Oh what heaven to only eat food grown where you live!

UNTIL last week, my teenage children thought ‘food miles’ was the distance we had to drive to our nearest fish and chip shop in Ross-on-Wye, a round-trip of 14 miles. Then we saw that actress Liz Hurley had set herself a food-miles challenge: to consume only produce that came from her (and our) county of Herefordshire.

Liz did not go short of nosebag. She feasted like a Tudor monarch on everything from local meat and poultry to cheese, vegetables, fruit and even popcorn and vodka.

Vodka in Herefordshire? you bet. The brand called Chase is distilled from potatoes (King Edwards and Lady Claires) grown just a few miles from Chateau Hurley near Ledbury. The family firm also makes a gin, Williams Extra Dry, of which my 18-year-old son is troublingly fond.

So we thought we’d try to emulate Ms Hurley and cut down on our food miles, i.e. the distance grub travels from field to plate.

It would mean we’d have to do without bananas (Caribbean), plums (Spain) and Scottish salmon. Tinned corned beef from the Argentine? Out. French brie and German salami? Non, und nein.

We would have to find Herefordshire alternatives. How would we cope?

My daughters, aged 17 and 13, clutched their necks in horror. They hesitated to forgo Waitrose cocktail sausages (packaged in Berkshire) and those slightly disgusting Frubes yoghurty things (made in Ireland) they like.

Even my home-made ginger cake and flapjacks would be out of bounds because they include treacle from Tate & Lyle (a refinery in East London).

But cheer up, team! Undulating, bucolic, frond-fringed Herefordshire is cattle country — Hereford bulls, lush pastures and milkmaids with custard-blonde ponytails...

Grass grows fast and thick in our damp valleys. Dairy and beef were things we definitely knew our farmers could do.

WE DULy ordered some juicy 8oz steaks from John Pritchard, family butcher for many years in nearby Fownhope. The delivery ‘boy’, Glyn, himself local as a Ross rabbit, confirmed that Pritchard’s meat is from nearby.

It comes from an abattoir at Leintwardine in the north of the county and is all the fresher and greener (well, Greener with a capital G — you know what I mean) for that.

Few of us like to dwell on the slaughtering process, but it is a comfort to know that animals do not face long road journeys before they are butchered. It is also, surely, sensible to source meat from a local abattoir as that reduces transport costs and pollution.

Is it really morally defensible that in this world of globalised trade, British shoppers buy beef from South America and the Chinese eat British lamb?

Moving on, starch was potentially a problem. We do not have a pasta machine, and although the Romans are said to have grown lentils in England, I have not heard of these plants prospering on the banks of the Wye, even with climate change.

Ditto rice. There are no paddyfields in the west of England, despite much of the land around Mordiford being under water from the River Lugg last spring.

Happily, we have an excellent new breadmaker at the Ross Bakery — ace pork pies, too. Ledbury has a master baker called Peter Cook and the Baker’s Dozen bakery makes the most heavenly lardy cakes.

Walkers crisps and KP peanuts were banned, but we could have Tyrrell’s crisps, made in Herefordshire by those Chase vodka people.

Tummies were starting to rumble. Morale, particularly among the girls, was dropping.

We trudged up to the top of the garden to inspect my wife Lois’s vegetable beds. The corn on the cob look promising but are not yet ready. The grapes (yes, grapes) are mere shot pellets at present. The cherries were eaten by the finches.

But spuds, we got ’em. They are so abundant this year, I have been half-minded to set up our own vodka still.

Into the saucepan they went for some lovely mashed potato for last Saturday’s lunch. This went well with Lincoln sausages (made in Herefordshire by Pritchard’s) and some courgettes from the garden, flavoured with thyme and rosemary from a pot outside the kitchen.

For pudding, we had some Just Rachel’s ice cream, sinfully good and made ten miles away in Bromsberrow.

Lois’s lettuces have also gone gangbusters this year. We struggle to get through them all and some of her courgettes are the size of RAF bombs. Stuffed with mince from local lambs and a few of last year’s tomatoes in our freezer? Mwaw!

As the chef in the house, I am still working through last year’s frozen green beans and blackcurrants, too. The currants do well in a crumble with some of last year’s frozen mulberries.

The children moan when their mother tries to stuff yet more of her ‘delicious, goood-for-you lettuce’ down their gullets, but I like few things better than a Marmite and lettuce sandwich. Problem: Marmite comes from Burton on Trent and that’s miles from Herefordshire.

I had to fall back on the marrow chutney I made last autumn. The pigeons wrecked our broccoli. The cabbages went the same way. Indeed, I’ve been thinking about buying an air rifle to exact revenge. Herefordshire pigeon pie: now there’s a thought.

Herefordshire has game aplenty, and there are so many pheasants and rabbits on the lanes that it is hard not to run them over.

This amazing county of ours is almost ridiculously fecund — an under-acknowledged Eden.

The bad news was that our strawberry crop has been a disaster — insufficient sunshine in June and then the ruddy pigeons scoffed the few that did ripen.

But up the hill from us, fruit farmer Angus Davison has a large acreage of polytunnels producing strawberries, raspberries, blueberries and cherries.

Many Herefordians hate the plastic ugliness, but there is no denying polytunnels have transformed yields. No one in Herefordshire need buy fruit from another county.

Near us, we also have one of England’s biggest producers of asparagus, the Chinn family. Herefordshire’s soil, red as mince, is amazingly fertile. Really, it is shaming that we import so much food. And on we went: chocolates from The Velvet Bean in Ledbury; snails — oui, snails, monsieur! — from L’Escargot Anglais at Fownhope; Frank’s biscuits from Rotherwas.

We have long bought eggs from a grower at Preston on Wye, but sometimes, Graham, an egg farmer neighbour, kindly gives us a box of his brown beauties.

Graham is a churchgoer at the splendid church at Sollers Hope and Lois plays the organ there most Sundays. We were present last week and artist Kathy Priddis, wife of the former bishop of Hereford, gave us a big bag of her garden produce. Such is the country way, dear friends.

The more we explored local produce, the more we were amazed by the variety. Pengethley Farm Shop, just off the Ross to Hereford road, had a range of local cheese, as did Truffles deli in Ross.

Little Hereford and Monkland are local hard cheeses and the Monkland dairy just outside Leominster does a fantastic garlic-and-chive job. While Neal’s yard Creamery at Dorstone makes goat’s cheese using milk from Bartonsham Farm.

David Cameron used to tease his French counterpart Francois Hollande that Britain has more fromages than la belle France. Herefordshire alone seems not far behind.

DURING our localfood-only exercise, fish was the one problem area. Salmon are back in the Wye, but there are some things you have to accept in life — and one of them is that Herefordshire is never going to produce haddock.

Local fare was on display at last Saturday’s village fete, aka the How Caple ‘novelty dog show’ — and foremost among the attractions was a cake stall run by my 81-year-old mother, who marshals contributions from the local network of ladies.

They had an astonishing array of sweetmeats: sausage rolls (made by Angela at the top of the village), pasties, cheese straws and cream cakes (many from my cousin Ros over the border in Gloucestershire, but an honorary Herefordian).

OK, some of the sugar and vanilla essence they contained might not have been local but, like Nelson, we turned a blind eye to that.

Drink is always a worry in life — as in, will there be enough? Herefordshire, happily, is handsomely provided for on the booze front.

Westons cider mill (Stowford Press and Caple Rd ciders among others) is just down the road. The mighty Bulmers is in Hereford and several varieties of eye-swiveller can be had at the Broome Farm cider barn near Peterstow.

Ledbury Ales is one of several local brewers, and there is wine, too: Frome Valley vineyard makes a potable dry white and the new, swanky Sixteen Ridges vineyard has been winning all sorts of prizes for its white fizz.

What a remarkable land we have her in Herefordshire, this Herefood-shire. Liz Hurley is right. We should cherish it more.