Sally Vincent’s Diary of Food and Life on a Devon Farm.
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Dark Days of Autumn
Golden autumn sunshine briefly floods the rain soaked valley. Geese are arriving for the winter; they screech and circle overhead as they prepare to land clumsily on the creek beyond our gate. Sheep glisten on the hillside high above my window, their fleece still wet from the relentless summer rain. The dry interlude has brought…
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Making Stock
A friend of mine who has recently had to take on all the cooking for the first time looked at me in a puzzled way the other day and said “When you’re making soup where does the liquid come from?” If you’ve never cooked before it’s a very good question! I laughed and explained about…
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Cabbages and Summer Rain
It’s three in the morning and the storm which woke me from a restless sleep, is easing a little. Exceptional rain, the worst since records began, has dominated most of July. A few glorious days seduced us briefly into believing summer had finally arrived. Balmy heat haze across the fields brought the farmers out in…
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Midsummer Dreaming
The sun is shining down in that funny, crystal clear, July- watery sort of way. The sky glows an infinitive iridescent turquoise, crowded with outrageously unreal puffy clouds. Great blobs of soft white meringue race across blue emptiness. Dragon flies and glimmering damsels hover over the crispy white cups of water lilies on the pond.…
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Gardening Time
Bluebells march through Devon in May with such reassuring relentlessness energy they make my heart sing. Like the pink waves of Sakura unfurling across Japan in spring, Devon turns blue. As the clouds of cherry blossom petals drift northwards from Okinawa to the northern tip on Hakkaido, the Japanese meteorological Agency issues regular news bulletins…
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Slow Down, Food is Fun…
“Put a Spoon in Your Hat!” Peasants Dancing by Pieter Bruegel It is several years now since I became quietly interested in the growing momentum of the international Slow Food Movement. Up till very recently I watched its progress from the sidelines. Then a few months ago by chance, I met some of the people…
