Foodie thoughts

RHUBARB GROWERS NEED HELP IN DARK TIMES

My favourite pudding is rhubarb crumble. My mum made one with so much sugar it made you high. It’s that time of year again, when those tender, baby pink stalks of forced rhubarb are sticking their sweet heads up.

It was once a huge industry here, and the area between Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield was known as the Rhubarb Triangle. The story goes that the soil was well suited to growing rhubarb because nutrient-rich ash from chimneys in the nearby cities fell on the fields.

Demand was so great that special trains left Leeds each day, stopping at branch line stations to be loaded with freshly picked crops bound for London. Robert Tomlinson’s family had their own wagons which they loaded in Pudsey. Robert still grows and harvests his forced rhubarb just as his father, grandfather and great-grandfather did: nurturing it in the darkness, and picking it by candlelight. I spoke to Robert, one of the last remaining forced rhubarb suppliers in Yorkshire.

“It’s been a tradition in my family since the 1800s. I started working for my father when I finished school at 16. There used to be 200 rhubarb producers in Yorkshire. Now there are only ten.”

How is he surviving during lockdown? “Most of our rhubarb has always gone to restaurants, and now they’re closed – we’ve seen an uptake recently with many of them doing take-outs, but I’d say we’re down about 75 per cent. We can deliver to your door, and Delifresh in Bradford put them in their veg boxes. We sell it at our farm shop too.”

Rhubarb is packed with vitamins and nutrients, and so versatile; poach it and eat it for breakfast, make gin or crumble. It pairs beautifully with ginger so whip up a syllabub. If we want to see these dedicated growers survive, let’s support them.

■ www.tomlinsonfarmshop.co.uk and www.delifreshltd.co.uk