5 key facts you should know about your soil

Soil may not seem a sexy topic, let’s face it – it’s commonly referred to as dirt.  But, with a name like Muddy Carrot, we're bound to bring it up at some point! 

So is it important for our every day life?

Yes, it is vital, it is what our very existence is built on, and before you dismiss it as something just for the interest of farmers - let's take a closer look at the soil beneath your feet:

• We depend on it, and its health, for all the food we eat.  It is key to our whole food chain, from fruit and vegetables to the plant life that sustains the animals on our farms and in the wild.
• Though it covers a third of the planet’s surface, we know less about soil than about space.  This may seem bonkers, but soil is very complex.  A handful of soil has more micro-organisms in it than there are people on the planet. It’s full of microbial life.  It is because of all this life in the soil that we can grow healthy food.
•  Much carbon is locked up in soil.  In fact there’s twice as much carbon locked away in the soil as there is in the atmosphere.  The organic matter we add to our soil in the form of mulching, composted plant material and animal manure is all carbon based.  A 1% increase in organic matter on 1 acre of land will lock multiple tonnes of carbon out of the atmosphere.  There is great potential for building soils in this way where they’ve been degraded over the last couple of hundred years.  This has the added benefit of improving the fertility of the land we grow on, not through artificial chemicals but through more sustainable organic matter.
• Soil can and is being eroded and compacted throughout the world.  This is most noticeable on soil on slopes.  Once we remove the plants growing on the surface of the soil, rain will soon wash the soil, and the goodness within it, away.  This is why clearing trees from hillsides to grow crops can have a devastating effect on it, and why rainforests can become desert.  
• Soil has many layers.  There is a rich surface layer full of the organic matter from decomposing plants, and added organic material, followed by the top soil and then the sub-soil.   Soil comes in varying mixes of sand, silt and clay, and the proportions of these elements determines the ‘type’ of soil you have.  A healthy garden soil should be teeming with worms moving goodness around the garden, and helping to keep the soil aerated.

You can help the environment by caring for the soil in your own garden.  Very simple things can make a big difference.  By learning how to make your own compost, mulching over the top of your garden beds and growing insect-friendly plants you can all have a positive effect on the environment.

How are you using your garden?

Create your own Edible Polyculture

"Our daily bread" is something most people in Britain have taken for granted for many years.  Food and drink is the UK’s largest industry worth £80Bn per year.  But although the UK has a thriving farming sector we still import 40% of the total food consumed and the proportion is rising.  This is a big reliance on food grown elsewhere in the world, especially with climate change affecting our food chain more and more.

There are now more signs of the strain put on our food industry.  In 2008 there was a spike in food prices in the global markets due to poor harvests - wheat prices rose 130%, soya by 87% and rice by 74%. 

Drought, food and water shortages are now affecting many more parts of the world. Richard Choularton, a senior policy officer in the U.N. World Food Program’s climate change office said “We should expect much more political destabilization of countries as it bites. What is different now from 20 years ago is that far more people are living in places with a higher climatic risk: 650 million people now live in arid or semi-arid areas where floods and droughts and price shocks are expected to have the most impact.”

This is very sobering stuff, and puts in perspective the need for food security and sourcing local, both to ensure we can continue to feed ourselves as well as reducing our impact on the rest of the world.  

Have you thought of growing some of your own food, but have little time?

If you’ve got some outdoor space it's amazing how easily you can grow a little bit of food for minimal effort.  I’m not talking a high maintenance veg patch, but simply adding plants into the garden that produce a harvest for you whilst also benefiting our local bee and insect population.  Over the next few months we will be looking at a few simple combinations of plants that benefit each other and could bring you a small harvest.

Create Mulberry edible polyculture :

Mulberry tree – not often seen these days (but through no fault of its own) it produces delicious red or black raspberry shaped fruit that  are rarely seen in the shops.   It was originally brought into Britain in the Tudor times  in the hope that it would be useful in the cultivation of silkworm. The mulberry tree is beautiful – it has a spreading habit and becomes crooked and gnarled with time, with attractive leaves. If space is limited it can be grown against walls.

Grape vine – if you’re lucky enough to have a larger specimen you can plant a grape vine through it.  The mulberry has a positive effect on the health of a vine.

Hyssop – This attractive medicinal perennial herb will attract bees.   It has a positive effect on encouraging the growth of grapes.

Jostaberry, sage and other perennial herbs are also known to work well with this grouping.

Wild Garlic Recipes

With Wild Garlic now in season we've had some delicious recipes shared with us.  You'll find it in woodlands, fields and roadsides. It is best eaten in early spring  - whilst it is at its most tender!

I hope you get a chance to do some foraging - it's great fun!!

Wild Spring Risotto

By Chris Westgate

Heavenly Hedgerows

2 large handfuls of nettle (spring tips are best)

20g Wild garlic 

100g butter

1 red onion

4C chicken or veg stock

100g grated Parmesan

1/2C white wine

2C risotto rice

1/4C mint

Finely chop the mint, nettles and garlic, put to one side.

Finely chop and fry the onion. Add the rice and gradually (1/2 a cup at a time until absorbed) add the stock (stirring constantly) When there is 1 cup of stock left, add the wine, nettles, garlic and mint. Finally at the end of cooking add the Parmesan and stir.  Serve immediately.

White beans with wild Garlic sauce

By Sue Currie

Netherton Foundry

400g cooked white beans (cannelini, haricot, butter beans - whatever you've got!)

200ml white wine

200ml chicken or vegetable stock

1 onion, sliced

1 dstsp grain mustard

100ml single cream

1 large handful Wild garlic, washed and chopped finely

Salt and pepper

Put the wine and stock in a pan and bring to the boil.  Simmer until reduced by half.

Gently fry the onion in rapeseed oil, with a knob of butter, until translucent and soft

Add the onions and mustard to the reduced stock mixture and stir well.  Add the cream and warm through.

Toss in the Wild garlic, season with salt and pepper.

Serve - with crusty bread, sausages, lamb chops or a nice piece of fish........... or any other combination that takes your fancy!

Nettle and Wild Garlic soup.

By Catherine

Cyril's Soap

Large knob butter
1 onion, chopped
1 medium potato (optional, but I think it thickens the soup up a bit) chopped
200g young nettle leaves, chopped
Couple handfuls Wild garlic , chopped
1 litre stock.
Melt butter and soften onion. Add potato, nettle and Wild garlic . Sweat for about 3 or 4 mins add stock and cook until all soft. About 30/40 mins. Allow to cool slightly and then whiz up in blender! Serve with crusty bread!

Wild herb dumplings

By Catherine

Cyril's Soap

100g flour
50g suet
Nettle leaves
May leaves
Dandelion leaves
Dock leaves
Cleavers (sticky grass)
Wild sorrel
Water

Use a couple handfuls of the above mixed herbs. Finely chop. Mix flour and suet and add herbs. Add water to make a dumpling mixture. Form into balls and add to spring/summer stews!

Why Livestock are important

With the pressure of feeding an ever growing population it has been suggested that livestock are a burden on the food chain.  The United Nations estimates that food supply needs to increase by 70-100% by 2050.  There are even some who suggest that going vegetarian would solve world hunger.  There is no doubt we need to do something, but is this the solution?

Presently a third of the world’s cereal harvest is fed to farm animals and for every 100 calories of cereals eaten by livestock only 30 calories of food is generated in the form of meat, milk and eggs.  It is estimated that if this cereal was used for human consumption it would feed 3 billion people.   

However, the question is more how we farm our livestock.  Factory farming often expounded as the solution to producing food more intensely is in fact highly resource intensive.  It means the livestock rely heavily on the type of cereals that would otherwise go into the human food chain. This is bonkers!  What’s more since the start of modern farming we’ve lost about a third of the world’s top soil.  This is one of our most valuable resources, without it we cannot grow anything.  Most of our fertilisers, pesticides and herbicides come from oil and this is very calorie inefficient.

If our livestock are raised in more natural conditions then they become an asset.  Many livestock can thrive in landscapes not suitable for raising crops and they naturally feed on things people would not want to eat.  Sheep on a moorland, pigs through a woodland or chickens in our own backyards recycling our food waste.  Also livestock effectively through their metabolism produce fantastic natural fertilisers for the soil and help to improve our top soil and increase the sustainability of the land. 

The key is to place the right livestock in the right place.  In fact the Shropshire sheep, once close to extinction, has found a new application.  It is one of the few animals that eats exclusively grass and has been used to great effect by tree growers and vineyards to keep the grass down, saving the growers time and money in maintenance.

Do livestock have a place in an ever stretched planet?  Yes, a crucial one.  Not in inefficient, intensive systems but in a more natural environment, earning their keep through the food and soil fertility they leave behind.  Would you want to see a landscape with no animals in it?

‘Safe’ Nuclear Energy?

I've never been a fan of nuclear. I've always felt we can go a long way by reducing our energy wastage and increasing our use of renewable energy technology. Most of Muddy Carrot  HQ's energy usage is derived from the sun, either passively through the solar energy that streams through the south facing windows, or through renewables - the solar panels heating the water and PVs generating electricity. There is no central heating, but loads of insulation. This is not complicated, or expensive technology, just clever thinking in the construction. I also know a couple of farmers that have turned to farming the sun with fields full of solar panels their sheep can happily graze and shelter beneath.  

One country that has made huge CO2 savings by being very forward thinking when it comes to sustainability is Germany and, though they are very effective, they still can not gain all their energy from renewables.

The recent nuclear popularity in turning to uranium fission power stations as a way to generate more electricity whilst keeping CO2 levels low has come to an end, with the Fukushima melt down that spread dangerous radioactive waves throughout the surrounding area. It could have been even worse if it was not for a team of heroic firemen that put their own health at risk in a determined effort to cool the reactor. What happened that day is likely to have a long term effect on Japan.

However, theoretically there is a far more stable and plentiful means of generating nuclear energy. Thorium.

There are numerous benefits of thorium over uranium, the key ones being:

Distribution of Thorium reserves across the globe

• There is a plentiful supply of thorium and it is far more easily extracted than uranium.
• Thorium is also much less radioactive than uranium, allowing far more stable reactors. 
• It is also considerably more energy dense; you could hold a lifetime supply of energy in thorium in the palm of your hand.
• It does not have the by-product of plutonium used in nuclear weapons.

Further research into thorium reactors is supported by some key environmental protection groups who are anti traditional nuclear power stations, including the influential Friends of The Earth who believe that this could indeed be the way forward.  

Thorium is not a new idea. The idea was first successfully tested in the 1950's, but the military saw the advantage of Uranium with the generation of Plutonium for their war heads and governments invested in the development of Uranium power stations over Thorium Power Stations.  

Theoretically thorium reactors would be based on the very early molten salt reactors which would not explode if overheated due to the fact that the salt contracts rather than expanding causing the reactor to remain sub-critical. The Thorium reactors would also be far more efficient at being cleaned than traditional uranium stations, with the waste being less harmful than uranium waste and able to be re-cycled.

It all sounds very good, but it has so far only been tested at an experimental level. Although this may seem amazing on paper it may take considerable time to develop it to a commercial level, and with nuclear energy having a messy past of horrific failures it has a lot of powerful opposition who don’t want any more nuclear disasters - thorium reactors may never catch on. 

Tomorrow World...

Ever since the Industrial revolution technology has moved forward at an incredible pace as we seek more labour-saving ways of doing things.  Often the pace and types of changes have been unsettling to many.  

When I went to University over 20 years ago there was no internet to turn to for information and my University main computer took the whole ground floor of one building.  What's more, much of what I learnt then is of no practical value now!!  At a similar age my Mother saw the old faithful carthorse, Dinah replaced with a modern tractor and this sparked the start of a huge revolution on the farm.

But what of the future of our modern day farms?

There is no getting away from the fact that in the future the world is going to need to be less resource hungry than it has been in recent times.  This Earth has limited resources and we've been a bit like stroppy teenagers trampling heavily on Mother Earth.  It is time for us to now knuckle down and become more responsible.  Also the public's faith has been tested through the poor traceability of food sold through some national supermarkets.  

There is presently a branching of opinions on the way forward.

There are many who are looking to science to guide them.  Focussing on the need to increase productivity by embracing modern technology such as "precision farming".  This involves the complete analysis of the farm's requirements, feeding it all into a computer and allowing the computer to guide the farming.  This can even go right down to GPS guided tractors driving themselves and fertilising the fields to mm precision.   This can have the advantage of a reduction in wastage caused by human error, together with increased yields.  However the weight of enormous modern tractors compacts the ground and the sustainability of primarily relying on artificial fertilisers in agriculture is questionable and it can be a polluter of our drinking water.

Scientists are also looking into developing  Robotic bees in response to the decline in the bee population.  The technical side of me would love to see one, but not to replace the real thing!

On the other side is a focus on our present wastefulness, and the need to act more sustainably.  The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) released figures in 2011 showing  approximately one third of the world's total food production is lost each year.  With our present weather you can see how some of this can happen, however a large amount of this could be reduced.  The desire to do things sustainably is also seeing the revival of many old practices.  In certain niche roles the working horse is proving very cost effective.  Their high manoeuvrability has made them ideal to work in woodlands, logging trees.  They do far less damage than any machinery could and are quick and efficient, making them perfect especially in ecologically sensitive areas. 

All Muddy Carrot's producers tread very lightly on the soil, including Chris from Heavenly Hedgerows who forages for her key ingredients.

I'm old enough to remember the TV programme Tomorrow's World and the many incredible ideas that we were expected soon to be using, though I believe that Star Trek has been a better predictor of the future with sliding doors, and mobile phones! Time will tell the way we go, but I feel that the primary tester should be sustainability and this could mean embracing the best of both worlds and caring about the roots of all our food.

What do you think?

We Guarantee to be 100% free of horse meat!!

I'm sure you've seen the latest news, The meat in some Findus beef lasagnes have been found to contain 100% horse meat.  This has come fast on the heels of the news that DNA tests have discovered horse meat in beef burgers found in some supermarkets.  

I'm sorry, but I couldn't help but smile listening to the general comments when it was announced.  There is this debate going on between the outrage of those who've now discovered they've inadvertently been eating horse meat and the apathy of others that point to it being harmless to our health.  But I think there is a far more fundamental question here.

How has food become so impersonal?  

It's not hard for Muddy Carrot to confidently claim that all its meat is 100% free of horse meat, it all comes down to the Muddy Carrot ethos.

The meat producers on Muddy Carrot know their meat is not horse because they've reared the livestock that produced it.  They've had no need for a DNA test because they've looked into the field and know from the evidence in front of them they are not rearing horses.  

This is how it should be.  Meat should not have to be transported half way round the world, or produced in a large factory.  It should be raised and finished with care locally.  Produced in small batches, with thought.

Don't get me wrong, I do embrace change.  But change has to be change for the better.  Yes, we want convenience in our busy lives, but I feel you can get a great deal of convenience buying from superb small producers, at reasonable prices, and be confident that what you're buying is genuinely what you thought it was.

Muddy Carrot is here to Make it Easy to Buy Green!

Do we want to create deserts or forests?

"Sadly, it's much easier to create a desert than a forest"

James Lovelock CBE

Stats on the destruction of the Amazon Rainforest are everywhere, and they make sobering reading.  We're all aware of how important the Rainforest is to us.  From its positive effect on the climate to the untapped potential being lost in terms of medical cures. 

Presently around 50,000 species of plants, animals and insects are being lost every year in the destruction of the Rainforest and less than 1% of tropical plants have been tested by scientists, and yet plants can be a rich source for life-saving drugs.  The Rainforest has already provided a quarter of the medicines we use today and many  Rainforest plants have been found to have anti-cancer properties.

Amazon deforestation started in the 1970's and in the last 40 years nearly 20% of the Amazon Rainforest has been destroyed.   That is 745,289km2, which is more than 3 times the size of the UK.  When the Amazon is described as the lungs of the world this is very worrying.

As well as the immense importance of Rainforests,  ancient woodlands are also important.    In the UK we have been destroying our own woodland for even longer.  Since the 1930's nearly 50% of our ancient woodland has been damaged or destroyed.  This leaves only 13% of the UK covered in woodland whilst Europe as a whole has 44% of its area covered in woodland.   This is important for similar reasons to that of the Rainforest.  Not only does it absorb so much CO2 but it is a rich habitat for biodiversity and home to many threatened species.  In the last 120 years 46 species of broad leaf trees have become extinct and 1 in 6 of our native woodland flowers are under threat.

Not only is it important for us to stem the destruction, but for the health of the planet there is a need to re-establish.  The Woodland Trust do much to encourage the replanting of woodlands in the UK.  They point out that a native woodland can be established  in just 12 years.  This is great news, however to develop into the rich biodiversity and maturity of an ancient woodland it takes 300 to 400 years.  Re-establishment of a Rainforest can be achieved in 65 years, but to develop the biodiversity of the Amazon Rainforest it is estimated to have taken more like 4,000 years.

If you’d like to support artisans sourcing their wood from local sustainable woodlands and so helping towards their future, Muddy Carrot has a range of lovely crafts.