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Bounty of the hedgerow

In the hedgerow this year are an abundance of autumnal fruits like blackberries - the fruit of the thorny avaricious weed that is the bramble. 

A couple weeks ago, my lad Radek and I went just five hundred yards from our house to pick blackberries. As a part of the essential tool kit, I took my very special (amazing) walking stick made by my very good friend Simon Grant-Jones, U.K.  champion blacksmith, and a milk carton adapted for blackberry-ing ....really all ewe need for a successful day out.;-)

Radek had his own cut of a plastic milk bottle, but his picking technique consisted of mostly “one for the pot, most in his mouth”.

The requirements for blackberry-ing (in addition to the fine walking stick) are, an immunity to nettle stings (as when you find brambles, you inevitably find nettles), and an eagle eye out for the bramble thorns. 

Be prepared for the fact that the best fruit are totally out of reach, hence the need for the stick. You’ll find also, that as you pull that lovely group of perfectly ripe fruit, unless ewe are lucky and can put your adapted milk carton under the ripe fruit to catch them, the best of them will fall on the floor into a really inaccessible place.

Also, as you let the branch spring back into place, the fruit you missed that were obscured by a bunch of leaves, will always look better than the fruit you just picked.

After you’ve spent an hour or two in the middle of a tangled mess of thorny brambles, the rewards of a blackberry and apple pie or crumble are second to none.  Without doubt the most rewarding and enjoyable pudding ever. Sat round the table with the kids eating you’ll find it even better with a bit of custard or fresh cream. 

Those of you in towns and cities will probably find this process just as easy as I did, and if not this year, try it the next as the relentless bramble takes hold of any ground given half a chance.

Food: cooking and sharing

Although people still say they don't have time to cook proper food, there are many pleasures they miss.

Food shared is food loved, whether it be simple buttered bread or something a bit more adventurous. Having the crack around your meals makes the cook happy to share the fruits of their labour, and enables the others gathered round the table to talk, eat and share common bonds.I think that the more we can make it more fashionable, sexy or whatever it takes to push food, cooking and sharing further up everybody's list of priorities, then the better off we all will be. 

Sometimes it's just the fear of failure that some people see as a good and valid reason to keep going back to the ready meal or the take away. It's up to the Do's to do what we can to help the Won't Dos and Can't Do's.

It may have sparked controversy but Jamie's campaign is along the right lines: big screen TV's are always less important than Food.

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Rubbish

Read an article recently in the Guardian. It hinted that the fall in UK self-sufficiency doesn’t matter. If this was indeed the intention of the article, it is in my opinion, a rubbish statement to make.

Food production matters. What we aren’t growing, we aren’t adding to the global pot. The reporter’s argument was that since it's a global market and we do import food, the declining domestic numbers/percentages don't matter. But declining production absolutely does matter. The more high quality food we produce, the more high quality food we can contribute to the global pot for others (i.e. other countries and human beings). Rant over.

Seriously, though, we have to understand that a selfish view of food production and consumption is not acceptable. There is a bigger picture which we need to deal with together. By together, I mean globally as well as domestically. For example, the European Union was set up as a single market with a policy for this self same issue. It's called the Common Agricultural Policy (the clue is in the name).  I agree it isn’t working exactly how it should. 

Finally, please don't demean farmers and the important work they do by implying food is just like steel or glass, as it is way too important and precious to be treated like just another commodity.