Opinion - Page 108 - Wicked Leeks

Food, Farming, Fairness.

Opinion

Guy's news: organic september, shopping habits & worms

Most of us are creatures of habit; once we find a way of doing things that works for us, we stick with it until pushed in another direction by suggestion or force. With this in mind, for this year’s Organic September I’m hoping to nudge your shopping habits just a little, by encouraging you to switch something new in your usual shop to organic.

News from the farm

Opinion

Guy's news: british edamame beans & squirreling inclinations

News from the farm

Opinion

Guy's news: keats never sold cabbages

News from the farm

Opinion

Guy's news: feeding the beast

This is coming to you from Home Farm in Yorkshire, our Riverford farm in the north. Peter Richardson, our partner and the grower of most of the veg up here is as daft as me; the line between visionary innovation and restless madness is fine and precarious. Knowing Peter’s weakness for a challenge, I’ve been trying to persuade him to grow horseradish, rhubarb and a tuber from New Zealand called oca but, as I pulled up in his yard, his head was buried in the guts of his latest project; a 200kW anaerobic digester.

News from the farm

Opinion

Guy's news: bringing in the roots

We have been busy irrigating our drier land where thirsty crops have sucked out all the August rains, but you won’t find many farmers complaining; September was gloriously dry and sunny. By the time you read this, almost all our potatoes will be in store. It’s been a year that rewarded patience; early-planted crops never fully recovered from going into cold, wet seedbeds in March but those who waited for drier conditions have had much better crops.

Opinion

Guy's news: getting there in the vendée

As our team picks the last chillies, squash and peppers, and the first autumn gale shakes a fine crop of cape gooseberries to the ground, I retreat to the office to try to make some sense of our accounts. After five years of growing lovely cabbages, spinach, sweetcorn, tomatillos, courgettes and peppers here on our farm in France (mainly to fill the ‘hungry gap’ in spring), the best I can say is that we are losing money more slowly than we were. Perhaps I should draw some consolation from the amount I have contributed to the French tax system.

Opinion

Guy's news: noble management

Last week I alluded to plans for the business to one day become stakeholder owned (by staff, customers, or perhaps both) and why I felt that was important. In the meantime I have challenged our management team to make Riverford a truly exceptional place to work; if we achieve that, all else will follow.