Twelve hunter-gatherer members of the Slow Food Cotswold convivium met yesterday at Daylesford Organic Farm School, for a food foraging tour around the Daylesford estate with Tim Field, the farm’s Environmental Scientist. On a brilliantly sunny day, we all assembled inside the beautiful eco-glasshouse where the Farm School is housed.
In front of us stretched the award winning kitchen garden, its raised wicker beds overflowing with borage, borlotti beans, courgettes, parsley, cabbages and cornflowers. Around us, planed timber floor, Cotswold stone seating, pale wooden benches and glass walls set the mood for a day immersed in exploring, finding and picking the very best that nature and the season had to offer. Out of the grass roofed building, past buzzing bee hives and ruby red Discovery apples in the heritage orchard, Tim explained the order of the day, and we began our walk, through the farm, and out onto the fields beyond. The Daylesford heritage orchard has a total of 100 legacy apple trees dotted around the organic farm school, and they are pollinated by the very bees that provide the estate with honey. All around us, a wide horizon: scarecrows, fields of organic vegetables, farm buildings and tractors.
En route we stopped to identify and examine hawthorn berries, rosehips, spindle berries, hazelnuts and sloes. Tim had laid crayfish traps along various narrow sections of the river Evenlode that run through the estate. Sure enough, he pulled trap after trap to reveal redclaw signal crayfish clutching the bait. We were told how this invasive breed of crayfish is dominating British waters to the demise of native crayfish. Here was lunch, sustainability and bio-diversity on one plate.
The highlight of our walk was a huge flood plain which Tim has created by blocking up the land drains and allowing the wild flower meadow to flood during the winter. This creates a 9 inch reservoir effect which attracts wading birds, wild fowl, otters and semi-acquatic plants. During the spring, the water level is reduced and the flood plain then becomes a rich pasture for sheep. Snipes flew overhead, and we saw herons and kingfishers, many birds using the thick hedges as nesting sites. Crab apples, field maples, teasels and wild grasses punctuated the talking points on our trail back to base, Tim pointing out the forests where wood anemones and wild garlic carpets the ground in spring. His bright enthusiasm for ecology and the native fauna is infectious, and his knowledge of every nook and cranny of this Cotswold land is encyclopedic.
Once back into the farm school’s eco-building, two pots of salted hot water provided a sumptuous supper of crayfish, spaghetti with a sorrel, Parmiggiano and hazelnut pesto, followed by the farm shop’s breads and damson jams. Our pudding was a delicious, wobbly crown of damson and sloe gin jelly with organic, home-made clotted cream. No one moved from the supper table till the last morsel had been cleared, laughter and chatter resounding around our little glass haven. We had learned so much in such a fleeting afternoon.
Our next gathering here will be a Slow Food meringue bake-off in October: my competitive juices are flowing already.
For foraging walks and all courses at Daylesford Organic Farm, visit the website www.daylesfordorganic.com. To join Slow Food, visit the website www.slowfood.org.uk.
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