Every third Saturday of the month, Histon & Impington is visited by one of the very best Farmers Markets around, hosted within the grounds of Impington Village College. Local resident and regular visitor Nicole Barton stopped for a chat with those involved.
Covid made us acutely aware of how dependent we are on producers at every scale, and for many it was our first time ordering sacks of local potatoes, searching out local livestock farmers, signing up to the milkman or ordering a local veg box etc. Supporting our Farmers Market is a great way to continue some of the good habits we’ve picked up over the last year and, frankly, it’s just a lovely way to start your weekend. You can pop down by foot or bike, bring the dog and chat away with producers, friends and people you vaguely know whilst munching on a pastry. I met some of the stallholders to find out more about them and their passion for good food.
Riverdale Organic Farm & Farmers Market Organiser – Edwin
Edwin and his wife Karen co-ordinate the Farmers Market at IVC, serving us HisImpers in-between their more star-studded visitors, like Helen Mirren and Nigella, who frequent their Marylebone High Street pitch! Edwin has been doing the markets for 15 years, having made the shift after previously working for multinationals on their organic ranges. Realising that he was away on business too much and missing out on his children’s lives, he turned farmer.
Riverdale Organic Farm, Edwin’s organic fruit, veg, juice and herbs, are grown at his 25 acre farm in Upwell, near Wisbech. The road to organic has been a battle, he says with the public and farmers often not really understanding it. But now big farms and industrial producers are starting to copy some of their techniques, using a rotating system and bio-controls more.
Maintaining healthy soils is crucial to both the environment and to producing the good quality and range that Edwin can offer. Weeds are their biggest challenge and then it’s the deer and pigeons – Edwin’s farm has a ‘no shoot’ policy. In Edwin’s experience, heavy Roe deer trample produce and will stop at nothing to feast on radicchio, whilst Muntjacs are fussier eaters and rather short-changed in the brains department.
Edwin’s produce scores very highly on low food mileage and most of the produce is seasonal. There’s hardly any waste as they don’t have to meet the exacting standards imposed by supermarkets around length, weight and appearance. Edwin’s business is home to 23 different types of butterfly including some rare ones like the Wall. There are owls, buzzards, bats, sparrowhawks and the partridges have returned after they left the grass to grow long in their meadow.
CamCattle – Angelika
Angelika of Cam Cattle owns the famous cattle we see grazing the city’s commons and believes that supporting the local economy and local systems by purchasing produce that’s grown where we live is of vital importance. She doesn’t shy away from the word ‘killing’, and thinks it’s healthy that people make the connection between their meat and a living creature. It all helps people to make a pro-active choice to buy high welfare.
The animals are hyper-local so the food miles are tiny and there’s virtually no waste either, with Angelika selling the bones and offal, and making pies.
Angelika says that her cattle are very healthy, very rarely needing the skills of her weekday job as a vet! By selling her beef and lamb at the IVC Farmers Market, Angelika gets to keep the profits. If sold via a retailer, they’d take 90% of the profits gained from the two and a half years it takes to grow her grass fed cattle.
The White House Coffee Co Ltd – Ellen
All of Ellen and Charlie’s coffee beans are roasted 24 hours before they travel to their market spots from Essex. The White House Coffee Co Ltd has been established for 16 years and was started after Charlie, who, having set up the coffee desk at Mitsubishi, decided he wanted to run his own business. When not preparing and selling coffee, Charlie grades coffee and cocoa on the London Futures Exchange!
The stall offers resealable pouches that are popular, and the coffee sacks get upcycled into all sorts or coverings and interior decorations. Because people can purchase exactly the quantities they want, there’s very little waste. They sell Rainforest Alliance coffee that promotes replanting and regeneration where forest is lost to coffee production.
Mimi’s Handmade – Hamera
A redundancy triggered by COVID led Hamera to take the courageous decision to turn her passion for home cooking into a source of income with the setting up of her business Mimi’s Handmade; making and selling Kashmiri inspired food.
Hamera’s key product is her natural, homemade vegetable salsas made with fresh veg like black carrot, beetroot and Asian spices. She loves to research old recipes, favouring those from Persia and those passed on from her mother and grandmother. Hamera tries to use seasonal ingredients and is looking to replace some of her plastic packaging with bamboo alternatives.
Hamera has also now started selling wholesale to nurseries, independent food shops and farm outlets.
Covenham House Orchard Fayre – Kathy
Kathy has a beautiful stall filled with preserves, syrups and fruit cakes made from the produce of her Norfolk orchard. Kathy worked in legal services before setting up her business farming, harvesting, cooking and selling everything herself. She’d been thinking that Covenham House Orchard Fayre might be a semi-retirement step, but says she’s never been busier!
Kathy has 70 trees; bringing a bounty of walnuts and almonds for Christmas cakes and then the usual plum, cherry, apple etc. There’s also peach, nectarine and apricot trees whose crops can be a bit more hit and miss. Chickens provide eggs and there are hives too. Kathy focuses on seasonal products, the food miles are low and because most of the products are preserved, there’s minimal waste.
Cheese Tellers – Chris
Cheese-Tellers sell artisan products from Italy – mainly cheeses that come in a huge variety of shapes, smells and consistency. The company was founded 14 years ago by some folk working in big-pharma who were craving something different – so they started importing their favourite cheeses from producers they’d previously only visited on holiday.
Filippo, the owner, won’t sell any cheese he doesn’t like himself and everyone on the stall loves to see the faces of shoppers light up as they hear the stories behind the products. The one I bought, Basajo, is a creamy blue, aged in Passito dessert wine and its unique flavour came about quite by accident. Soldiers occupied a village in Italy where the ewe’s cheese was popular and the soldiers liked it as much as the locals. Keen to ensure supplies for themselves, the producers stashed it in barrels that had been used to hold the Passito wine. On retrieving the cheese, they discovered it had taken on a brilliant new flavour.
Chris says there’s very little waste because people can try before they buy, and so only purchase what they really like in the exact quantities they want.
Pinewood Nurseries
99% of the plants on this ornamentals stall are grown in a nursery in Ashdon near Saffron Walden, as opposed to many plants that we buy that are often imported from Holland and Belgium.
Unlike the supermarkets, smaller quantities and attention to care mean there’s much less waste. Surplus compost is put into a large steamer with a fire at the base. The heating destroys weeds and bacteria so it can be reused.
Cards in Bloom – Sue
Owner of Cards in Bloom, Sue took to taking pictures of nature and flowers over lockdown and since then has created a card collection and beautiful, colour photo-book of the images. Sue has donated 200 of her books to care homes and hospices so that those stuck indoors for this terribly long and lonely period could enjoy the beauty of nature and the changing seasons.
Sue Balding wrote the foreword and the profits from the book are split between three charities, including the Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust.
The Farmer’s Market visits Impington Village College every third Saturday between 9am and midday. Their next scheduled visit is Saturday 19 June.
