Sustainable farming

Sustainable farming is the only way for farming, fact. 

It all might feel a bit preachy and a bit "what a bad lot we all are" for not eating sustainably, but even the thought of change is a start.

The opposite of sustainable is Un-Sustainable which we definitely can’t afford, so everyone has to take the metaphorical Bull by the horns and see what can be done. 

The system can’t be changed overnight but at the heart of this matter are without doubt all the current issues - "pig swill", "meat free Mondays", and ironically from me Mr Meat, "eat less meat"..... All this has been voiced many times over and it does indeed start with education, but the conversation must continue within the day to day reality of food consumption and consequently food production.

I heard an agronomist (soil Scientist) say recently that arable soils are lacking in organic matter, and that the soil needs to be cared for and revered, not whipped like an ill treated dog. Good sustainable farming is in all our interests.

Mutton

Read my most recent POST on Borough Market's blog

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.

5 Food Safety Rules

Sloe Gin

It is my duty to tell ewe that this drink sneaks up behind ewe and pounces!

Sloes, the fruit of the blackthorn, are a small, purple, plum-like fruit found wild in hedge rows up and down the country.

There's no better use for them than for making into sloe gin. As a fruit they are dry, bitter and not very appetising but, made into sloe gin it’s like drinking fruity nectar - deceptively alcoholic and perfect for adding a taste of summer to the winter evenings.

The harvesting process is particularly easy but timing is crucial as it is best to harvest the fruit after a decent frost (this breaks the skin and helps with the infusion)..... soon after this the fruit will fall off on its own.

Here's a way of ensuring the fruit gets the frost treatment - pick them a week earlier and put them in the freezer. Remove them after checking that the skin has broken then, leave the fruit gin and some light Muscovado sugar to infuse in something like a Kilner jar for a few weeks, decant the precious liquid and put into bottles. 

Store in a dark cupboard for consumption later to chase away the winter cold. 

Ewe can even keep the used sloes as a bitter cherry for addition to cocktails. My mate Graeme the chicken man said it was "incredible."

Antibiotics resistance

There is an ongoing argument about the state of antibiotic resistant bacteria and as ever the overall picture is a complicated one. 

The worst kept secret in agriculture pharmaceuticals is that prophylactic antibiotics are widely used as a growth promoter and disease inhibitor mostly in pig and poultry production.

Consequently those antibiotics are passed on through the meat to us... not news to us insiders but it in my opinion this fact should be on banner disaster news headlines across the world! 

Can ewe imagine a scenario with your doctor saying “I am sorry that chest infection has no cure”? I can.

Even in the face of little hope, one major start would be to remove antibiotics from agriculture - a difficult thing to achieve, but not an impossible one. To start the change of antibiotic resistance, pork and poultry production would have to be more extensive. We would get lots of advantages from this, like better animal welfare and better quality of meat but it would cost more, so we’d eat less.... Eat less Eat better seems a win win to me.

Happy Kids/Happy Father's

In all the debate about food there is one overriding force for change.......KIDS. Kids are the future of food production and consumption and the easiest way to drive better production systems (we all know that there are many things that need to be changed).

I propose a kind of reverse brain washing, opposite to the techniques that some of the omnipresent burger chains have put to use in the past.

There is nothing better than a child badgering their parents (or the uncles or the aunts or any other elders in their lives) to buy better food (they usually win too!).

Have fun doing food things with the kids this week!

Little Farmersharp at the mincer....