Muddy Marathon

Some Musings on our Muddy Marathon

It’s hard to believe it’s nearly a month since Christmas and the end of our Muddy Marathon.  This blog entry has been a long time coming; delayed somewhat by the usual family craziness during Silly Season, the amount of office work that awaits you when you go away for nine weeks and the fact we have got so many new and exciting things planned for Muddy Matches in 2008 that it is proving very hard to look back!  Nevertheless, we wanted to write a few words about what turned out to be the most incredible trip. 

So…nine weeks, nine regions…two sisters travelling around Great Britain from October to December in a motorhome they had tarted up to look like a country cottage…the first thing most people wanted to know was were we utterly mad?  Well, yes and no.  Clearly it’s not your average way to end the year but there was a plan behind the madness which included: spreading the word about Muddy Matches and getting people to write about us, meeting lots of you (our fabulous members), hosting some social events in your area and looking into different countryside activities and businesses. 

And we managed to pack a lot in…

We visited around 20 farms (from goat to dairy, and arable to ‘celebrity’), one stud, a vineyard, a shooting ground, 3 agricultural colleges, a distillery, a hunt kennels, a butchers, several smallholdings, a graffiti-covered castle, a recycling plant, and  a hydrotherapy centre for horses.  We spent the day with two different chefs, hung out with a mountain rescue team, tried our hand at falconry, cut some hedges, had a shooting lesson, learnt how to make cider, fed some fish, played frizbee golf, did some mountain quad biking, learnt about thatching, took part in recording a Wiggly podcast, followed a beagle pack, watched an expert sheepdog trainer, went abseiling, made haggis, put up a fence, tried our hand at – ahem – “modelling”, mucked out, went stalking, watched a gundog being trained, fed some goats, learnt how to make wool, went beating, saw how sloe gin is made, wormed some cows, sized up some lambs for market…we could go on, but it will be much easier if you scroll down and read all about it for yourselves in our blog!

Another popular question was, “how are your livers going to survive?”  It’s a fair question since about 45 of the 60 odd nights we were on the road were spent at a party or in some kind of drinking establishment!  There were 2 bonfire nights, a ‘Deer &Beer’ party, 18 pub socials, one farm Christmas party, a night at a beer festival, 4 pub grub nights, one speed dating night, a drinks party at an RAF base, a night in the woods with the BTCV, 4 pub quizzes (2 of which we put on), a Young Farmers ball, a Scottish Countryside Alliance drinks party…and countless, countless other times when we rocked up at someone’s house on our night off and they said “let’s go to the pub”! 

One of our Pub Grub nights

Something else people were amused by was the fact that we were two sisters living together in a confined space for an extended period of time – didn’t we have some huge bust-ups?  Well, yes, tensions did run high at times and we did have a few choice words to say to each other every now and again, but it was never anything that didn’t blow over pretty quickly!

The most amusing thing was that, when it was all over, the two things we were most sick of were each other and booze…and then we had to head home for a family Christmas, where it was impossible to avoid either.  However, our livers still seem to be in tact and we are definitely still friends, so it looks like we survived!

So what were the highs and lows?  Let’s start with the lows, as there are less of them!  To be honest, most stressful situations were motorhome related.  There was the time that we got wedged between two buildings in the dark and almost burnt the clutch out trying to reverse up a hill, there was the time that we started slipping down a steep hill and when Lucy yelled at Emma to put the handbrake on she yelled back that she already had (luckily there was nothing behind us!).  Oh, and then there was our darling SatNav…the time, in a blizzard, it directed us to a closed ferry terminal to get across Lake Windermere…that was quite a special moment!  You have to bear in mind that it was also flipping cold half the time so that could be a bit trying.

But enough of that, let’s talk about the highs instead.  Aside from all the wonderful things we got to see and do, it was the people that really made our trip (quite literally in the case of Christina, who organised a large part of the Marathon and kept things running smoothly at home). 

We were constantly amazed by the kindness of complete strangers: how people would give up entire days to talk to us about what they do, how they would cook for us or insist on paying while we were out, how they invited us into their homes, introduced us to their friends and family, and generally made us feel really welcome.  We have dedicated a page to all our ‘Good Eggs’, so please take a look if you have a moment.

It was also a fabulous opportunity to meet some Muddy Matches members, many of whom invited us to stay or made recommendations as to what we should do on our travels.  It is reassuring to see that there are loads of lovely and genuine muddy people all over Great Britain who, like us, love our countryside and meeting people who share that passion.  What was even more special was that there has been a lot more Muddy Matches romancing going on than we knew about (you don’t tell us [sniff]) – one couple we met who had got together on the site were discussing their first Christmas, another were about to go skiing together and another were even talking about moving in together!  Gosh, it made us feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

We were also completely inspired by all the wonderfully talented and driven business people we met.  Watching people juggle their hectic business, social and family lives, on many occasions we felt ashamed to have ever thought of ourselves as really busy people.  And the fact that such busy people would give up time to talk to us was incredibly flattering! 

Looking into rural businesses on the trip, one thing we found particularly interesting was the lengths to which some people would go in order to create employment for themselves in a part of the world they love; be that the countryside in general, a particular region, or the very farm they grew up on.  Lucy is hoping to write more on this at some point for, in her opinion, it seems that having some kind of attachment to, or affection for, the land is a powerful entrepreneurial catalyst.

In short, we feel that the Marathon was a roaring success.  It’s not often you get the chance to visit so many beautiful spots in your own country and the fact we got to try lots of new things, increase our membership and meet some lovely people was an added bonus!  We made some great friends and have had loads of ideas as to how we can improve the Muddy Matches website and take the business forward.  As a result of the trip, we plan to host a lot more social events in the future and look forward to seeing everyone again soon.

Oh, and will there be any future Muddy Marathons?  Watch this space!

Mellow Yellow Cold Pressed Rapeseed Oil

For our last business visit, we decided to keep it local and popped in to see Duncan Farrington, who produces Mellow Yellow cold pressed rapeseed oil on the family farm near Hargrave, Northamptonshire.

Mellow Yellow rapeseed oil and the new Farrington salad dressings

Duncan became interested in oilseed rape back in the 90s when he was looking into biodiesel production as part of his university degree but when, on a visit to Germany, he met some farmers who were pressing their own oil for human consumption he began to look into the nutritional benefits and culinary properties of cold pressed rapeseed oil and was pleasantly surprised.

With less than half the saturated fat and ten times more Omega 3 than olive oil, as well as having the optimum balance of Omega 3, 6 and 9 oils and being a natural source of Vitamin E, it certainly has lots of health benefits.  Being cold pressed (rather than hot pressed, which involves heating it up, adding a solvent to boost the extraction rate and then refining and deodorising it), the oil is gently squeezed out, meaning that it retains all its natural goodness.  It has a subtle, nutty flavour and is perfect for anything from salad dressings to stir-fries, high temperature roasting and frying. 

Duncan Farrington

Despite all this, and the oil’s growing popularity abroad, a decade ago the UK quality oil market was dominated by olive oil imported from abroad and nobody seemed to be producing rapeseed oil.  This, according to Duncan, is easily explained:  oil seed rape just didn’t have a good image.  Whilst olive oil has a romantic image, people tended to associate oilseed rape with the smell, hayfever and GM.  Add in the word ‘rape’ and all its negative connotations, and it’s a marketing nightmare.  With this is mind, and after taking some expert advice within the industry, Duncan decided that the UK market just wasn’t ready for it and so put his idea aside and returned to the family farm. 

By 2000, however, it was clear that the farm wasn’t big enough to support two families, and Duncan knew that they would have to expand in some way.  At the same time our attitude to food was beginning to change and a Suffolk farmer had decided to give culinary rapeseed oil a go, so Duncan decided it was the right time to invest in his idea.

Changes were made to the way the farm was managed and they embarked on what was really a completely new business for them; finding the right machinery (which was apparently very difficult), sourcing and designing bottles and labels, and ironing out problems in the oil production.  The name was still an issue and, whilst rapeseed is mentioned on the bottle, they came up with the brand name Mellow Yellow (“yellow in colour, mellow in taste”) and it is clearly marketed as that.  Investing money without really being sure that they’d ever sell a bottle, they launched the company in 2005 as around the second or third UK brand to make cold pressed rapeseed oil, but the first in Britain to grow, press and bottle it.

The press

Duncan’s timing seems to have been just right and the business is now going from strength to strength.  They have now been going nearly three years and he says it has got much bigger than he ever thought.  On his first day of production, he and his mother managed to make about a hundred bottles, which he then packed into his car and took to local farm shops, butchers and delis.  He now produces about 3,000 bottles a day and his oil is sold by more than 600 shops in the UK, including Harvey Nichols and Waitrose.  Also, in an attempt to grow the business further, they have now started producing a honey mustard and a blackberry vinaigrette salad dressing (with Mellow Yellow as the base oil), both of which were given Great Taste Awards by the Guild of Fine Foods.

We’ve tasted the oil and the dressings, and there is no denying that they’re delicious.  Could olive oil be about to lose its stranglehold on the UK culinary oil market?  Watch this space!

Farrington Oils Ltd
Bottom Farm
Hargrave
Northamptonshire
NN9 6BP
Tel: 01933 622809      
Fax: 01933 461003
www.farrington-oils.co.uk

Art and Farming

You may remember that right at the beginning of our Marathon (Week 2 to be precise) we visited Sedlescombe Organic Vineyard in East Sussex.  While we there we spoke to the owner, Roy Cook, about our trip and he mentioned an artist called Georgina Barney who had zigzagged her way around Great Britain working on farms and creating pieces of art.

Intrigued, we got in touch and arranged to meet up with her in the last week of our tour to hear about her project.  A contemporary artist based in Leicestershire, Georgina spent a lot of time on her aunt and uncle’s farm in Powys, mid-Wales, and began to see a connection between art and farming.  If you look at the stereotypes of both an artist and a farmer, they seem to be worlds apart, but the act of creating something links the two and both farming and art demand independence, entrepreneurship and self-motivation.

With this is mind, earlier this year she spent eight months travelling around British farms and land-based projects in a journey funded by the Arts Council England and supported by Farming and Countryside Education (FACE), trying to draw inspiration from working in different rural working environments and documenting it all in a blog.  You can read all about her experiences on her website, Great British Farming.   

Great British Farming

She spent up to two weeks on a variety of farms in Scotland, England and Wales, ranging from a croft on the remote island of Eigg to a city farm in Sheffield.  At the end of each visit, she sought to conclude it by making some kind of object, which she photographed and made into a postcard.  These postcards were then displayed in a series of exhibitions on her return in the autumn.  One of our favourites was this one, based on her time with a Stilton cheese producer in Leicestershire:

Mid-Land Cheese: front

Mid-Land Cheese: back

Now she has finished her tour, she has is concentrating her efforts on communicating across the rural/urban divide and getting other artists on to farms across the East Midlands.  The day we met, she took us to Woodlands Organic Farm in Lincolnshire, where she was interested in meeting the owner, Andrew Dennis.  An Arts Council England grant enabled Andrew to invite a writer and poet called Clare Best, from Sussex, to stay on his farm and be a ‘Writer in Residence’.  Every few weeks she would visit the farm and organise community projects (such as farm visits and poetry workshops for local schoolchildren) and write poems based on her experiences of the work being done at woodlands.  What’s interesting is that every month at least one of her poems would be popped in to the 2000 fruit and veg boxes that the farm sends out, which we thought was an innovative way to link art, farming and the community.  To read some of Clare and the schoolchildren’s poems, click here.

Where does your recycling go?

Another unusual farm diversification project…but Chris and Simon Mountain’s East Midlands waste management and recycling centre has been so successful that they now rent out the family farm and have essentially diversified out of farming all together.

It all started at the end of the 90s with two skip lorries (which they inherited when someone couldn’t pay their debts) and a knackered old shed on a site near Sleaford, Lincolnshire.  One agricultural and one industrial design student, the two brothers seem to complement each other and, alongside another brother who runs the bulk transport arm of the business, have successfully managed to develop the business to the point that they now operate over 50 vehicles and run both a 15 acre purpose-built MRF (materials recycling facility) with a 120,000 tonnes per annum waste management license and a 50,000 tonnes per annum recycling centre based just outside Peterborough.

We met up with them at the MRF, where they kindly kitted us out with high-vis jackets and gave us a tour of their recycling operations.  If you think how much waste there is at Christmas, you can imagine how busy they are at this time of the year.  It was a hive of activity, with one council recycling vehicle after another arriving with piles of orange bags to be sorted.  A lot of it is done by machine using clever magnetic and infrared systems to pick different materials out, but a lot of the more unusual stuff is still picked out by hand - so bear that in mind when you next fill your recycling sack!    

Lucy and Emma dwarfed by cans

They recycle all sorts of things on site, including paper, plastics, metal and woodwaste, and are constantly trying to develop innovative new practices.  They have recently come up with a new process using bespoke machines to recycle 100% of used plasterboard, which is the first commercial scheme to separate the paper from the gypsum so that they can recycle all the material. 

Squished cans

If they can recycle absolutely everything that they take in it is a win-win situation as they are paid to take the waste and then have an end product to sell.   They are currently building an energy-from-waste plant at the MRF to convert non-hazardous waste wood to renewable electricity, which they can then export to the National Grid. 
It is an impressive set-up and fascinating to know what happens to your little orange sack once it is taken by the bin men. 

For more information about how they process and recycle waste, visit www.midukrecycling.co.uk.  For more information about their skip hire and waste management services, visit www.greenmountains.co.uk.

You can lead a horse to water...

Having heard about a hydrotherapy centre for horses in Nottinghamshire, we went along to see what it was all about.

Right in the heart of the Vale of Belvoir, Emma Hawthorne runs Flawborough Equine and Hydrotherapy Centre, which specialises in offering treatments to aid the recovery and rehabilitation of horses.  Emma had always worked with horses, ranging from working at the National Stud in France to setting up a livery yard on her husband’s family farm, but it was only when her best and most expensive horse got injured a few years ago that she came across the type of spa treatment that she would eventually start offering herself. 

Emma Hawthorne in her kitchen

The horse had a deep digital flexor tendon injury and, having gone down a more traditional route of trying to cure him, she had been told that he was a write-off.  Failing to believe that there was nothing that could be done, she did some research and found out about an Australian-designed spa that had been proven to help horses.  To her surprise, a local farmer had one of the spas and she sent her horse there for a few months.  She was so impressed with the remarkable recovery that he made that, when the farmer decided to sell up, she jumped at the chance to buy the spa from him.

The spa at work

Although the spa is often mistaken for a swimming pool or treadmill, it is not actually designed for exercising horses.  Instead, they stand still in temperature-controlled (2-4C) aerated salty water, which has a number of health benefits.  For example, the coldness of the water can reduce inflammation, the salt has a natural healing effect on wounds and the bubbles in the aerated water have a massage effect.  As a result, the spa can effectively treat a number of problems, including tendon and ligament injuries, sprains, strains, swellings, joint problems, some fractures, lacerations, infections, arthritic pain and laminitis. 

Lucy testing the water: brrr

Each session lasts between ten and twenty minutes at a cost of around £20 and a typical treatment lasts about six weeks, starting with five sessions a week and gradually decreasing the number.  Some clients will drop their horse off for each session (on the way back from a competition, for example) but for long-term treatments the horses are generally left at the yard.   

As Emma points out, we have long since been using sea water and cold water for the treatment of inflammation and injury (even the knights used to lead their horses to cold streams and rivers after battle), so it makes sense that a further developed and controlled technique should work well.  Her clients seem to agree and bring anything from £200 ponies to £200,000 dressage horses for her to treat. 

The biggest challenge when she launched in 2005 was winning people (especially vets) over to the idea that the spa could really help horses.  However, as time has passed, word has spread and most of her clients come from vet referrals or other people’s recommendations. 

As well as hydrotherapy, Flawborough Equine also offers electro-magnetic pulse treatment, ultrasound, infa-red therapy, deep oscillation and muscle stimulation.  For more information, call 01949 850332 or visit www.flawboroughequine.co.uk.

Arrow Farm Shop

We popped into hundreds of farm shops on our travels, ranging from lean-to sheds to supermarket-style food emporiums, so we were really pleased to add a proper family-run farm shop visit to our itinerary in the last week of our Marathon.   

Dinah and Richard Blagg opened Arrow Farm Shop on their farm near Worksop in 1991, but they have been selling their home-grown potatoes direct to the public for a lot longer than that.  Encouraged by their success with the potatoes, they decided to convert an empty potato store into a shop selling fresh fruit and vegetables.  Over time, this has continued to grow and they have started to sell eggs, preserves, pickles and hand-baked biscuits and cakes, as well as opening up a butchery department and a delicatessen counter.  Their potatoes, however, are still a huge draw for customers and they sell about 350 tonnes through the shop a year.  Apparently they sell about 20 tonnes in Christmas week alone!

What’s nice about it, is that it is still very much a working family farm and, despite its impressive growth, the shop still has that family feel to it.  Much of the meat they sell is from a local relative’s farm and, if they can’t produce it themselves, wherever possible they try to source their products from neighbouring farmers and local producers. 

Some farm shops get so big, adding a novelty gift section here and a clothing line there, that they begin to feel like just another retail outlet and seem very far removed from farming.  Whilst the Blaggs have lots of plans for the future, they know that farming and the local community are central to their success and are keen to keep it that way.

Arrow Farm, Steetley, Worksop, Nottinghamshire S80 3DZ
www.arrowfarmshop.co.uk
01909 721782

Open 7 days a week.

Drinks at RAF Leeming

Opportunities like this one don’t come around very often.  When an article came out about our Muddy Marathon in Country Life, we got a phone call from one of the boys from RAF Leeming inviting us to come and look round the base and go to Happy Hour in their mess.  How could we refuse?!

We turned up in the afternoon and tried to get some cool pictures of the van and a jet together.  Unfortunately, light was fading fast so it was easier said than done!  We then got to sit in one of the jets but, no, we didn’t get to fly in one – apparently it costs thousands of pounds just to go up for a short amount of time and it sounds like everyone’s sick when they do anyway!!

We then got to have a go in their simulator, which with our little knowledge meant that all the pilot (Emma) had to do was keep it straight, while the navigator (Lucy) sat in the back and watched us crash!

We had invited a few other girls along for the drinks bit that evening, which turned out to be really good fun and everyone got on really well.  Lots of our female members complained that Yorkshire was too far away for them to get to, so we’re hoping to hold a similar event further south next year! 

Fencing in Yorkshire

It was easily the coldest day of the year when we spent the morning on a Yorkshire farm with fencing contractor, Wilf Standeven. 

Wilf grew up in Yorkshire and after a brief stint in London was drawn back to the countryside, where he started working for another fencing contractor. After gaining valuable knowledge and expertise of the fencing industry, he felt there was room in the market for him as well and decided to go it alone, buying all the equipment and setting up his own company, Standeven Fencing, in 2006. 

Emma and Wilf

The morning we were there, he was finishing off some electric fencing for a local beef farmer.  Luckily for us, most of the hard work had been done, as the posts were already in the ground, and our job was just to help fix the wire to the posts and tighten it.  We’re not ashamed to say, we did some tea-drinking as well; Wilf seems to be immune to the cold, but even with two pairs of gloves on we could hardly feel our fingers!

Gloved up, but still feeling the cold

Electric fencing is just one of the things he does; he also puts up post and rail, wire stock and metal parkland fences, plus rabbit netting, cattle grids, gates and lots, lots more.  For more information, call 07803 499584 or visit his website.  There is obviously an abundance of entrepreneurial spirit in his household, as his wife Lizzie has just set up her own interior design company, Standeven Interiors.

Ample Bosom

When Sally and John Robinson were looking for new ways to diversify on their farm near Helmsley, North Yorkshire, Sally came up with the idea of selling bras and lingerie on the internet and, in 1999, she launched the wonderfully-named ‘Ample Bosom’.  It was certainly one of the more unusual farm diversification projects that we visited on this journey!

Initially, they tried to go down the more traditional B&B and holiday cottage route, but as her two sons got older she was looking for a new challenge.  A local, technologically-minded friend was looking on the internet for a bra to get married in and when, as Sally puts it, all she could find was plastic or feathery ones with tassels on or holes in them, she turned to Sally knowing that she was looking for something new to do and suggested she started selling bras on the internet.

Having managed to get six suppliers on board, and with a loan from her local bank manager and an EEC diversification grant, she converted an old cow shed into an office, bought a mailing list and sent out her first paper catalogue in September 1999.  A couple of months later and she was ready to launch her first website.

She had spotted a gap in the market for properly fitted, quality bras for normal women of all sizes and, recognising the importance of her repeat customers and how time-consuming bra shopping can be, she kept a history of people’s orders so they could reorder the same or similar items without any fuss.

As the popularity of her service has grown, so have her premises, the number of suppliers and staff, and the range of bras and accessories she stocks.  She now uses about 30 suppliers, stocks more than 177 different bra sizes and employs around a dozen members of staff, all of whom have to muck in wherever they are needed, whether that is packing in the warehouse or cleaning the holiday cottages.  People buy her bras from all over the world and she has attracted an incredible amount of media attention, not only because she is a success story, but also because she is a farmer’s wife who has thrived in an industry where many other more likely internet entrepreneurs have failed.  This is testament to her hard work, determination and wonderful no-nonsense personality, and she is an inspiration to many.

Lucy, Sally and Emma

For more information, call 01439 798388 or visit the Ample Bosom website.

Watch Sally on Richard & Judy!

SLOE motion

Those of you who were coming to see us at the CLA Game Fair this year might remember that one of our sponsors was Yorkshire-based sloe gin company, SLOE motion.  Since we were in the area, we thought that it would be nice to pop in and say hello to Jonathon Curtoys, the owner, and have a quick look round.

This close to Silly Season, they are obviously extremely busy (75-80% of their sales are done in the run-up to Christmas) so we could have timed our visit a little better, but they were all very friendly anyway!  Actually, they’ve had a busy year: they’ve moved offices, everyone is talking about them and they have just been awarded the Gold in the “Taste of Britain Awards” Best Drink category.

With a degree in agriculture and a background in farm business advice and environmental campaigning, Jonathan saw the possibility of creating an ethical but profitable business by harvesting a crop that is essentially free.  He had grown up drinking his Dad’s homemade sloe gin and decided to team up with a friend near Malton and start making the tipple just like his Dad’s but on a much larger scale. 

They started off by using all their own sloes, but have grown so much that they now have to buy a lot in.  However, nearly 80% are from North Yorkshire and since the Blackthorn bushes must be left to grow in order to harvest the sloes, as Jonathan points out, he is effectively paying farmers to manage their hedgerows in a way that is good for wildlife.

The harvested sloes are frozen to split the skins; traditionally each sloe had to be pricked twelve times with a thorn from the bush, but this new method is a little more practical for large quantities!  They are defrosted as and when they are needed and put into large metal tanks.

The gin that is added is sourced from London’s last traditional distiller and is added to the tank (two parts sloes to three parts gin) with some sugar.  The mixture is then left in the tanks for six to eight weeks (any longer and it gets too sweet and you begin to lose the alcohol) and stirred occasionally with paddles.  Jonathan said that it’s quite a happy time when they’re filling the tanks as it is very easy to get tipsy off the fumes!

Jonathan checking one of the tanks

The liquid is then filtered three times through a piece of muslin (if you do it any more, it starts to lose its taste) before being gravity fed into the bottling area, where it is bottled by hand.  The labels are produced by a local printer, but the labelling and packaging process is done by hand on site.

Bottling up

All hands on deck to get the Christmas packaging done

The gin-infused sloes that are left in the tanks are then put through a machine that brushes the flesh from the stones.  Said flesh is then used as the centre for their SLOE motion truffles, or cooked up with onions, apples, raisins and tomatoes to make a delicious chutney.  As well as the truffles and chutney, they also make sloe whisky and vodka.

They make around 20,000 litres of sloe gin a year, 5,000 litres of sloe whisky, 3,000 litres of sloe vodka and about 6,000 jars of chutney (we forgot to ask about the chocolates!) and sell their products at shows, online and through a network of around 200 retailers.  On average, half their sales are made at shows, a quarter on the internet and a quarter through retailers.  The company seems to be going from strength to strength and, having recently bought out his partner, Jonathan has loads of ideas about how to take the business forward. 

Even if you make your own sloe gin and baulk at the idea of paying someone else for it, the truffles are absolutely delicious and well worth a try.

If you fancy trying one of Jonathan’s sloe gin cocktails – a ‘Sloegasm’ – come and visit the Muddy Matches stand at next year’s CLA Game Fair!

Sloe Motion, Green Farm, Barton-le-Willows, York YO60 7PD
0844 800 1911
info@sloemotion.com
www.sloemotion.com