Vitha Shepard, Riverford Farm.

I arrived at the Riverford Field Kitchen during the morning food prep. The blackboard was being updated with the lunch offer, and some leeks were char–grilling, making me wish that lunch was not a distant figment of my imagination. Cauliflowers were getting the machete treatment during a conversation about whether the green was edible or even tasty. I wanted to join in on the side of the affirmative camp, but I saw that the green leaves would not make the cut and were duly relegated to the compost heap.
I was struck by the overall quiet of the environs – small family groups were milling around, readying themselves to take a guided tour to the sound of Guy Watson’s voice, and there was a hub of activity around the kitchen

Elsewhere, peace reigned. There seemed to be a total lack of anything motor or mechanical, and I knew there was a frenzy of low pitched activity on the insect front. Butterflies were everywhere and the insect cohort of the workforce was well on with their daily tasks. Just as it should be on an organic farm.
Enjoying a brief respite from my back injury I too took the tour around Riverford.

Guy Watson intently guided me through each field of produce explaining the crop cycle and highlighting the highs and lows of particular produce. I learned a lot during my walk – badgers are partial to squash, and weeds are not seen as pests to annihilate with noxious chemicals. Indeed, they grew alongside some crops, with no apparent harm to the quality or quantity of the expected yield.
I was grateful for a dock leaf growing alongside some nettles that had pounced, as they do, and viciously stung my arm. They soothed the redness, and I marched onwards, taking stock, listening and watching.
On my return to meet Vitha Shepard at the Field Kitchen, I had a head full of questions. I had seen the fruit and veg but was intrigued as to how 45,000 customers received an organic box each week, some as far away as London. This was not the pick your own farm of my youth, so no one was in the fields filling their trugs with tasty wares to throw in the back of the car to cook up for tea.

So, how was it all done, and how was it done in sympathy with the environment?

Riverford proudly boasts a field to table lead time of just two days, infinitely superior to mainstream supermarkets, so the freshness is a given with this kind of box scheme.
Somewhat sceptically I wondered how it all got moved around. I had followed a convoy of Sainsbury’s lorries on the M5 and was surprised to see a Riverford lorry of the same magnitude turn off in front of me up the lane to Riverford. Food miles passed uneasily through my mind.

Vitha was swift to allay my fears.

Riverford has worked tirelessly with Exeter University to study in great depth its carbon footprint and its effect on the ethos of its business
“We want to offer a saner alternative to supermarkets without becoming like them.”

Nothing is air freighted. Absolutely nothing.

I asked about staples like tomatoes that appear on our tables year round. I had read Guy Watson’s take on the wasteful idea of producing second rate hot house tomatoes on site. The Exeter team unanimously concluded that it is less carbon wasteful to road freight them from Southern Spain when they cannot be picked on site.

Even the exotica that comes from their Ugandan partnership comes by sea. Vanilla is dried and so is the pineapple, using the respected preserving methods of our grandparents to adhere to their strict credo.
Riveford has an additional three farms in Yorkshire, Hampshire and Peterborough that slot into the web of supply. All four work in partnership with neighbouring farmers to meet the ever growing demand for their boxes.

A farm has additionally been acquired in the Vendée region of Western France, its aim to provide earlier produce, due to the milder climate in the region. Again, lorries will bring the produce to the UK, measuring faithfully up to the stringent standards that Riverford have set themselves.
Riverford has four farm shops in the area, which expand the offer to customers to provide meat, dairy and a wide range of other locally sourced produce, affording their more local clientèle the ability to reduce the food miles on many other comestibles.

They have strong links in the local community. They are the school meal provider for the local primary school and run a Young Farmer’s Club for the pupils.
They visit the farm weekly, tend a plot of land and see the growth cycle from seed to harvest, thus raising awareness of this vital process from a very young age.

Jane Baxter who runs the Riverford Field Kitchen, and the co-editor of the award winning The Riverford Farm Cook Book (Fourth Estate 2008), does cookery demonstrations with them to see how the fruits of their very young labours get onto the table at home.

Jane Baxter’s skill is omnipresent in the Field Kitchen. A mountain of her and Guy’s cookbooks are snapped up by satisfied eaters, and there are a half dozen well thumbed copies to read during lunch if you are so inclined. It is crammed with recipes and ideas for the Riverford box contents. Not satisfied with this, the weekly newsletter supplies further seasonal ideas, and there is a good selection of recipes on the website. Waste, so scorned by the intelligent eater is also touched on, where ideas for using up the last remains of the weekly box.

Food this good should never be wasted. I seriously doubt it is.

Lunch is a set meal affair, providing on the day of my visit chicken and no less than five vegetable dishes. One could glibly think that this was a token gesture to the “Five a Day” mantra that most of us hear in our sleep these days.

Incorrect.

Each dish contained a wide selection of vegetables, providing an ample main course dish for even the most hardened vegetarian. I think my meal gave me nearer fifteen a day, no exaggeration. The desserts were in truth, indulgent and copious, although there was ample evidence of Riverford fruit in at least half of them.

Lunch is served up, school dinner style, with enormous vegetable tureens and homemade bread being passed from eater to eater, all of us desperately trying to be polite and not take more than our fair share. Our parents would have been proud. However, in true canteen style, seconds are very much the order of the day, and the tureens were eagerly passed around a second time.
Dessert was more a first come first served affair and there was no shortage of takers (myself included)
Whilst sipping my organic peppermint tea, I asked Vitha why people chose to buy from Riverford.
“Oh, that’s easy to answer. We surveyed our customers and the resounding reasons are flavour and freshness”.

There is no shortage of this at Riverford.

The operation is not a small one, but it has dovetailed itself into the local communities whilst still allowing customers further afield the delights they have to offer. Riverford, for me, represents the intelligent and moral choice we wish to elicit from our weekly shop, without the confusion of what to choose from supermarket shelves that can so often mislead us. Riverford has taken on the role as our collective conscience and has made all the right decisions for us.

It’s that simple.

Around 40 years by my last calculation.

As a young teen, I kept one that was red that had a key , but it lasted a matter of weeks.
I lost the key, and had to slice the piece of plastic that linked the front and back boards together with a blunt carving knife behind my mother’s back.
It flapped open after that point and seemed to spill my secrets out every time I picked it up.
I threw it in a box of discarded memorabilia at the bottom of my wardrobe and covered it with clothes that I was too lazy to put on hangers.

The thought of writing longhand really filled me with dread after that.
My head and hand worked at different paces and I could never get the words down fast enough on the page which frustrated me.
Moreover, I could never read what I had written due to my appalling handwriting, which in many ways seemed to defeat the idea.

Blogging has changed all that.

I believe a am one of an a legion of readers who enjoy reading diaries and memoirs for leisure.
In fact, I can’t remember reading a novel for a long time.
I love to read about real things, and real people.

I squeezed a novel in recently as our monthly book club was looming large and I didn’t want to be the only kid in the class who hadn’t done her homework.
In truth I enjoyed the book immensely – it was the first of the Inspector Morse novels by Colin Dexter – Last Train To Woodstock.

Even this however had a “real life” context for me as our second home is in Oxfordshire, and I found I love to relate literary context to real life experience.
So yes, I guess I am a realist, which is why I love to read and write about real things.

Anyway, back to the diary…

14th July 2014.

This is a good day to start writing a diary.

It is a national holiday in France, known as Bastille Day in English.
It is a time where friends and family come together, share a meal and a few bottles of wine, and let off a few fireworks at a time I have usually been asleep in bed for some while.

It is a good time to be in France.

I am not in France.

I am in Oxfordshire, and the 7.22 has just sped past our flat window carrying Nick, my husband to work in London.
I feel that already all my Francophile readership has tailed away muttering about this being a complete waste of their reading time.

I can’t say I blame them.

I am spending a week here in our second home as I like to be with my husband as much as I can.
Actually being here helps keep the carnage down in the flat.
Nick doesn’t understand the concept of housework. Or Ironing. Or cooking. Or putting things back where they belong in their rightful place.

“Rightful place” to Nick signifies the table and floor space next to his second-hand Ikea armchair.
He really does put everything he owns down in that one small space.

Most of it anyway.

He also has a spill over deposit area on the window sill next to his side of the bed.

That’s pretty crammed too.

Keen to prove his domesticity, he uses a Sainsbury’s Bag For Life for his dirty washing.
He keeps that by the side of the bed and not by his armchair, which, after more than a quarter of a century of living together, I see as a definite step in the right direction.

Things are looking up on the housework front.

When he met me last Friday at Reading train station, he seemed a tad dishevelled and tired.
He informed he had worked from home (true) and that he’d had to fit in the housework around his work (very untrue).
We shall, reader, overlook the fact that he’d had around 20 days prior to last Friday to “do” the housework.
In truth he tried to make sure a first visual experience for me entering the flat would not incite divorce, and to be fair, he did do that.

But, despite the efforts he made, it meant that I spent the next 2 hours cleaning up before I deigned to sit down.

But, that was then, and this is now.

Bastille Day will have to come and go without me this year.
It is the first year in the last ten that I have been away from France on this special day.
In truth though, it is a special day if you are French in my book.
Taking part in another nation’s festivities is great fun and I have done so for many years.
It’s just not the same.

We try to celebrate Guy Fawkes Night on 5th November each year, depending on if we have managed to source some fireworks for the event.
Mugs of home-made soup, hot dogs, baked potatoes and burgers around a huge fire with a straw man atop wearing a pair of faded Levi 501’s, a straw hat, and a lilac fleece given to you by a distant aunt is where it’s at for me, and brings out your inner child.

It makes for hard explaining to the neighbours though, especially when you have invited a few of them over, and they walk through the garden gate to see you eating outside in freezing temperatures, with a pagan effigy burning in the far corner of the garden.

It does get a bit tricky too when you start explaining that the dude on the bonfire wearing the said lilac fleece in fact represents a Catholic being burned by Protestants…….it’s just easier not to invite them round really, as they end up thinking you are stranger than they ever thought you were.
I would add however that we are very sporting about all the guillotine business and knitting….

But that was 8 months ago, and a diary is about today.

I should close by saying that I have started to write this very early in the morning, so the 14th July has not yet really happened in the true sense of the word.

I am guessing by this, that the polished diarist would write up their day at the end of it and not at the beginning.

This diary business is going to take some getting used to……..

I spent the last four days at the Hay Festival.

Given its location in the heart of Wales, it is not a venue for the faint hearted. Bad weather is an iconic part of Hay, as is Pimms, copies of the Telegraph and the constant whirr of animated chatter.

As in previous years we were duly rigged out for the wet and cold and treated the mud as a regular fixture of the entire event.

Overall, there was the perennial air of a large event organised by artistic people. That is to say that there is a lot left to the imagination when it comes to efficiency. A polite confusion rules the day with people somehow or other scurrying to their venue on time and enjoying their respective events despite the mayhem that pervades the site.

For those who have not yet been to Hay or a literary festival, you may have the same initial trepidation that I did when I went for the first time five years ago.

Let me elaborate.

When I first attended Hay, I went for one day only with the main event being a converstation with Stephen Fry. Amidst the plethora of talk shows back in the day I feared the worst.
I imagined a scenario like something from the Johnathan Ross Show: As member of a live (or TV ) audience,I would be ushered in to watch some luminary talk about their latest book, film or life event, while they share flaccid in-jokes with the interviewer, leaving us (the audience) with the sensation that we were looking into a party with our faces pressed against the window -excluded and uninvited other than to marvel from a distance, and clap when prompted by a man with a large cue card.
I had grown to hate these narcissistic exhibitions as the guest and for that matter, the host seemed to have lost track of the reason they were on air, which was to entertain the audience , and not so spend an hour or so slapping each other on the back praising their respective mediocrity.
To my relief, I enjoyed my first day, and when it came for the Stephen Fry event, I sat, trasfixed as he and his interviewer took us through the ABC of his life. At every twist and turn, the audience was fully included, everything was shared as if we were all sat in a large circle, communing in one unique experience.

Yes, Mr Fry was the at the epicentre of it all,and we the moths around his incandescent flame. We all sat in wonder as he polished his sharply honed intellect like a well worn pair of shoes. The entire experience was a pleasurable one, and I left the auditorium thinking that Mr Fry was a jolly nice chap.

Well that was then and this is now – so, has anything changed?

Our chosen events were this year a truly eclectic mix: Mervyn King,Tony Fadell, P J O’ Rourke, Robin Ince and Rebecca Front were just some of the speakers we saw. Oh yes, and Stephen Fry!
As with my first expericence at Hay, none of the speakers entered into the exclusive conversations I dread, but more opened up the book that is their life, sharing some of their secrets from the pages, and baring their imperfections as well as their triumphs.
Mr Fry entred the auditorium late having arrived only minutes earlier, out of breath and a little shaken. He continued like a true professional but I felt that his unease stayed with him all day. I saw his talk later on Shakespeare and detected him struggling to bring to mind key facts that eluded him, and here and there he made slight quips to excuse this very human trait.

How very honest of him.

Ms Front likewise transmiited to her audience her fear of flying, train travel, tunnels and lifts, exposing herself to possible criticism by telling all about her cognitive therapy and sharing its ups and downs with us, along with her daughter who was sitting in the front row.
Robin Ince, bounded around the stage as if his feet were on fire , taking us through an anecdotal journey of some aspects of his life. He referred to a death in his family and to the fact that he no longer drinks.

Bold statements from those who ply their trade by entertaining us.Lesser mortals would fear expsosing such chinks in their armour.

It would have been so much easier to take the “Look at me,I’m really great!” route. After all, we had all paid our entrance fee into the circus tent, so they would have been able to do pretty much anything they wanted with us.

But they chose not to.

They were searingly honest, empathetic with our questions and downright bloody professional from the first enunciated word to the end. We loved them all the more for their foibles and imperfections as for those magical minutes, they were as we were,ordinary people talking to others about thier lives, warts and all.

I am a devotee to the festival and will go for as long as they stage it. I will overlook the inherent ignorance of the few who push past, walk over your feet and try and jostle in front of you by brandishing a dangerously poised golfing brolly. I will forgive the lady who admonished me for sitting on the end of the row as it made it difficult for her to be seated. Despite the fact I am disabled, I was apparently not allowed to do that, not in her eyes anyway.
I shall try and forget the dozen or so officials who tried to oust me from the auditorium despite the fact I was about to see the next speaker in a few minutes.

“We have to empty the auditorium between shows” was their stolid and unimaginative mantra
When I tried to explain I was unable to carry all the things my party had left behind, they weakly pointed to chairs a long way off just outside the doors as if they provided the solution to the dilemma.
No offer of help came to carry the items and then house manager tried to eject me as a last resort.
As a last retort I a shouted at her, very loudly and that seemed to bang the message home.
I have decided not to forgive her, and may even pen a complaint to the organisers, who would doubltess be amazed they had overlooked my needs and others like me.

What poor service from a supposedly enlightened group of individuals.
Never mind, we can all hope that things improve on these fronts and that the other thoughtless individuals will try a little harder next time.
They may even consider not having a disabled car park with no firm parking base, forcing those who are most precarious on their feet take their lives in their hands by walking on one of the most unstable surfaces known to man to gain access to the site. It was interesting to see that all the official cars were parked on a hard base, though I suspect that was to preserve the patina on their new riding boots and wellies rather than to assist the less able boded among them.
Come on Hay people – get with your programme and act as informed as you pretend to be. If I can grapple around Hay with my walking sticks, you should be doing your damndest to make sure my epxerience is as good as the next man’s!

I love my Aga – everyone knows that. It’s an undeniable fact.

It is at the heart of my kitchen and warms the house gently in the colder months here in France.
However, there comes a time of year when it starts to take on a furnace like quality and overheats both the kitchen and us.

I think we reached that point last night. We went to bed and we were forced to open one of the large windows on our first floor as the heat from the Aga was creeping up the stairs to our open plan bedroom and slowly was beginning to gently poach us. The central heating has been off for a while and I have been giving the Aga a day by day appraisal whether to switch it off or not.

Last night the dial was switched to zero for the coming months of summer, and we descended this morning into an airy cool kitchen – windows wide open and shutters tightly closed. Dark, shady and so so cool.

Like many of my fellow villagers I am lucky enough to have a “cuisine d’ete” where I can cook outside the house to make sure the entire house is protected from the heat of unnecessary cooking heat emanating from my gas cooker which is also a feature in my kitchen.

I have decked out my compact summer kitchen with a two ring burner, a halogen oven, a slow cooker, loaned from my Mum plus one or two other gadgets, all of which get an airing during the warmer weather.

So, I have yet to swap the larger cooking pans from the gas cooker oven to the now cooled Aga ovens, check the gas bottle to ensure it is full, and we are ready to go on to summer time cooking.
Unless it rains or the temperature suddenly drops of course…

26 April 2014
The Woman Writer
Overseas news
From Little Acorns
by Susan Elkin

New overseas member Helen Aurelius-
Haddock, who is registered as disabled,
moved to the Poitou-Charentes region of
France in 2004 with the help of her brother-
in-law.
‘He suggested that I keep a video diary of
my daily exploits and pitch it as a TV
programme,’ says Helen. ‘Sadly he was
unaware of my severe short-
comings on the “techno” front, but I liked
the idea of sharing my story and decided
to write a blog, which I eventually started in
2008.’
Helen called her blog Haddock I The
Kitchen as it was about food and she
describes herself as ‘an avid foodie’.
Soon she was also writing for a food
magazine called Flavour, a series of pieces
entitled Retro Chefs encapsulating the
work and writings of near forgotten cooks
and cookery writers, using her collection of
old cookery books as her main resource.
For the same title she interviewed
Masterchef winner Mat Follas, writer
Josceline Dimbleby and her personal
heroine, Clarissa Dickson Wright.
Then came articles about living in France
for Daily Telegraph, French Property News,
Green Living and a number of local
English language magazines and
newspapers. ‘I offered advice on a range
of issues affecting expats who had taken
the plunge to move to a new
country – healthcare, property,
administrative issues, disputes with
neighbours, schools, and of course
learning the language,’ explains Helen.
Although she has ongoing health issues
and days when she finds work difficult,
Helen is now writing a novel based on her
experience in France. ‘Perhaps I am
playing safe by “writing what I know” but
for a first attempt I think it’s wise. It won’t
be all sunflowers and wine festivals
though,’ Helen says, adding that her book
will explore the themes of loneliness and
isolation – two strong negative forces that
very often force newcomers to France to
uproot and return to the UK.
So just how lonely is it living in France?
‘Despite living in a rural area, I am very
fortunate to have access to a good writing
community,’ declares Helen. ‘My friend
Alison Morton has recently published the
second novel in her Roma Nova series
(Perfidas), Susie Kelly and Karen Wheeler
are both writers based near me, and we
keep in touch via social networking. I also
have friends who run an excellent writing
school, The Circle of Misse, and I am in
touch with a local writers’ group that
includes a number of published authors. I
am also a very active member on the
Survive France Network run by fellow
journalist Catharine Higginson.’
Last year Helen visited China. ‘It took a
mountain of faith, gritted teeth and, of
course, my iron will actually to get up onto
the Great Wall, but it means a great deal
to me to have done so!’ she says

I am not entirely sure of the reason the French call April Fools Day Poisson d’Avril.
I do now feel a stronger affinity with it given my surname, and seeing this mighty beast of a fish recently caught at our local Pescalis in Moncoutant, it made me remember one particular sting I was caught with when living in the UK.
I am a self-declared foodie, there is no denying that. I have certain tastes I like to the exclusion of all others.
One particular combination I adore is coconut and pineapple, and am oft spotted with a trashy looking pina colada, complete with lurid green straw and cerise umbrella, sipping away like there’s no tomorrow.
Imagine then my utter delight one day when flicking though a Sainsbury”s magazine under the “What’s New?” section.
There was a glossy picture of a new fruit they were stocking that had been made from careful botanic manipulation – a cross between a coconut and a pineapple. It had the exterior of a pineapple, and when opened up the flesh next to the outer skin was of pineapple with a soft luscious core of white coconut.
I actually got in the car and drove 24 miles to my nearest Sainsbury’s to buy one, taking the magazine with me.
I can leave you to work out the rest for yourself, as not unsurprisingly, there were no such fruit on sale.
I was bitterly disappointed, and the fact I’d been “had” by an April Fool jape mattered not a jot – I wanted my new hybrid fruit, and that was that.
You will be relieved to know I have long given up the search for this exotic item, but still some days I wistfully dream that someone somewhere is working on such a genetically modified delight.
We can all dream, and I continue to do so.