So hard to define but…
Market waste transformed into larder treasures, produce and unusual treats from Badlesmere Court
The larder works to save, preserve and improve food. We use bones (of fish and meat) that would otherwise be thrown away to make good, strong stock that you can buy as a base for soups or stews. We also render beef fat into dripping that you can use for superb frying or to make wonderfully crisp pastry. This sort of domestic economy (indeed, market economy) is not about indefinite preservation (like a deep freeze) but about being creative with produce, creating delicious food whilst taking the edge off the urgency of “eat me now, or I’ll rot”.
No fancy packaging, no additional cellophane or boxes. No ribbons. We wrap solid food in greaseproof paper, tied with string. We put more liquid foods (and preserves and pickles) in re-used glass jars. So please do bring us your jam jars if you can.
Badlesmere Court – Market Garden
A few years after starting The Goods Shed we were lucky enough to find our dream home a very rundown dream but a dream nevertheless! Badlesmere Court, grand as it sounds, was a neglected traditional smallholding come mixed farm. Once it would have fed 80 people self sufficently, taken pride and its surplus to the city markets. It was all still there, the pig and cowsheds, the stables, water tower, dairy, cavernous cellars for storage in lean months, the vegtable gardens and greenhouses, but you just couldn’t see them for bramble and decay. Making the house a liveable space for our burgeoning babies was the first priority – but bringing back to life the ideal of a true Market Garden and taking our produce to The Goods Shed fresh picked and still wet with dew has always been the dream.
After five years of unrelenting weeding, hoeing and digging what was an indistinct mass of brambles is finally looking and feeling like (or at least part of) the productive Market Garden it once was. Paths uncovered, walls cleared and growing areas redefined all without a drop of weedkiller or any other artificial aid. We have learned to love our weeds and many of them can found for sale on the larder. While on the other side of the garden a rusting hulk of Victorian greenhouse has been rebuilt over a painful winter of grinding, welding and glass cutting.
Working together these two small remenants of what was once a much larger mixed smallholding are now starting to again nurture lovingly grown produce destined for town markets. Unfortunately we have neither the access to ready labour of the ‘old’ farm or the spanking machinery of the new. Thus we, by neccessity, must be imaginative about what we grow and how we present it – choosing only the most wholly useful or special crops to take to market.
We know that new potatoes or broad beans are at their very best if picked young, delivered and eaten fresh, not always viable for large producers but possible for us. Traditional english cut flowers that actually smell! well, being brought up by a father who grew the finest sweet peas on the Marsh, thats definitely on the list. But the most important thing for the small smallholder and ultimately for us all – are crops without the waste of the unsold or the wilted.
Compost made from restaurant peelings and fertiliser from nettles and borage brings a flower that can be enjoyed in a vase, eaten in a soup or salad, used to sweeten a cocktail or made into a soothing hand cream. Herbs that can be sold fresh or macerated, concocted, infused or any other kind of used… so long as their used. Thats our aim at Badlesmere Court, early days and unfurling plans. Watch this space and The Larder for further developments.
