Reading Time: 12 minutesImagine a world where there is just one stage; one show to see and listen to. The world would be not only a stagnant place, but would limit our perspectives of the world. And, what of the owners of the stage (the platform) and the stage show? Who are they? How would we have ended […]
Animals
Traditional Nose to Tail: Thrifty Tips and Ancestral Wisdom
Reading Time: 2 minutesGrass-fed or pastured meat and food from farm shops is expensive. Is that right? It may be slightly more expensive (for good reason) but if you want thrifty, nourishing food, take advice from cookbooks of your grandmother’s and great grandmother’s era. You may not have your own, so I mean metaphorically speaking, as traditional nose […]
On Drover’s Roads, Prehistoric Settlement and Ancient Landscapes
Reading Time: 2 minutesWe recently excavated a rare kind of Iron Age settlement in Warwickshire. From out the ground came evidence that pointed us to our age-old habit of walking with animals. Our site sat in an ancient landscape, most likely riddled with drover’s roads and ancient byways, connecting places of a similar type. Herders traded livestock north […]
Herdwick and Swaledale Yarn, Local Cloth, Local Landscape
Reading Time: 3 minutesHerdwick and Swaledale Yarn; local yarn for local cloth. Actually this isn’t local yarn to me, but it’s locally distinctive yarn. It’s shorn from sheep able to weather windy hilltops and cold winters of northern England. With their slightly kempy (hairy) woolly coat, they produce a durable, hardy yarn that’s more likely to make it into […]
What’s the Softest British Wool? Could It Be Ryeland?
Reading Time: 10 minutesAs I drove up the track, I saw Helen. She waved at me from behind a full-sized skip bag of, what could be, the softest British wool – Ryeland wool. Fifteen Ryeland fleeces in a big sack. We exchanged talk about the journey over, then she said ‘I decided I might as well add in […]
Charcuterie in the Pantry: The Meat Cure
Reading Time: 5 minutesCharcuterie in the pantry or larder. That’s what charcuterie has always been made for. For thousands of years we’ve been dry-curing and smoking meat (before we could import food from all around the world) because we needed to keep going in lean times. And lean times they were, as we had to produce from the […]
