Dear Customer,

I hope you enjoyed your summer holidays and thank you for being back with us. It probably seems like a long time ago, another world perhaps.

Several weeks ago I attended an open day at Ryton Organic Gardens in Warwickshire. There was a tour of their Heritage Seed Library which saves the seed of rare and endangered vegetables, there were tomato tastings and demonstrations on how to save seed.

The Henry Doubleday Research Association was founded in 1958 by horticulturalist and writer, Lawrence D Hills. As well as Ryton, they have sites in Yalding and Audley End. The HDRA was conceived as a membership club for experimenting gardeners and was named after a nineteenth century Quaker smallholder called Henry Doubleday. Hill's wife Cherry researched the health and nutritional issues of plants and they circulated their findings to their members through their newsletter. Many current concerns, such as the link between aluminium and Alzheimer's disease, were first suggested in HDRA newsletters.

In 1974, two scientists, Alan and Jackie Gear became involved with the Association and the HDRA soon became world leaders in 'organic' research.

Once a piece of barren land, Ryton is now a heavenly place full of perfumed gardens, orchards, wild flower meadows and tiny allotments. It is in these allotments that they are growing our lost varieties to save and renew the seed.

In the 14th and 15th centuries seed was starting to be imported into England by merchants. Seed also came from monastery gardens and was sold by shopkeepers in London. In the country, people could buy seeds at fairs and markets or from travelling pedlars, but there wasn't a reliable supply. They were also expensive which meant that people would grow their own and swap them amongst themselves.

With the development of market gardening to supply the growing populations of the cities in the 16th century, there began a more organised production of seeds. A lot of the expertise would have come from the Dutch immigrants who settled in Southern England during the middle of the century. They started by growing vegetables, especially in Kent and Essex, and then began to specialise in seed. Many local strains were developed like Sandwich beans and Sandwich radishes which were on sale by the 1670's.

Around this time the first specialist seedsmen began trading in London. One of the earliest surviving seed lists from around 1677 is that of William Lucas who had a shop near 'Strand Bridge'. His list included three types of carrots ( Orange, Yellow and Red ), and three types of turnips ( Long, Round and Yellow ). These early seedsmen sold by weight. Their customers would have been market gardeners or gardeners to country gentlemen and richer inhabitants of London.

By the 18th century the number of specialist seedsmen were increasing and starting to set up in provincial towns. In 1764 John Harrison bought himself out of the navy and set up shop in Leicester, the beginnings of Harrison & Son Seed Company which went on to trade for 200 years.

The vast growth of the towns and cities in the 19th century meant a corresponding increase in market gardens and gardeners. Many of them selected their own special strains of crops and saved their own seed. The best of these strains were taken up by the seed companies and commercialised. The Gardeners Chronicle in 1889 praised the Cheltenham Green Top beetroot, and it is still sold today. Head gardeners on large country estates were selecting for early production or bigger, tastier fruit. A variety carrying the name of an estate and which won prizes at shows carried considerable prestige. Few are still familiar today, like the Blenheim Orange melon or the Rousham Park Hero onion.

There was no knowledge of the laws of genetics and the gardeners developed their varieties using combined skills of experience, observation and intuition.

The number of varieties exploded during this era. Sutton's catalogue in the late 1800's listed over twenty five varieties of frame cucumber alone. Suttons were now to start discounting their prices or even to supply them free to '…Clergymen and others who desire to encourage their Cottagers in the cultivation of their gardens'.

The first few decades of the 20th century brought many changes. The austerity of the war and the years of depression swept away the diversity of the Victorian and Edwardian kitchen gardens. There were not the men to tend them nor the money to pay for their upkeep. Increasingly vegetables were grown on a field scale instead of in small market gardens. As the emphasis changed towards agricultural efficiency, problems of seed quality started to be addressed. Emergency regulations on seed testing during the 1914 - 18 war were replaced in 1922 by permanent legislation. The Seeds Regulations required seeds to be tested and meet minimum standards of germination. The work on the rules of genetic inheritance of a Moravian monk called Greg Mendel started to get recognition and plant breeding became more of a science. Plant breeders started to make deliberate crosses of parent plants to suit changed social and agricultural conditions.

However, seed firms were still selling locally for local food production and their lists included varieties that had been specially adapted to the conditions of that area. Neighbouring villages had their distinct varieties of Brussel sprouts for example. Nevertheless it became increasingly more economic for seed merchants to buy seeds from abroad.

In 1942 wartime blockades prevented all that, seeds were becoming scarce and increased home production was imperative. As part of the Ministry of Agriculture's Dig for Victory campaign, gardeners were encouraged to save their own seed.

After 1945 farming became more mechanised and industrial. We started to buy more processed and out-of-season produce. The supermarkets replaced traditional greengrocers and they were not interested in local produce. In response there was a streamlining of the seed companies with smaller companies either merging or going bust and merged companies being taken over by multinationals whose main interests were possibly in other fields such as oil or chemicals.

The supermarkets wanted only varieties that were uniform and robust. There was now no seed supplier financially prepared to satisfy the quirks of British gardeners. Each time a small seed company had merged or collapsed its list was either rationalised or it disappeared completely. And with it went local adapted strains, increasing the need, by compensation, of the use of agrochemicals.

In 1964 there was new EU legislation. The Plant Varieties and Seeds Act proposed that all vegetable varieties offered for sale must be registered on a 'National List', with seed companies invited to submit varieties for inclusion. So when Britain entered the EU in 1973 it became a punishable offence to sell the seed of a variety that wasn't on the UK's or one of the other member states' lists.

For a variety to be registered it had to pass the DUS Test ( Distinctness, Uniformity and Stability ). This cost around £2000, and then £300 per annum thereafter to stay on the list. It was uneconomical for seed companies to grow a wide range of varieties.

Lawrence Hills recognised that the loss of old varieties did not just affect gardeners, but that it endangered our future food supplies.' The future may well need seeds having pollution tolerance as well as disease resistance' he said ' and we cannot afford to allow the destruction of valuable genetic material in the interests of commercial or bureaucratic tidiness'. So in 1975 he launched a campaign to start a 'Seed Bank'.

The pea that Lord Caernarvon claimed to have found in Tutankhamun's tomb is banked in the Seed Bank, along with the Duke of Kent pea which disappeared from the UK in the 19th century and has just been found and brought back from the USA.

A strain of black-seeded runner bean called 'the Coal Bean' was grown by miners in the Shropshire village of St Martins and passed down by generations. It was sent to them anonymously with a note saying ' Sadly very few are left who grow them now. I was given these by an old gentleman who can no longer garden so I am sending them to you.' Many people, now elderly, who had heeded the Ministry's words and ' dug for victory' have saved seed ever since. Varieties of which, had it not been for them, would have disappeared for ever.

This leads me onto the real reason for my visit. Our old varieties need not just to be preserved but revived. The sale of seed varieties not on the National List is not permitted, but the sale of the produce is.

At Ryton I met with curator and expert Neil Monro to explore whether there was a way of us acquiring some of those precious Victorian and heirloom seeds.

Since the visit I have been in dialogue with him and we are going to be given enough seed to start our own production and thereafter we will save our own seed. We are starting with ten different varieties of tomatoes, six french beans, two broad beans and two runner beans. There will be enough seed to produce 1lb per farmaround customer of each variety. If successful we will move into brassicas and roots. The tomatoes will include Whippersnapper, Snow White Cherry, Ararat Flamed, Pop-in, Orange Banana, Cherokee Purple and Darby's Striped. We will have Jack Edwards, Brighstone, Snake and Selma Zebra french beans along with Bok and Fry runner beans. All it takes now is for me to find an inquisitive and experimental farmer - that may be the hard part.

If all goes to plan, next summer I will be giving you the names of the varieties and the histories as they appear in the bags. I will also give information on how to save the seeds yourselves.

On leaving Ryton I called in on my ancestors graves in the village of Haselor near Stratford to ponder my own genetic heritage, then continued on to Herefordshire to see John Vaughan.

John grows potatoes, sweetcorn, Brussel sprouts, Savoy cabbages, leeks, broad beans and runner beans and has 100 Texel breeders ( sheep ). He farms 30 acres of his cousin's land in Dinmore on banks that slope down to the River Lugg. Each field is bordered by hawthorns, elderberries and wild damsons. The fields are subdivided by rows of sweetcorn to create paths for the tractor to drive up once the corn has been harvested. The sky is full of swallows that feed on the aphid. There are badger paw prints because of course they adore sweetcorn. It is an idyllic setting though the proximity to the river means flooding and last year was a disaster.

John's family bred Herefordshire cattle, winning Herd of the Year six times running and Sire of the Year nine times. Sixteen years ago he emigrated to Australia, taking with him a flask of 100 embryos of the family's prized cattle that he would invest in his new life. The herd and everything he had was sold, he didn't think he'd be back. The embryo vet that he used in Australia conducted the implants of the embryos unhygienically and not one calf was born. He pursued the vet for 2 years and the day before the court case the vet declared himself bankrupt.

John then bought some irrigated scrub land and began growing maize. Four years later he was bust and came back to England.

He took over the cultivation of a piece of his cousins land and converted it to organic. He started by just growing sweetcorn as this was the skill that he had developed in Australia. He sold it all on local markets.

John is like a volcano verging on eruption, completely overpowering and aggressive. He is tall and broad with curly grey hair and ruddy face. He spent the afternoon telling me that I looked ill and pale, that my complexion was awful and that I needed red meat. When he calls to ask us if we want potatoes he shouts at us down the phone. He is under no illusion about his character, he certainly doesn't try and hide it. He told me that he was directly descended from Black Vaughan.

Sir Conan Doyle was staying at the Baskerville Arms in Haye when he was told about Black Vaughan and this inspired him to write the Hound of the Baskervilles.

BV was the head of the Vaughans. He led a posse against Cromwell's men, some of whom he killed and hung in a bar. A crime for which he was beheaded. His spirit lived on to haunt the town of Kington. Twelve parsons and twelve cats went to Kington to exorcise the spirit but all but one parson and one cat fled. This last parson caught the spirit and put it in a snuff box. The parson put the snuff box into Hargest Pool, Kington. BV told the priest that his spirit would be back. John believes that his spirit is back and that it is in him.

It has been a good growing season with plenty of rain and sun and we have been enjoying his sweetcorn and runner beans in the late summer. We finished off with tea and homemade shortbread made by his kind, elderly mother with whom he lives in a bungalow nearby. Having fallen out with his cousin, John will lose the land in one years time at the end of his tenancy agreement. So if anyone is interested in 30 beautiful organic acres of Herefordshire with possible planning permission and a willing Black John Vaughan to do the growing, it's £100,000.

Thank you very much for having completed and returned the questionnaires to us. The winner of the prize draw for the luxury hamper was Carol Webster of TW15. The information was invaluable to us. We have made many changes to our product range as a result. We are also having new software written for our computer system to help improve our efficiency. Amongst other things it will then generate weekly statements, which many of you have asked for.

NEW PRODUCTS AND PRICING

We have introduced some new bags which you can see in the shop. This includes a Select Bag which never includes some of the commonly unpopular vegetables such as swede, white cabbage, kale etc. We have also introduced a set of 'modules'.

We are discontinuing the Mediterranean Box which included pasta and pasta sauce and are replacing it with a Mediterranean Module @ £6 which contains only fresh produce. (Pastas and sauces will be available in the new grocery catalogue which will be launched sometime in November)

For anyone currently receiving a Mediterranean Box, we will automatically switch you to a Mediterranean Module on week commencing 5th November unless we hear from you otherwise.

We are creating a new Salad Box @ £7.50 and also introducing a Salad Module @ £5.

For anyone currently receiving a Salad Box @ £6.50, we will automatically switch you to a £7.50 Salad Box on week commencing 5th November, unless we hear from you otherwise.

There are some price changes to some of the juices and also to the prices of some of the loose vegetables, details of which are in the enclosed brochure. These price changes will also be effective from the 5th November.

Please remember that any changes to your order can easily be done online here or by calling the office on : 020 7627 8066.

Over the years we have had many requests to put promotional material into the bags. It is not something that we would normally do. However, knowing how tough it is running a business, especially at the moment, we would welcome as a one-off, giving you the opportunity to do so.

We will put a package together to go in the bags during the last week of November. You may have a business brochure, or are a freelance designer needing extra work. Perhaps you would like to advertise a holiday home or have something to sell. Whatever it is please feel free to give us your information and we will compile it. I would suggest a deadline of Monday 19th November for inclusion. If it is in catalogue or brochure form perhaps you could send me a sample copy. Otherwise, just email, fax or post the text. My email address is i.davies@farmaround.co.uk. For your ongoing use we are in the process of creating a Customer Notice Board on the website.

I know that this crisis is affecting some more than others. One lady rang up to cancel her order saying that she was having a nervous breakdown and couldn't even put anything in the microwave let alone cope with a sack of vegetables. I sympathise completely and hope she is feeling better.

I watch or listen to the news constantly. I am conscious as I write this that I'm missing Panorama. Nothing much is 'happening' today particularly, but it's hard to relate to much else. Trying to get on with every day life as we are supposed to is fine and I'm sure most of us are able to. But it doesn't remove that constant underlying feeling of perturbation. That feeling that beneath the veneer of the normality of our everyday lives the pillars that support it are creaking.

I sincerely hope that by the time I write another newsletter all will be well again, it usually is. As my dear father always says to me 'There is no point worrying about things that may never happen.' Thank you for reading what is probably an excruciatingly long newsletter.

Best Wishes,


Isobel Davies

Reference: Back Garden Seed Saving by Penny Strickland