Heaven and Hell

This is short Article I have written for publication elsewhere in January.

Wherever I go, I cannot resist food markets, and so visited five or six in the South West of France while on holiday in October. As a customer of Northfield pointed out, buyers at Food Markets in France actually expect to pay more for their food than they do in Supermarkets. While I don’t advocate that as a principle, it is very noticeable to how great a degree the average food buyer in France demands, expects, and receives a tremendously high standard.

The countryside there is made up of a mosaic of smallholdings. Small herds of beautiful blonde Mirandaise cattle, graze contentedly behind single strands of electric wire, often in and next to vast fields of corn. The corn cobs hang like golden nuggets from the shrivelled stems and leaves of their host plants. They are harvested either entire or stripped of their golden ears. When taken whole, the cobs, complete with ears are loaded back at the farm into tall wood and wire cages where they are dried and stored ready for use to feed the cattle through the winter. Where stripped, the cobs are spat out onto the ground with the shredded stalks. Cattle or pigs or ducks or hens or turkeys might then be grazed on the mixed stubble prior to the remains of the harvest and the grazing being ploughed in ready to start again with a new crop rotation.

The autumn in the Gers was gentle warm and kind to man and beast. Not so back in England sadly.

When I came back, the contrast in pace of life hit home harder than ever before. In one drive from Northfield to Melton I saw more vehicles on the road than I had seen during the whole of the previous two weeks. The land looked less prepared here for the dark season ahead. I cannot compare the media between the two areas as I neither watched TV nor listened to the Radio. I only looked at a local newspaper once. This was a strange experience in itself as the two front page articles were firstly about the higher incidence of road deaths in the Gers compared with every other past of France (strange given the lack of traffic) and, secondly an article about a local well-known Grandfather who took his grandson with his tractor into the woods to show him how to cut logs for the winter. Sadly the old man’s tractor rolled back and killed him. This small sad article, a tribute to the old man, only served to remind me of my own lucky escape some three years ago. I wrote a great deal about my experience. The accident itself, and the extraordinary care which I received from the NHS and other public services, without which I would not be around to tell the tale.

This is a time of year when we all used to make New Year’s Resolutions. Mine must be to finish that writing and to put it to some productive use at last.

The single other greatest contrast, in my little exposure to the media when in France, was how little mention there was of War. As soon as I got back, and ever since, every sense has been bombarded with stories of death of young soldiers, lack of sufficient support and infrastructure. By the time this makes print, who knows what may have happened, but at the moment our government seems like some huge mythical animal, moving slowly towards an inevitable death yet refusing to acknowledge its fate. It chants the same mantra of self-justification, oblivious to life in the real world. The remembrances of Armistice Day had such poignancy this (last) year. Yet they seemed to take place in another world. A world of trenches and naïve anticipation of a short and glorious conflict where we, The Great Britain, would march forward and despatch our enemies quickly and neatly. We remember the sacrifices of those heroes of old. We remember those victims of misguided leaders who basked in glory while sending a generation to ‘The hell where youth and laughter go’. Lets hope against hope that our future leaders will remember the very real hell which week in and week out spews  our youth back at us like evil clockwork.

Jan McCourt

jan@northfieldfarm.com

 

Pastel Blue

We took the road North through Simorre, to Grimont, up around Auch & into Lectoure. Parking just off the main square, slightly down the hillside, it was a short but steep climb back up to the main street and the busy Friday Market. Mainly food, stalls, large & small, strung their slightly random way down the whole length of the street.

The trick of visiting any market for the first time is to walk its whole length, explore each and every corner, visit all its stalls without buying anything. Stop & taste, chat to the stallholders & get to know them a little. Observe how they run their stall & how they relate to other customers. Make a mental note of what impresses & what does not. Then, and only then go back to those that you wish to buy from. That way, not only will you understand the dynamics and atmosphere of the particular market, but also you will not end up kicking yourself for having bought a particular cheese or saucisson when there was a better one a few yards down waiting for your patronage.

Hard work this busman’s holiday so a gentle beer in a bar bedecked with sporting memorabilia and random artwork was needed, followed by a decent but not memorable lunch just off the main drag.

Later, replete & just a little drowsy, I took my boys for a private tour & demonstration at the pastel ‘factory’ which is sandwiched between the train track and a small industrial estate on the outskirts of the town.

www.bleu-de-lectoure.com

The website tells someof the story, but does not really do it justice. It is the story of the humble Woad plant, a weed which when subjected to a combination of processes, turns to a magical blue. A die which secured the fortune for this small area or ‘golden triangle’, as it was known in the fifteenth & sixteenth century. Here, in this spectacularly beautiful mediaeval building I found a description of every young man’s dream. Well one of them.

An essential part of the transformation of the boiled sludge of the woad plant into the remarkable colour which became ‘Royal Blue’ was the need to add urine. So, I kid you not, the original makers of Pastel employed what our pretty french guide called ‘pee-ers’. Apparently the most sought after job in the area at the time was to be one of these pee-ers. Men & boys came from all around to drink as much beer as they could manage and then to pee on the woad. Obviously these specialists were not much good for any other job most of the time, but they were apparently very well paid for their trouble.

So here we had a manufacturing process which involved taking a weed, crushing, boiling, rolling into balls to dry & then waiting 5 or 6 months for the balls to mature. Then all that was left was to get regularly drunk and pee on the broken up balls. This laborious process created a product worth its weight in gold, strictly regulated by law & sought after throughout the known world.

Alchemy?

D’Artagnan Country

For all the recent bitching & moaning about Ryanair, I flew down the other day with my two sons &, despite the feeling of being herded like cattle, the experience was not bad. It seems to me that if one is careful to read all the small print & travel fairly lightly, it all works fairly well.

Having been persuaded to go on my first holiday abroad for several years, I had done little to prepare myself or learn anything about the area in which we would be staying. What little boy does not know the legends of the three musketeers? Whether by written word, by film or by cartoon, the stories come back to life as soon as your hear the mention of  Gascony. It was from here that it all started. D’Artagnan left his home near here around 1630, heading for Paris to find fame, fortune & immortality.

Walk through any of the woods here, and you could so easily be back in those times, even driving around, if you ignore the proliferation of electric fencing and concrete fence posts, very little appears to have changed. France’s least populated rural area has a mediaeval quality to it, especially closer to the Pyrenees which we can see on a clear day and are calling for us to visit in the next few days.

Foie Gras, Armagnac & Prunes are this quiet world’s most famous products. Foie Gras from ducks & geese is available ‘en vente directe’ almost everywhere you look. Some of these farms have not a bird to be seen outside and conjure up the image of the funnel, force-fed birds’ short, dark lives. Others have flocks, large & small scrabbling around outside, ranging freely to different degrees. Similarly, Armagnac is everywhere & equally varying in quality. As soon as you leave Carcassonne there are vinyards to be seen in every direction, but as you reach further south they become more & more scarce until they pretty much disappear altogether. Apparently, Brussels, in its wisdom, some years ago paid the farmers ‘du coin’ to grub out their ancient vines & plough up the land with the result that the price of the wonderful, but variable spirit doubled or more and to some degree another way of life was lost.

I have discovered that combining two of these, Armagnac & Prunes as a dessert makes a near magical dish, especially when served with ice cream. There is even the slightest implication of it being a health food because of the inclusion of the prunes which have never tasted so good in any other company.

You can buy these very Agen prunes from Alex in Borough Market together with the amazing block butter which is produced & eaten here and creamy yoghurts.

The countryside is at once wild & gentle. Above all it is empty at any time of day. All roads seem to lead to the town of Mirande, which we have yet to visit, and the many of the farms have small herd of white cattle known locally as Mirandaise. There are still vast unharvested fields of corn, their stalks long passed from green through yellow to a sad head hangng rusty brown. Some of the farms still have tall clamps made from wire in which the corn cobs are gathered and dried as they are let down into the troughs below as winter feed for the cattle. There are also fields of pink & black pigs, roaming, digging and scratching with the gusto that only pigs can muster. Deer abound and indulge us in brief staring matches before breaking and running away, zigging and zagging to disappear in the woods.

A medium sized eagle perched, dark & brooding on the white concrete entrance post to the memorial to the Maquis not far from where we are staying. As we started the short steep climb up to the memorial itself, the bird, never taking its eye off us, rose from its perch & quickly rose in a series of circles ’til we could barely see it high up in the sky.

Black marble plaques list the names of those who died here & close by. Whole families destroyed in one short three hour battle which was followed by the torture and disfiguring of so many others. The small graveyard of white painted crosses neatly arranged show the names of those who could be identified, others simply show ‘nom inconnu’ and a few, most poignant of all, randomly placed among the others have their Jewishness simply identified by a cross of David. There were many crosses sporting bright fresh flowers, others extra tributes from Maquis remembrance societies from elsewhere. The Jewish marked monuments each had a small stone, barely larger than a pebble placed on its top.

The Rule of Least Remove, Food and Music

The lunch for the Melton & Rutland Conservative Association lunch at Northfield Farm sold out very quickly after tickets went on sale. The obvious draw was Clarissa Dickson Wright as guest speaker, and she did not disappoint.

Her theme was ‘A Life of Honest Food’. Honesty in food remains such a huge issue and for many people a complete mystery.

I received an email the other day which set out the numbers within bar codes showing from which country a particular item originates. China, whose government declared half of it rivers as being too polluted to drink from, supplies some 70% of the fish consumed world-wide. The email showed photos of a Chinese chicken processor sending staff out to collect dead birds from small farms, take them back on bicycles, pluck & wash them in vile, unsanitary conditions & finally die them with a colour rendering their appearance appetizing again. Fish, Chicken & pigs are all capable of thriving to a certain extent in the most vile of conditions.

There is only one way to buy & consume these meats safely. Observe the ‘Rule of Least Remove’. How far removed are you, the consumer, from the producer of the food you eat? Think about it. The fewer steps you are removed from the original producer, the more certain you can be of a product’s honesty and quality.

I suspect the other less obvious draw was a degree of curiosity, not just about Northfield Farm as a venue for such an auspicious event, but also for the opportunity to observe one of the party’s more colourful characters at close quarters. In the event, Alan Duncan proved a charming and very amusing presence and speaker.

It would be fascinating to host a similar gathering for our other major party and to see how appreciative they would be of the food and surroundings.

Our night of music with the Atlantics and Laura Swaine was attended by nearly 100 people. Our next on Friday 13th November with the Hounddogs promises to be even bigger & better. We already have one booking for a party within the party.

Clarissa will be back for our Christmas Fair on 21st November.

Last night I attended a conference dinner at PERA in Melton for the Market Towns debate on surviving the recession.

Our hosts had made a huge effort with the meal and sourced virtually every ingredient from local producers including Northfield Farm. These producers were invited as guests and gave a talk of varying length about their businesses and the food they had supplied. It was a difficult audience to gauge in terms of their genuine interest, but they did clap with enthusiasm after each speaker had finished. At the end of the evening my neighbour shook my hand and told me how much he had enjoyed the event. He made a particular point of saying how interesting he had found the emphasis on the quality and the provenance of the food. ‘Until now’, he said, ‘I did not think I was interested in food. This evening has changed that completely’. The conference organiser had followed the Rule of Least Remove and deserves huge credit for doing so. I think that simple statement was one of the greatest compliments that could have been paid to any of the producers in the room. I, as a food producer cannot conceive of how anybody could fail to be ‘interested’ in what they eat. Yet I must learn that this is so. The challenge therefore for me and other producers is to go out, missionary-like, to convert the disinterested masses. The after dinner entertainment was by the Melton Musical Theatre Company founded 90 years ago by Sir Malcolm Sargent. They were brilliant. They are in desperate financial trouble. They must be saved. See www.northfieldfarm.com for more on everything. Visit us soon. Jan McCourt jan@northfieldfarm.com