WILLIAM COBBETT,FOOD AND FARMING…….
So by 1821 William Cobbett was ready for a change from reform politics and super- heated anger over every aspects of Georgian England , now under the reign of George IV ; the rogue who had been so beastly to his Queen Caroline, and who died in 1821 having won her case against the Parliament, king and every mortal gangster lined up to defeat her – mainly thanks to Cobbett.
He set off on horseback one foggy morning in October 1821, from Berkeley, Hampshire and he wrote about his impressions of the countryside in his Political Register, under the subheading ‘journal’ , dated October the 30th 1821- Tuesday (evening) , and from these journal items he compiled his Rural Rides which was published as the book in 1830. It is worth quoting the text (page 196 Richard Ingrams) at the start of the 16 rides, and to contrast the conditions and prospects of the farmers he was talking to – with the farmers now. Spot the likeness.
“Fog that you might cut with a knife all the way from London to Newbury. This fog does not wet things. It is rather a smoke than a fog ; the fog prevented me from seeing much of the fields as I came along yesterday; but the fields of Swedish turnips that I did see were good; pretty good; they’re not clean and neat like those in Norfolk . The farmers here, as everywhere else, complain most bitterly; But they hang on, like sailors to the mast or the hull of a wreck. “
He kept his travel writing up for the next 10 years, and flavoured his Political Register with descriptions of southern England county by county – Finding the Avon valley from Pewsey to Salisbury his favourite.
And from the extract given by Ingrams, we shall take the expanses, and items Cobbett considered beautiful, and visit and photograph each one; Viscount Folkestone’s fine acacias; Selborne village; Peterborough Cathedral; the American partridge; Romanesque doorway to Malmesbury Abbey.
MAPLEFIELD, MARTIN,HANTS
Flanders wheat; 100 grammes ; it is a medium straw wheat grown in Britain during the 1970s ; Now almost extinct, definitely on the Red List for wheats. Yesterday I sowed the 100 grams of precious Flanders seed given to me by Mollusc ,the Huguenot from East Martin. I used the ‘mound’ plot on the mid- east side of Maplefield, whereon the mulch of comfrey and hay has collapsed into a soft covering , not unlike dried tea leaves. I rake the surface lightly with the green landscaping rake and broadcast the seed straight on top; then lightly raked, going the opposite way – mark with sticks and leave – I mean , where is the work in that? And balance that with the excitement of planting an old ,old variety of bread wheat that is right on the skids; think of its predecessors all the way back to a yard next to the river Euphrates , where the first woman winnowed the first bread wheat from a tight, small grassy plant – and try not to pass into a swoon. Next to the Flanders, I sowed Maris Widgeon under sown with the red Clover, and next to that, a band of biblical tares (vetch) , all raked into the crumbly surface and left. I have also sown a band of buckwheat which I know is late, but we’ll see what happens; So, if I was attempting to grow enough wheat to provide us with a loaf per week for a year ; Say 50 with two weeks of for fasting, this would require at a loaf per square metre, 50 square metres of territory entirely devoted to bread flour. The mound is 40 metres by three or 120 square metres within a border of strong, five year old comfrey plants. I have prepared and sown ¾ of it with wheat, both the Flanders and the Maris, in superb conditions of soil fertility, shelter and moisture levels; what can go wrong ? The math is that you need 500 grammes of flour to make a decent loaf; At 2 tonnes to the acre yield, that is 2000 kilogrammes times 1000 equals 2 million grams divided by 4840 gives 413 grams per square metre ; So not far off 500g.
So with the best laid plans, and all – that might just work, plus we shall have long straws for sucking ghostly mouthfuls of sloe gin at the winter solstice, and corn dollies to decorate the barn , as a constant reminder of the merciless ,unending bounty of the earth on Maplefield farm . Or any field anywhere, tended as a Garden by the strange, upright bi-pedal humans nearby.
And as an autumn task, I have sown red Clover into the ‘deep mulch’ cover of the ex- polytunnel plot , to see if it will germinate within the fibre of the ‘mulch crust’ as a winter blessing. The seed is so small it easily disappears from sight and is too small to be attractive to birds, unlike the vetch seed I have broadcast alongside the Clover, which looks like a small pea and may be tempting to a migratory bird for its lunch box on the journey. We need to include these hyper- nitrogen producers into the rotation, and to keep them constantly around the food crops we want to grow.
As most people I meet struggle to imagine an acre of ground, laid out in front of them , a greater number of us will have seen football pitches’ live’ at the match or on telly – we have probably all seen Wembley Stadium. So the grass pitch inside Wembley measures 105 metres by 69 metres or 7915 square metres , which , expressed in acres, which are imperial measurements not metric, developing from yards instead of metres – is 1.6 acres ………..or with the margin and the ‘dug-outs’ almost 2 acres. If, for this argument sake, blend yards and metres we get approximately 9466 square yards divided by factor 0.8361 , inside Webley which could grow, if we are right, 9000 loaves of bread.
I put a loaf in the oven for 40 minutes , having proved it overnight, and while that is baking , let’s think about the UK and its use of daily bread; that’ll be 60 million divided by 4 (families) gives 50 billion loaves a week ; I know that is probably light on reality, but it starts off the math and the comparisons and it establishes the need – If nothing else. The accuracy can come with the thoughts and the reckoning of fabulous minds, mixed with great farmers. As I am neither of those, I throw out the thought tassels for people , users of bread, to grasp and to retain as a mental picture of what might be what.
If we strive to grow 15,000,000 loaves a week, from our own organic soils, beamed in from long- term island living , we shall need to sow at least 3-4000 acres times 52 = 156,000 acres (15,000,000 loaves times 52 equals 780 million loaves per annum) Wheat growing acreage in 2024 (UK Defra stats), was 1.4 million hectares . (To get acres multiply by 0.4047), ..or 566,580 acres; 50% of which goes for animal feed to chickens, pigs and cattle ; Leaving 283,290 acres under the current arrangements to grow 4840 loaves to the acre per year, gives a Grand National total of 2.75 billion loves , (566,580 times 4840 equals 2.75 billion loaves), or shall we Say – plenty! The oven buzzer has sounded; Have I missed a decimal point? Shall we leave it all to Whitehall? I don’t think so. If PFS (Plot Farming System) crept across the country, each region could feed its citizens warm fresh bread , in an unhurried, friendly way, as a National food substance of the highest quality, at a price, if thought necessary, subsidised by government because the same subsidy would cover all the nature/eco and climate change- targets – as well as nourishing the Nation ; the subsidy per loaf would straddle the farmer, Baker, distributor and furnish each with enough for their efforts and the land with ‘hand- back’ fertility; a ‘backhander’ to the soil organisms. Or ……………. of course, you could see that every citizen gets paid enough in order to afford the Nations bread, and it might help to lift the climate change anxiety experienced by people who feel unable to help