Opinion - Page 97 - Wicked Leeks

Food, Farming, Fairness.

Opinion

Guy's news: food additives

A combination of cola and certain orange processed foods make my youngest son quite uncontrollable. It can be entertaining for a few minutes but I would hate to have to deal with him in a classroom. Mostly he is deprived of the junk he craves by a puritanical father but I sometimes relent at the cinema with the result that he once had to be physically restrained in the aisle half way through Lord of the Rings.

News from the farm

Opinion

Guy's news: time for a radical re-think?

News from the farm

Opinion

Guy's news: the question of meat

News from the farm

Opinion

Guy's news: sweetcorn stories from France

Down in the Vendée the maize is head-high and growing so fast you can almost hear it. We are picking sweetcorn (maize’s smaller, sweeter and less robust cousin) for your boxes a full six weeks ahead of the UK. Our season started well, with lettuce in March, but this was followed by a poor few months. Now, after some sun, the crops have perked up and things look more promising. The chillies, peppers, tomatillos and cape gooseberries are all doing well if a little late; they will available from late August.

News from the farm

Opinion

Guy's news: Organic September

When I converted the first of my father’s fields to organic in 1986, my motivations were primarily to avoid the agrochemicals that put my brother in hospital and made me ill as a teenager, and also a sense that it offered me a better chance of making some money. Over 25 years my commitment has grown; organic farming is much more than simply rejecting synthetic chemicals; it’s about balance, harmony and humility, and an acceptance that we share our planet with six billion others, and are part of an ongoing ecosystem rather than its short-term master.

Opinion

Guy's news: harvest woes

As I write, a ridge of high pressure is edging in from the Atlantic and threatening to build into the high pressure system we have been waiting for all summer; too late for most schoolchildren’s holidays, too late for many a fair, festival and fête; too late for our stunted pumpkins and sweetcorn, blighted potatoes, mildew-stricken onions and rotten strawberries.

Opinion

Guy's news: KBO

The sun is out, I’ve just swum in the reservoir and I have instructions to write my 400 words without moaning. If I carry on with my weekly liturgy of doom, my sister Rachel, who looks after marketing, is going to give this job to someone more cheerful. Back in April, with a drought threatening and the reservoir dropping, I was cursing myself for not fixing the leaks, but as I write this, the water is lapping at my feet.