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  • From: "Lisa Rollens" <rollens@fidnet.com>
  • To: "permaculture" <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Fw: [oeffadirect] How I lived off the land
  • Date: Fri, 13 Jan 2006 12:44:32 -0600


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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  • [permaculture] Fw: [oeffadirect] How I lived off the land, Lisa Rollens, 01/13/2006

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