FEAST FROM THE FARM
Carole Bamford and her family began turning their land over to sustainable farming long before it became fashionable. Here, she shares Daylesford’s philosophy and her favourite summer recipes
Carole Bamford shares Daylesford’s philosophy of sustainability and her favourite summer recipes
I begin every day by taking my dogs for a walk around the farm. The dairy’s milking team will already be hard at work and I’ll usually see a few heads among the rows of vegetables or fruit trees, lifting or trimming or tending to our market garden. And, as I look around, I am still so immensely proud of what I see. What began as a desire to make a small difference to the health and future of our planet, and to feed my family in a better way, has grown from a collection of empty barns and bare fields to become Daylesford.
We’re custodians of our land, our soil, our bodies and minds, and our precious planet, and I think we can all make small changes to live in a more mindful way, to take care of them and strive to leave our world in a better state than we find it. Cooking and eating well were central to my childhood. I’m a child of the 1950s when we had to make the most of what we had. Much of the way I do things today is simply how we lived back then – we looked after things, we looked after ourselves and we looked after the land.
It reminds me to be very grateful for what I have today. So many of us have lost sight of where our food comes from, but it has a real value and I worry that sometimes we forget that. We’ve lost that connection between field and fork – the how and why our food comes to be on our plates. We sit down to meals, often without a second thought about what we’re eating and without sensing or savouring the flavours and ingredients. Mealtimes have always been important to me, but even more so from the time I became a mother. As well as being a time to nurture and nourish our bodies, meals are an opportunity to bring my family together, to spend time enjoying our food and acknowledging the work and care that have gone into creating it.
“We’re custodians of our land, our soil, our bodies and minds, and our planet”