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Compilation Field to Fork

Ellie Harrison is in the market town of Frome in Somerset to find out about a field-to-fork revolution which is taking this place by storm.

Ellie Harrison is in the pretty market town of Frome in Somerset. She discovers the town's love for local, fresh produce, making tasty pakoras from greens picked by the roadside. She also finds out about a field-to-fork revolution which is taking this place by storm. It's called the Food Assembly and could change the way we shop for our produce. Ellie meets the two mums who set up this scheme in Frome and a dairy farmer who has bought into the Assembly's concept.

Ellie also looks back through the Countryfile archive celebrating the best of British produce, from the time Anita Rani discovered a novel way of cooking goat to Matt Baker's underwater forage for a free, fresh lunch.

1 hour

Last on

Mon 23 Nov 2015 00:40

Community vegetables

Community vegetables

Ellie Harrison meets a community group growing vegetables in Frome’s unused and often unloved public spaces. She joins in with volunteers tending a site, next to a busy road, that’s packed full of local produce. Organiser Caroline Wajsblum explains that the idea behind it is all about encouraging people to grow their own food and think about where it comes from. The group in Frome is part of a wider ‘Incredible Edible’ movement which has spread to more than 100 locations around the UK. Ellie then takes some of this produce to a local community café where she helps make Kale pakoras before tasting a vegetarian Indian delight.

Kentish Blue

John Craven gets kitted out for some cheese-making on a family-run 250 acre farm. Dairyman Steve Reynolds and his Holstein Friesians provide the milk and, together with his wife Karen and their two sons, they make Kentish Blue cheese. It’s a small local business which each member of the family is passionate about and everyone helps get the produce to market.

The taste of spring?

Anita visits Cambridgeshire food-fanatic Tim Hayward who believes that spring lamb is old news and the new ‘kid’ on the block is actually goat. The demand for dairy produce from goats is increasing and Tim shows Anita how we can make more of one of the industry's most valuable by-products - in his own unique style. 

Butter making

Butter making

Geoff Bowles runs a family dairy ten minutes from the centre of Frome. It supplies Frome Food Assembly with delicious Jersey milk , cream and butter. Ellie joins him in the parlour where he teaches her how to churn and pat butter and explains why he signed up for the scheme. Although it’s only a small part of his business, Geoff tells her that the guaranteed orders when customers buy online saves him lots of time and money.

Free diving forage

Matt Baker is on the hunt for free seafood. The waters off Newquay are full of tasty treats like lobster and spider crab but there’s a catch - Matt will have to dive down to get it. So he calls on the help of local freediving expert Ian Donald.  Ian teaches Matt how to hold his breath long enough to stay down beneath the waves. But will it be long enough to snare his supper?

Blackcurrant cassis

Anita Rani visits a blackcurrant farm in the north of Herefordshire that is giving French liqueur makers a run for their money.  The farm produces more than three hundred tonnes of blackcurrants a year. Most of the fruit goes to make squash or is frozen. But the family farm is also making an English version of cassis, using champagne yeast. They are leading the way in the UK, as they are the only ones brewing the tipple this way.

Asparagus harvest

Adam Henson helps with the harvest of one of our favourite vegetables - asparagus. He starts small-scale with farmer David Brooks. David’s field is amongst the sand dunes at Formby, near Liverpool – an area where asparagus production once thrived. Adam discovers the best way to harvest these fast-growing spears is still to take them out individually by hand. Then, down in the Wye Valley, farmer Chris Chin is taking asparagus to a new level, developing techniques to extend the notoriously short season.

The food assembly

The food assembly

Ellie meets Lindsay Downes and Pia McGee, a team of two who decided that Frome needed a new way of shopping. Since starting around a year ago the idea has gone from strength to strength with more and more members signing up to order local produce online each week. Ellie joins the pair in action at the weekly collection where customers pick up their shopping from local bakers, butchers, vegetable growers and sausage makers to name just a few.

Credits

Role Contributor
Presenter Ellie Harrison
Presenter Anita Rani
Presenter Matt Baker
Executive Producer William Lyons
Series Producer Joanna Brame

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