The Feast Of Albion

It was the poshest organic dinner of the year so far - held at London’s Guildhall, with Annie Lennox as the after dinner singer, and a ticket price of £1000.  What more could you want?   Is the Soil Association getting above itself, I wondered?  But at least all the money raised will go towards their new scheme of bringing children for a day out on an organic farm so that they can see how their food is and should be produced.

The dinner was called the Feast of Albion, after the oldest know word for England, the point being that everything on the menu was home produced and came from within fifty miles of the centre of London.

It is worth spelling out the immense menu just to show what is possible. The canapés included venison sausage with Cumberland sauce, and the venison came from Windsor Great Park.  There was also mutton and turnip pies, Prince Charles having supplied the mutton from his Gloucestershire farm. 

Then once the 400 guests had sat down they were faced with a choice of starters that boasted pickled herrings with beetroot - the herrings were caught by drift nets in the Thames Bay, whilst the beetroot, together with all the other organic vegetables came by bicycle from Ian Tolhurst’s organic twenty acre smallholding on the banks of the Thames at Pangbourne.  He doesn’t use this method to distribute his 25 mile area box scheme, but is thinking about using part of it as he plans to set up a box scheme in Oxford.   There were oysters from the oyster beds in the River Blackwater in Essex, and there was also crispy pig from Laverstoke Park, just down the M3.

The starters were  followed by nettle and wild garlic soup. Again the nettles came from Hyde Park in central London , as well as from the towpath running alongside the Thames in London, as was the garlic.  The main course returned to the theme of Windsor Great Park’s venison with a fillet of the beast as well as a piece of shoulder, and a faggot with bay and juniper sauce.  The huge meal ended with a selection of locally made cheeses served with rose hip jelly.

The Soil Association’s Director, Patrick Holden, enthused about the whole event. “I think it is wonderful that you can organize an evening in the middle of London with sustainable food as the centerpiece, he told me. 

"Going organic and thinking about where your food is coming from is not about denying yourself pleasure, which is what this event is also about.  It is a celebration of properly grown and reared British food, both local and organic. I’m particularly pleased the event is supporting our Farm Schools project because it is our children who will have to contend most with climate change and dwindling supplies of ‘cheap’ oil.'"

The idea behind the Farm Schools scheme is to bring children to the more than 100 organic farms throughout Britain, who are willing to welcome them.

Ian Tolhurst who provided most of the vegetables told me that he was asked for Romano potatoes, because the chefs wanted to make hash browns, and he supplied a second early white potato called Milva.  He also sent ‘tons of leeks which he has been cropping from August right through until May.

"I sent up carrots, red cabbages, Jerusalem artichokes, parsnips, French parsley and quirt a lot of other stuff," said Ian, who has been a member of the Soil Association since he started smallholding in Cornwall in 1972.  After ten years he moved to his current holding.

“Fruit and veg is still very much the market leader as far as organic food is concerned, but there is a lack of supply.  I think the Feast of Albion was a great idea, but it should also concentrate the minds of our politicians on providing land within our towns and cities to grow commercially, as they do in Cuba. It will have to happen as the supplies from abroad dry up.”

As chairman of the Thames Valley Organic Growers he is also aware of the shortage of trained horticultural labour.

“There is nowhere in Britain where you can now get a degree in horticulture. We have started a two year apprenticeship scheme, where a mentor/grower helps the young person, and we introduce an academic input as well. Most of our growers are now over 50, and the worrying thing is we are not training the next generation, who will be crucial to providing food commercially.”
 

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