From Farm to Table: A Journey to Sustainable Living
A Journey to Sustainable Living
My earliest, and happiest, memories of childhood always centre on food, from picnics that were more like feasts to family get togethers where everyone bustled around the kitchen, chatting over the top of each other whilst simultaneously cooking up individual platters of food that would miraculously come together at the last minute to form a formidable tablescape that even the hungriest of groups couldn't finish in a single sitting.
I can't say whether or not these moments have shaped who I am today, but I find myself reliving my past with my own children.
Our world revolves around food, from farm to table, and I find it hard to classify what I do as a career because, to me, cooking is much like breathing, I do it without thinking!
When I look back at how I got to where I am, it all seems to boil down to a single decision in my 20's to quit my job in London, leave all my friends, and head to Ireland after a chance opportunity led me to Antarctica with a world-renowned environmentalist...
I left CLC in 2005 and headed to Exeter University. Once I graduated from there, I went to London and worked as a Head Hunter in the Green Tech industry.
The two years I worked there definitely shaped how I feel about the world today because, as part of my job, I was fortunate enough to go on an expedition to Antarctica with Robert Swan OBE and his company 2041.
Robert is not just the first person to walk to both poles, but he has also dedicated his life to protecting our planet.
His story inspired in me a love for environmentalism that is at the core of what I do today.
After coming home, I knew that I needed to make a change: my view of the world did not match up with how I was living in it.
Now, not every change has to be big, sometimes the smallest of changes can have the biggest ripple effect but, in terms of life decisions, quitting my very secure job, leaving my friends and London to head to Cork in Ireland to undertake a three-month intensive cookery course at Ballymaloe Cooking School, seemed like a momentous decision at the time.
Ballymaloe is an incredible example of how you can live off what you produce if you plan, care for, and nurture what you have.
The school is on a farm where they grow almost everything that the students cook, from dairy cows that provide the milk for making cheese to polytunnels filled with varieties of tomatoes and lettuce that you may never have seen before.
They have a wonderful way of connecting with other local farms in the area to bring in anything that their site does not produce itself.
Once I graduated from Ballymaloe, I worked in restaurants around the UK. I wanted to get as much experience as possible. I had a hunger to learn from chefs who cooked responsibly, who reduced their food waste by being creative, curated menus that were seasonal, and championed British produce and producers.
I then spent a year in Spain on a private yacht as a chef, before coming back to the UK to learn the ins and outs of fire cooking, working as Head Chef of a bushcraft company.
Once I had experience in a wide range of cuisines and styles of cooking, I worked as a private chef, touring the country, cooking food that represents something great about the UK; the incredible ingredients that we as a country produce, and the people behind the scenes who grow food that reach our shops, stalls, butchers, deli’s and farmers’ markets, brimming with flavour, championing one of the most green farming models in the world.
Most recently, I have spent four years as a Recipe Developer and Food Stylist for a B Corp Social Media Agency who work with the most wonderful array of British Food and Drink producers, who notably produce their product with the environment at their core.
Today, I juggle farming, parenting and cooking.
I seemed to have married together farming and food - literally, by marrying a farmer and moving to a farm in Worcestershire (I promise this was not planned)!
My husband and I, with our two children, breed pedigree Charollais sheep and crossbred lambs for meat.
Farmers in this country have a chequered history when it comes to their reputation, but there is a change in the winds and I firmly believe that those of us who produce food in the UK can say with great passion that we do our utmost to protect our countryside and environment, right down to the core - the soil itself.
If we as farmers do not nurture our soil, everything else becomes obsolete, we simply cannot grow or produce food. It is in our very interest to enhance our environment. So, we tend to it, we manage it, we give it vitamins and minerals and then we carefully graze, cut, sow and leave to grow wild those spaces that need rewilding.
With my hand on my heart, I can say that farming costs us the earth financially; battling climate change with every seasonal turn gets increasingly hard each year.
We have faced six foot snow drifts in the middle of lambing and found ourselves standing hip deep in snow crying in a field wondering if a single sheep will come out alive; we have faced droughts where the grass simply refuses to grow and spent a fortune on feed as a result; we have faced floods that have literally wiped fences, trees and sometimes fields off the face of the farm and we have suffered losses from a disease in sheep called Schmallenberg that is spread by midges that now favour the warmer summers here in the UK.
But, and this is a big but, we are rich in a million and one other ways.
Our farm is a haven for butterflies, birds and bats. Newts adorn the brook, at night the sound of hooting owls fills the sky, the water we drink comes straight from a spring and the fields are filled with hares, deer, foxes and so much more.
The food we eat comes from our garden, our neighbour's garden, or the local farm shop.
Being able to tell people I cater for that everything on their plate is grown within ten miles from the very table they sit at is really rather special.
I can’t say it is always easy. Being a chef means high levels of stress and adrenaline at peak times when food needs to be served, and farming… well, farming is a way of life that is dependent on Mother Nature and her mood, and she can be a fickle woman indeed.
However, as we all know, women are undeniably one of the most amazing creatures on this planet, and what she takes away with one hand, she offers with the other, giving us everything we need to produce great food.
Laura Folkes
CLC 2000-2005, St Margaret’s/Beale
