wine and the salads referred to previously. I have to confess that the basics this week were bought from the local supermarket and were not sourced in Powys but this was because the snow covered streets and pavements made it difficult to shop around. I will do better next time.

Thinking ahead is something I have found to be very important and preparing meals in advance is vital. This week I have made enough rissoles to last for 4-6 meals, I made a large batch of crumble topping to use on my fruit in the freezer for puddings and I also made some bread rolls and bread. I am also, and I say this reluctantly in case I am thought of as being completely off my head, saving the water from my steamed vegetables to use in stocks so that I don’t have to buy stock cubes in the future. Where will it all end ?

Bye for now
Aeshna

“ Be the change you want to see in the world” – Gandhi

Visited Llanidloes yesterday. Amazingly I found the locally grown potatoes I was looking for and bought a sack which I shared with 2 friends who are becoming interested in the Powys Diet project but who are not yet converts.  The potatoes were ‘Wilja’, cost £5 for the sack and were grown ‘somewhere near Welshpool’.  As Welshpool itself is 31.8 miles as the crow flies from Llandrindod the potatoes fulfilled the 40 mile rule I have set myself.  I am calculating my distances using www.infoplease.com/atlas/calculate-distance.html

Looking for more locally grown vegetables in Llanidloes was disappointing.  The shop where I bought the potatoes also had some cabbages grown ‘somewhere near Newtown’ but the vegetable stall in the market hall contained only vegetables the proprietor had bought from wholesalers in Birmingham, the shop near the Traveller’s Rest had a few swedes and parsnips grown near Llanidloes but they were rather small and the vegetable shop run by or on behalf of the Powys Growers Group had nothing that was locally grown and I was told that this is how it is at this time of the year. On the way home I called at the Wholefood Shop in Rhayader but there were’nt any fresh fruit or vegetables – just pre-packed stuff.  The only thing I could find in the shop from Powys was bottled apple juice from the Brecon area.

I’m still eating the majority of my food from my freezer which contains mostly things I grew last year – apples, plums, beans etc, and food items I have prepared in bulk eg meat dishes and soups, so things haven’t been too difficult so far.  Once my freezer items have been used up I will be even more dependant on locally grown produce.  At the moment I am just looking for local foods when mine have run out.  I now need to start looking for flour and butter and my Xmas wine supply has also run out so I now have to decide whether to become TT and drink water or learn to like apple juice!  I believe wine is produced somewhere in Powys but I don’t suppose it’s the cheap plonk I usually consume.

I have also researched indoor plant growing systems so that I can get my salad ingredients started early. I’ll spare you the details of the search but I am pleased to record that I have ordered a light system which doesn’t seem too complicated or too expensive.  Once I get it up and running I hope it will enable me to produce strong, healthy plants, such as lettuce, weeks in advance of those I would normally be able to grow.  If all goes well there might even be some spare plants to pass around to my friends.  Yes, I know the system uses electricity but hopefully one day it will run off solar power.  One step at a time !

I’m really enjoying this challenge.  Speak to you soon.

Aeshna

“ Be the change you want to see in the world”   -  Gandhi

Next time I’ll try without egg, because having uncooked eggs in them I think means I need to store them  cool and dry and eat them quick.

The taste test
I couldn’t resist trying  some straight away this morning for breakfast – why not?  I boiled a handful in water with some sea salt, drained, ground some nutmeg on top and  stirred in a generous spoonful of honey -oh joy!   have just invented myself a great quick hot breakfast.

Talking of breakfast: I haven’t found any grains grown in Powys yet, although I know it is grown, for animal feed. Perhaps I should go down to the feed merchants next.  I am pining for porridge

I was just about to weaken, and eat an OOC [out of county] breakfast ; porridge from organic oats milled by Morn Flake in Cheshire ( some Morn Flake oats may be grown in  Shropshire, but they just say “Most of our grain is ‘contract grown’ on specially selected farms throughout the United Kingdom”)

I have been wondering how  hard would it be  to make my own ‘breakfast cereals’?  Perhaps I could try popping a  few grains in the popcorn machine and see if I can get puffed wheat / oats / barley? Could be rather high energy process  though, and  I still need to find some grain grown in Powys first!

Interesting facts from Wikipedia

John Harvey  Kellogg and his brother Will Keith Kellogg started the Sanitas Food Company to produce their whole grain cereals around 1897, a time when the standard breakfast for the wealthy was eggs and meat, while the poor ate porridge, farina, gruel, and other boiled grains.

[Hmm, so cornflakes were invented  in the Victorian era, the beginning of the Oil age!]

John Harvey Kellogg was an especially strong proponent of nuts, which he believed would save mankind in the face of decreasing food supply. Though mainly renowned nowadays for his development of corn flakes, Kellogg also patented a process for making peanut butter and invented healthful, “granose biscuits.”

[the mere mention of peanut butter makes me wonder if peanuts could be grown in polytunnels here - they need five months of warm weather and equivalent of over 20" of rain - I saw them in the Eden Project rainforest biome]

Food miles and footprints?

flour; It is organic and  stone ground, and  milled in Powys.  it isn’t from Powys wheat [see above; does anyone know where you can get  wheat in Powys?] . The Bacheldre Water Mill website just says “Using the best quality grains often sourced from the UK”,  Purchased in Vans Good Food Shop

eggs;  free range organic eggs, with dark brown shells and proper yellow yolks,   from just up the road  from the Ddol farm in Llanbadarn Ffynnedd. Purchased   from the Spa shop in Middleton Street, Llandrindod

salt; Halen Mon organic pure white sea salt flakes from Anglesey. Purchased in Vans Good Food Shop

honey; organic local honey, from beekeeper  near Brecon. Purchased in Vans Good Food Shop

nutmeg; ground from a whole nutmeg in my kitchen, therefore  minimum processing and packaging , but it probably came from the Banda islands in Indonesia! So that nutmeg is really precious.  At least it keeps for years, and doesn’t lose its flavour in the cupboard  like the dried stuff.

Happy breakfasts

Di Laughing

Quite apart from the footprint, I am anticipating a year of food enjoyment and discovery;

• eating more fresh and wholesome  food,
• eating with the seasons,
• brushing up on my cooking and preserving skills,
• remembering all the good food we had in local shops before supermarkets were invented,
• doing some detective work to find who is growing what in Powys nowadays,
• finding the new food pioneers who are trying out what else  we could grow here.

I have taken stock. This is what I have already

• in garden: small amounts of greens, broccoli, herbs, overgrown leeks, carrots and parsnips,
• in freezer:runner beans,
• in cupboard: my own jam and bottled fruit, a handful of dried beans and some sloe gin.

Also I am going to “allow” myself food from another county if I went there for another reason; so that brings in these goodies I bought from a farmers stall in Tenterden  Kent, (my home town)  on Christmas eve

• box of juicy Cox’s Orange Pippin  apples  (scrumptious, the taste of my childhood),
• a kilo of sweet chestnuts

So what’s in the shops? On Friday 1st january 2010 in Llandrindod I found there was

• lamb and beef from Hundred House
• local wild  rabbit,
• pork from Kerry also home made sausages and shop cured  bacon
• free range organic eggs from Llanbadn Ffynedd
• honey from Brecon
• strong white, wholemeal and maltgrain flour from Bacheldre Mill.

All very tasty, and nutritious, especially as I decided to  “allow” myself spices because Ghandi said countries should not import or export any food  except spices.  [ I think; but I cant find the quote! does anyone out there know it?]

It’s great to have a running partner on this challenge, Aeshna. Good luck to us both, and Happy Eating

Di Laughing

*I nearly forgot: I’m also going to allow myself tea, so long as its Fairtrade,  I just can’t see myself giving that up easily. Coffee and chocolate will be very hard too, but I’m going to try to cut them right down, and only Fairtrade.

I have always made my own soups utilising whatever is to hand so this won’t be too onerous a task.  I still have a few cartons of home-made leek and potato soup in the freezer and after Christmas I used the turkey and other left-overs to make a further batch of 11 cartons of ‘vegetable/turkey’ soup.  These, together with my home-made bread should see me through lunchtimes for the next two weeks.  As someone who buys in bulk whenever possible, I have a good stock of onions and carrots with which to make my next batch – carrot and coriander possibly?

Bread and soups stockpiled for start of Powys Diet

My stock of potatoes is running low so I think my task for the coming month will be trying to find stocks of locally grown potatoes (ie, within a 40 mile radius of Llandrindod).  At the same time I will concentrate on buying and sowing seeds for my spring salads.  I don’t usually start this early in the year but as ‘growing my own’ will be my main source of salad vegetables in the future I am going to have to be bold and experiment with methods which will allow me to harvest things earlier.  There will probably be a few disasters and many mistakes on the way but who cares, it will be fun trying to do things differently.

Talk to you again soon.

Aeshna

“ Be the change you want to see in the world”   -  Gandhi