I’m back to updating The Little Green House. I’m not promising daily updates, but I’ll see how I go. I have missed it. The latest news is that we have given up our allotment. We’ve instead decided to move our vegetable growing to our own garden, to allow for easier care of the plants, and some other projects that have come up and are taking up more of my time. We have scaled back our vegetable growing accordingly, but are still growing garlic, tomatoes, cucumbers, butternut squashes and potatoes at home, as well as plenty of fruit. We have two apple trees, a pear, a green gage, a kiwi, a cherry tree, raspberries, blackberries, grapes and strawberries. I’ve also made sure that I source more of my bought vegetables from very local sources as a way to assuage my guilt. My hunt has delivered some unexpected treasures and led to my meeting some amazing people.
I ordered a ham from a farm in the next village for our Christmas lunch, and will drive through the fog tomorrow to fetch it. Peter is unable to contemplate a meat-free Christmas, but in our effort to reduce our footprint on the Earth, we are having a very local ham and a vegetarian Mushroom Wellington (from The Cranks Bible) instead of our usual wild boar and ham. I will also be stopping in at the local farm shop for our sprouts, carrots and parsnips that will be roasted together, and potatoes for our roasties. Unfortunately there will have to be a trip to the supermarket too (we don’t have any local grocery shops left in our village, apart from a tiny Co-op) to stock up on booze, Green & Black’s chocolate, and other bits and pieces for the weekend and Christmas Day. Mental note to self: don’t forget the loo paper - recycled, of course!
As wild fish stocks wane and over-fishing becomes a real concern it seems ridiculous to be trying to increase the amount of fish in our diet, but that is what I’m trying to do. Call it instinct, call it desperation, call it anything you like really. The fact is that I "feel" that we don’t eat enough fish, and because we have cut meat out of our diet so much in the past few years, that we need an alternative, healthy source of protein in our diet. I’m also trying to shift the last few stubborn kilograms of baby-weight from my body now that my "baby" is well over two years old. Sigh!
I’ve been taking stock of the supermarket fish counters in our area over the past few weeks. I don’t even bother going into Morrisons anymore because they have no sustainably caught fish. Sainsbury’s offer some MSC certified Pacific caught cod and Alaskan wild salmon, as well as line-caught yellow-fin tuna, and it seems that Waitrose fish is all considered to come from well-managed waters or fish farms.
Hmmm! We could really do with a local fishmonger. I haven’t been able to find one in the two years that we’ve been here.There is an article in The Ecologist about traditional fishmongers that is worth a read, and now I must take my leave and scour the net for a fishmonger within a reasonable distance of our little green house. Toodle-loo!
What’s A Rare Breeds Farmer To Do?
I took my children to Burpham Court Farm Park this morning for a little outing. It’s an ideal morning out because it’s so close, the kids love to feed the animals, play and have a picnic, and farmer Bob is full of interesting facts and happy to show the children what he’s doing. I also like to pick up some local non-intensively reared meat for the freezer while we are there.
Our chat with farmer Bob today wasn’t as upbeat as usual. He is a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He has been having problems with the National Trust, who have flooded his land more than 20 times in the past three years by opening its weir gates fully across the Wey Navigation, flooding fields, ruining hay crops so that his cattle are starving and introducing liver fluke to water logged pastures where over 70 sheep died before the parasite was discovered.
The crux of the matter is that farmer Bob, a tenant farmer who has put his heart and soul into conserving rare breeds and educating local children about farming in an environmentally friendly manner is now impoverished, struggling to keep the farm open and as a result of him having taken on the "big boys" and lost is facing having to cover the legal costs of the National Trust and Guildford council, a whopping £400,000. If you’re interested in farmer Bob’s story, read his full account of what has happened here.
