permaculture

["Lisa Rollens" <rollens@fidnet.com>]

Thought some of you might find this interesting.  

Lisa, in the MO Ozarks


----- Original Message ----- 
From: JEROME RIGOT 
To: oeffadirect@oeffa.org 
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 2:07 AM
Subject: [oeffadirect] How I lived off the land


How I lived off the land
Independent, The (London),  Dec 5, 2005  by Rich Cookson
If there's an ancient art to preparing rabbit, I'd like to be in on it. I'll 
spare you the details, but my kitchen looks like something out of a horror 
movie and the rabbit liver has just slipped off the chopping board and on to 
the floor " it's more like Reservoir Dogs than River Cottage. 

Still, food doesn't come much more local than this. My rabbit was shot a few 
fields away and the vegetables were grown just eight miles down the road. The 
delicious, thick, creamy milk that will go into my mashed potato came free 
from a friendly farmer this morning. In a couple of hours, there'll be a 
steaming bowl of delicious and wholly local rabbit stew and mash on the 
table. 

The food we eat is travelling further than ever to get to our plates. A 
recent government report revealed that the food eaten in Britain travelled a 
staggering 30 billion kilometres in 2002. The study, from the Department for 
Farming and Rural Affairs, also found that the amount of food transported by 
lorries has doubled since 1974, and now accounts for a quarter of all miles 
travelled by HGVs in the UK. 

The phenomenal growth of supermarkets, with their centralised distribution 
systems and out-of-town locations, is partly to blame. But they rightly say 
they're only responding to demand: many of us want to eat strawberries and 
tomatoes all year round, without thinking too much about where they come 
from.The report pointed out that each of us now travels an average of 136 
miles a year by car to shop for food, and the combined environmental and 
social costs of all these food miles is about pounds 9bn a year. Launching 
the report, the Sustainable Food and Farming Minister, Lord Bach, said that 
the issue was 'complex and that a range of factors have an effect on the 
overall impacts of food transport, not purely the distance travelled by 
individual products... [but] buying local products has the potential to 
greatly reduce the distance food is transported.' 

So just how local is it possible to go? Styling myself as Somerset's answer 
to Morgan Spurlock " the US film-maker who ate nothing but McDonald's for a 
month and made a documentary about the grizzly consequences " I set out to 
live ultra-locally for two weeks. The golden rule is simple: I can only eat 
food grown, reared or hunted within 10 miles of my house. 

That means forgoing a daunting list of staples including tea, coffee, sugar, 
salt and pepper, oranges, bananas, chocolate, pasta, olive oil and breakfast 
cereals. Would I be able to find enough bread, milk, meat, fruit and 
vegetables to live on " or would I be forced to eat parsnips for breakfast 
and succumb to scurvy? 

Thankfully, I live in the Somerset countryside: with cows munching grass at 
the end of my garden, and winter crops sprouting at the back of my house, it 
seems like a cinch. 

The night before I start, I clear out a kitchen cupboard.There's Tanzanian 
tea, Costa Rican coffee, tinned tomatoes (Italy), prunes (not quite sure why 
I bought those, but they come from France), dried apricots (Turkey), flaked 
almonds (Spain), nutmeg (Tanzania), pasta (Italy), dried lentils (France), 
risotto rice (Italy), sunflower seeds and pine nuts (China), basmati rice 
(India), pudding rice (Italy), couscous (France), soy sauce (which, 
dubiously, claims to come from the Netherlands), capers (Cyprus), olive oil 
(Italy) and an old jar of jalapeno peppers from Spain. At a conservative 
(though completely unscientific) estimate, all of the food in that one small 
cupboard has travelled more than 41,000 miles to get here. That's not far off 
twice the circumference of the earth. 

I'm left with one small jar of local honey and four eggs from a nearby farm 
but a few minutes on the internet gives me some decent ideas about how to 
fill up the fridge. A good starting place is www.bigbarn.co.uk, a fantastic 
website that tells you what's available in your locality. The Soil 
Association's site (www.soilassociation.org.uk) provides helpful tips, too. 

Day One. With only eggs and honey to choose from, breakfast doesn't look too 
appetising. I dissolve honey in hot water, which does little to stop me 
craving the three cups of coffee I drink every morning, but is much tastier 
than it sounds. Alongside a plate of scrambled eggs, it makes a surprisingly 
hearty meal. Armed with a rucksack and a wad of cash, I set off for the 
three-mile walk across the fields to my nearest farm shop. 

The store is suitably rustic and has a fantastic array of vegetables " 
delicious-looking kale, vivid-orange carrots, huge sacks of muddy potatoes, 
knobbly parsnips, eggs, butter, preserves " but most of it comes from 
Oxfordshire or Kent (apart from the peppers, which have been air-freighted in 
from Spain). I opt for three more jars of honey. And 18 eggs, just in case. 

A mile or so up the road, there's a farm that sells decent beef from its 
Aberdeen angus herd. The family has farmed here since 1958 and are happy to 
talk about how they farm and who else might be worth visiting round here. I 
go for a couple of hefty sirloins and some stewing steak. They also knock 
some money off the total price " something you don't get in Tesco. 

And then I hit the jackpot: a huge farm shop in the wonderfully named village 
of Farrington Gurney. The farm shop, called Farrington's, sells fabulous 
vegetables from its 430-acre farm. Tish and Andy Jeffery have farmed here for 
15 years and their philosophy is strikingly simple. 'We want to sell as much 
local food as possible,' says Tish. 'The further food travels, the more it 
loses its nutrients " and I don't see the point in buying vegetables from 
abroad when they are so much tastier if they are grown locally.' 

While the shop does stock some food from overseas, I can get a good range of 
vegetables here (all helpfully labelled with food miles). The shop's butcher, 
too, points me towards its beef (reared within a few miles, he says) and 
locally shot game. Unfortunately, there's no milk (it comes from 20 miles 
away) and the bread, too, is off the list. The butter is also produced out of 
my area, but I desperately need something to cook with and as it's only out 
by a couple of miles I cheat slightly. I emerge with four venison steaks, two 
pheasants, a large bag of potatoes, red cabbage, beetroot, cavalo nero (black 
kale), swiss chard, leeks, fennel, celeriac and two pats of butter. And all 
for pounds 19.73. 

For the next few days I eat remarkably well. I pick the last few apples from 
my garden and stew them with local honey. Breakfast alternates between this 
and increasingly bizarre dishes involving eggs and vegetables (cavalo nero 
omelettes are a particular favourite). Beef stew without seasoning tastes 
rather insipid, but improves with age. The venison is delicious, as is 
steamed green veg. I eat my body weight in potatoes. 

A couple of days later, some friends come round for supper. We eat roast 
pheasant, mashed potatoes, honey-roasted beetroot and kale " all of it local. 
They drink wine while I stick to honey and hot water. 

Towards the end of the week, I find another shop that sells vegetables 
produced at a local market garden. The owner tells me about a local 
cheesemaker, less than a mile from my house. That night's supper is a squash 
from the former, baked with goat's cheese from the latter, washed down with 
honey and hot water. 

By day eight I'm beginning to notice how much extra work this is. Most meals 
are based around meat, vegetables and potatoes, which all take time to cook. 
Without pasta and rice, I'm really stuck for quick lunches. I've also been 
scrupulous about saving fat from the steaks I fry and making stock from any 
leftover bones " both go some way to adding extra taste to my cooking, but 
I'm sorely missing salt, pepper and fresh herbs. Breakfast is also difficult: 
eggs and honey are rapidly losing their appeal and I still can't find any 
milk. Most mornings, I fantasise about toast and strong coffee. 

The following day, I'm working in London. I have breakfast at home but can't 
find anything that I can take with me for lunch and resort to a sandwich at 
Paddington station. I work late and eat on the train that evening too. 

With only three days to go, things start to slip. I succumb to an early- 
morning coffee and start adding salt and pepper to food. From there, it's a 
short step to using dried herbs and (local-ish) bacon when I cook. I may have 
broken my own golden rule a few times, but most of my ingredients are 
thoroughly local " and the difference is remarkable: food simply tastes so 
much better when it is properly seasoned. 

But I certainly won't be rushing down to the supermarket next week: there are 
a couple of partridges and another pheasant in the fridge, and more local 
vegetables than I know what to do with. I'm looking forward to the odd banana 
or two, and some guilt-free coffee, but there's so much good food on my 
doorstep that it seems insane to buy it from anywhere else. I might even 
tackle another rabbit, if someone can show me how to do it. 

Miles better? 

  a..  Half of all vegetables and 95 per cent of fruit eaten in the UK is 
from overseas. 
  b.. Two out of three apples sold in supermarkets are imported, says Friends 
of the Earth " with Tesco the worst offender, sourcing 72 per cent of apples 
overseas. Some had travelled more than 12,000 miles. 
  c.. From 1978 to 1998, the amount of food transported on UK roads increased 
by 20 per cent, but the average distance travelled went up by 50 per cent. 
  d.. Food transport in and to the UK produced 19 million tons of carbon 
dioxide (CO2) in 2002. 
  e.. Transport of food by air has the highest CO2 emissions per ton, and is 
the fastest-growing mode. 
  f.. Buying locally grown and manufactured produce boosts the rural economy. 
For every pounds 10 spent in a local organic box scheme, pounds 25 is 
generated for the local economy, according to the New Economics Foundation. 
This compares with pounds 14 generated for every pounds 10 spent in a 
supermarket. 
  g.. Ingredients for a typical Christmas dinner travel up to 30,000 miles, 
according to the Green Party. 
SOURCES: DEFRA, FOE, GREEN PARTY, NEF

Copyright 2005 Independent Newspapers UK Limited
Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights Reserved.

********************************************************************************************
Jerome F. Rigot 
Visiting scientist 

Scientia Terrae 
Microbial Ecology and Biocontrol Research Program 
Fortsesteenweg 30A 
B-2860 St.-Katelijne-Waver 
Belgium 
+32(0)15-30 55 90 

"As soon as we start doing -we learn how to proceed" -Bill Mollison





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