We are lucky to live in England, a free country, where we can all choose what to say, what to think and where and how to spend our money but it is good to remember that the very freedom we celebrate comes with great power and therefore great responsibility.  As the cost-of-living crisis deepens and begins to affect us all, every pound in our purse takes on a greater significance.

​It is easy to think that the priority is to save money and therefore a quick basket shop in the supermarket is the best option but perhaps that is a rather short-term view. To start with, does the food in that basket fill you with joy, make your taste buds flutter, get your juices flowing?

​Let your mind wander to a wicker basket full of provisions from your local farm shop, freshly picked strawberries which were sunning themselves on a bed of straw only this morning, a freshly-baked sausage roll straight from the oven made with love from fresh meat, without a plastic wrapper or a best-before date in sight, and perhaps a paper-bag full of slightly wonky courgettes, green and fresh with a small muddy smudge on them rather like a badge of honour proclaiming how local they are. Does this make you happier? Does this make you drool?

​Enjoying your food must count in my mind – in this age of fast-food and ready-meal, a truly tasty basket of food is worth its weight in gold. And if we are going to eat meat, then let’s make sure it is well-reared, British homegrown meat that’s had a happy life before it ends up on our plates.

​Apart from joy and a moist mouth, what else does buying from a farm shop do for us? It can send a message that we want to support the local economy. Do we want to give our hard-earned cash to a huge multi-national chain of supermarkets, or would we rather support the work of a local farmer, a local producer, and a local community? Putting money back into the community has all sorts of knock-on positives not the least being that it encourages our food to be produced in our country and not imported from across the sea.

​The recent shortages that all supermarkets have experienced makes it glaringly obvious that more needs to be done to encourage British farmers to grow food for the home market and we have the power to help that movement. The power is in our purse.

​What else? Helping the planet!
Now these are big, weighty issues being blazoned about.
​How can buying a bag of earthy spuds from the farm shop down the road help the planet? Well, that bag of spuds is likely to have been harvested from a field next door, down the road or just around the corner. They have been dug out of the ground recently and transported a few miles to the shop. They have not been flown in, trained in or trucked in from very far. They have not been washed, dried and packaged in plastic. They have come from the farm and will be on your fork by the next day. No wasted food miles. The shortest journey from the field to your tummy that is possible with the exception of growing your own and kneeling down and chewing on a spud straight out of your own veg plot!

​And by helping the planet, you are helping yourself – helping yourself to eat healthier. The freshness of the locally grown vegetable means the goodness is still present when you put it in the pan to steam or chop it into your salad. It hasn’t wilted, degraded and faded. The broccoli is still green, not yellow, and the raspberries are still the right shape and not slopping around in a pool of their own innards!

​And why are they so fresh and beautiful? Because they are in season! Hoorah! buying from the farm shop means you get back in touch with what fruit and vegetable are available at what time of year. Eating seasonally is better for you, costs less, helps reduce imports and makes you happy! You are back in tune with the seasons, back in tune with the planet. Let’s all do a little happy dance, support our local farm shop and celebrate the British farmer.

​Halloween wasn’t really a “thing” when I was little. Growing up in the 70s in rural England, we didn’t really know much about trick or treating or pumpkin carving. I seem to remember my mother muttering “American nonsense” under her breath around the end of October and we concentrated whole-heartedly on Bonfire Night and stuffing an old pair of tights with newspaper to make a rather floppy and lumpy Guy Fawkes. But that all changed when a fabulous and theatrical American family moved into the house next door.

​Our lives brightened overnight. To start with, they had four children around the same ages as me and my sister. That, in itself, was joyful enough. Suddenly we had enough people to play a meaningful game of tag, stuck in the mud, sardines and charades. We could put on plays that no one would ever watch but meant we could dress up and wear lipstick and feather boas.  A large hole in the hedge began to appear as they would crawl through to our garden, and we would crawl back to theirs just as often.

​And then it was October and activity next door became feverish. I remember popping over on the hallowed day itself, the 31st, and standing in awe at the porch door. Black paper bats and mini cauldrons swung from the ceiling, four eerie pumpkins glowed through jagged and heinous teeth and witches’ hats sat askew broomsticks in each corner and, beyond all of that, there was our neighbour, the wonderful American mom, dressed herself as a witch and holding the most beautiful basket, lined with red velvet, home to about 30 little cones of sweets. I felt bad for her though… no one had ever knocked on our door and said “trick or treat” in all the eight years that I had been alive. Our lane was too long and dark and our village was too English. I had a sneaky feeling that by the end of the night, we would be ripping open those glorious cones and eating the sweets ourselves …..and I was right.

​Things are rather different now. It can safely be said that the UK has embraced Halloween with about 60{650a267a6dfc0c56292df9f4411de9160c0ac02671db1e1ee03f984da437e88e} of households now actively encouraging trick or treaters.  With children of my own, we have entered into the spirit with freaky costumes, spooky face painting and little sweet-collecting cauldrons. And there is always a pumpkin or two, carved and grinning at my doorstep on the 31st October. My old neighbours would be proud.

​Pumpkin sales have exploded in the UK over the last decade with a predicted spend for 2022 of nearly £29 million! Farm shops have joined in the fun, and many are now offering PYO pumpkins where families are encouraged to take their kids and choose the perfect pumpkin and take a family snapshot amongst the glorious orange fruits. And why not? Let’s see if we can boost sales again this year. We’re still behind our American friends with $804 million expected to be spent on pumpkins for Halloween across the pond. That’s a heck of a lot of pumpkin. Soup anyone?

​My dad was a keen and quite ruthless mycophile. As a small child, I would sometimes accompany him on his thrilling, early morning, field mushroom raids and there was an undeniable whiff of prohibition about them. I felt like I had stepped into Dahl’s “Danny, Champion of the World” and it was me and dad against the landed gentry! 

​We would set the alarm early and dress in wellies and old clothes and, with the early morning mist still hanging in the valley, we’d stride out (well, he’d stride, and I’d skip to keep up) across the dewy grass in search of those glorious white globes, clutching a little basket and keeping my voice to a whisper. 

​There were a couple of other ardent foragers in the village and dad was always thrilled if we could make it to the fields before any sighting of Mr H in his grey cloth cap or Mr S in his tweed jacket and I would feel jubilant on his behalf (and mine as I’d have dad all to myself).

​Bending low over my wellies, I would admire the mysterious, smooth protrusions which made him so excited. He taught me what to look for and how to pluck the mushroom from the bottom of its robust stalk, flip it over and inspect the beautiful, fleshy pink underside, sniff it to ensure it had a fresh, earthy perfume and then pop it in my basket. I didn’t seem to worry that most of them were growing out of cowpats, a few days old with a hefty crust on the top covering the wildlife below!

*from Ode to Autumn by John Keats

I popped round to see a friend last week and her husband was unpacking a few goodies he’d just picked up at his local farm shop. He approached me with a big grin on his face and a small offering in his outstretched palm;
“You have to try this.”
​In his hand was a small but beautifully formed strawberry, glistening slightly under its cap of green leaves.

​Is there anything more evocative of a British summer than that taste? And I’m not talking about the all-year-round insipid supermarket strawberries, covered in plastic, tasting of literally NOTHING and flown in from goodness only knows.  I mean those little shiny ruby nuggets of freshness that have spent the day basking on a bed of straw in the sunshine until they were wrestled off the stalk by your own fair hands. Most made it into a punnet to be weighed but a few, less fortunate, disappeared elsewhere and the taste…oh the taste…exquisite! 

​Did you ever visit a PYO strawberry farm when you were little? We had one at the end of our road and we would go a couple of times each season. It always seemed to be on a boiling hot day, and we would slap on the sun-cream and a big-brimmed hat and wander down there with our baskets. In my memories, the walk took forever as we stopped to throw sticky weed on each other’s backs or pull the long grass and tease our companions’ ears from behind. We’d arrive sweaty and itchy but the sight of the neat rows of strawberry plants stretching out ahead would revive us and the thought of the juicy fruits waiting to be picked, even more so.

​Preparing the strawberry rows
​at Strawberry Fields PYO in Morley

​Bent down on our haunches, lifting the fronds and searching for the hidden red treasures was pure joy especially when you found a plant heavily laden where no one else had been before you and you could strip it and fill your container with a layer of fruit before moving, crab-like, onto the next one. In reality, I contributed meagrely to the family collection, adding one or two handfuls to my mother’s bountiful harvest but I don’t think she minded. She was just pleased that she was out in the fresh air, away from the kitchen chores and breathing in the summer vibes. 

​Loading the punnets onto the scales was always a dramatic moment and learning just how many pounds we had managed to gather. We would take them home, happy in the knowledge that pudding was a sure thing that day, and that jam-making would also be on the cards in the very near future.

​I’ve reminisced for too long and all because of that little strawberry. Imagine if you offered one to each customer that came through the door of the farm shop? Maybe you’d have to listen to them wax lyrical about their childhood for a few minutes, but I bet your strawberry sales would go through the roof!

Last year, my sister gave me some tomato plants for my greenhouse as my seedlings had not enjoyed my watering apathy. Gratefully, I popped them in the ground and paid little attention to their labels. Late summer, when the fruits appeared, I could no longer ignore them, for nestled in the hairy fronds, rather than the glorious, juicy red I was expecting, were some deeply odd-looking tomatoes. 

​We are urged to “eat the rainbow” knowing that green vegetables are loaded with vitamin K and folates, orange and yellow fruits are usually full of vitamin C and red ones full of vitamin A but purple, when you read the facts, are extraordinary! The term “superfood” is applied to more purple fruit and vegetables than any other and now an increasing number of plants are being bioengineered to have this special hue.

​They help keep a healthy heart, lower blood pressure, aid brain health, enhance calmness, boost mood and strengthen the immune system…and they look beautiful. A display of beetroot, aubergines, purple sprouting broccoli, purple cauliflower, figs, grapes and blackberries cannot fail to stop you in your tracks. 

​They bring to mind a wonderful quote from Alice Walker’s book “The Color Purple”:

​And why am I so obsessed with purple this month? Well, it’s the official colour of the Platinum Jubilee and we at Fabulous Farm Shops have been decorating our Headquarters with purple fruit and vegetables.

The logo of the Jubilee, designed by 19-year-old Edward Roberts, features a continuous platinum line (representing Queen Elizabeth’s 70-year long reign) on a purple background which is a nod to the rich, velvet Coronation robes worn by the monarch after he/she is crowned. 

​It is a colour that has long been associated with royalty but is also a shade that is universally complimentary… so if you are dark, blond, red-headed, grey or bald – you can wear purple and if you are large, small, old or young, you should be getting it on your plate and in your mouth!