I begin every day by taking my dogs for a walk around the farm. The dairy’s milking team will already be hard at work and I’ll usually see a few heads among the rows of vegetables or fruit trees, lifting or trimming or tending to our market garden. And as I look around, I am still so immensely proud of what I see. What began as a desire to make a small difference to the health and future of our planet, and to feed my family in a better way, has grown from a collection of empty barns and bare fields to become Daylesford.
This book tells a little of the story and shares the beliefs and ideas that have led to Daylesford becoming what it is today; how and why I started along a path to lead a more conscious life and how that path continues to teach and challenge and fill me with joy every day. But it also celebrates the work of so many others. I am very fortunate to be surrounded by the most brilliant team, who are as passionate and committed to Daylesford’s philosophy as I am. Above all they are driven by the same desire to share the work that we do as widely as possible. I have a vision but my team are the experts – they are the ones who make it all happen.
My hope is that you might take even just a little of what you are about to read and be inspired to make a difference too. I believe it’s not just doing a good deed, it’s a responsibility. We’re custodians of our land, our soil, our bodies and minds, and our precious planet and I think we can all make small changes to live in a more mindful way, to take care of them and strive to leave our world in a better state than we find it. Cooking and eating well were central to my childhood. I’m a child of the 1950s and I know that has had a huge part to play in shaping my life. I grew up in a time when food was still rationed so we had to make the most of what we had and much of the way I do things today is simply how we lived back then – we looked after things; we looked after ourselves and we looked after the land.
When I think back to that time it reminds me to be very grateful for what I have today. So many of us have lost sight of where our food comes from but food has a real value and I worry that sometimes we forget that. We’ve lost that connection between field and fork – the how and why our food comes to be on our plates. We sit down to meals often without a second thought about what we’re eating and without sensing or savouring the flavours and ingredients. Mealtimes have always been very important to me but even more so from the time I became a mother. As well as being the time to nurture and nourish our bodies well, meals are an opportunity to bring my family together, to spend time celebrating and enjoying our food together and acknowledging the work and care that have gone into creating it. I like to make an effort with the table setting at mealtimes – to set a scene and make it look special – and I love seeing others enjoy that.
Farming was very different back then too. We didn’t use chemicals and pesticides because we didn’t have them. There were only small farms where everything was free-range and it was organic by nature. Then in the late 1960s and 70s came this big push towards progressive agriculture – big machinery and huge farms whose sole aim was to reap as much from their crops and livestock as they possibly could, whatever the means. Farming was no longer about working with nature’s natural rhythms and timescale; it was all about speeding things up. The hedgerows were pulled out to create more space for the fields, wildlife and bees lost their natural habitat, and soil health and plant diversity were sacrificed in the race to produce as much as possible. It seemed like such a good idea, yet what is clear now is that it wasn’t sustainable – it was instant gratification in return for years of damage and loss.
When I married, we lived on a farm in Staffordshire and it was there that I was first struck by the idea that things needed to change. Starting to farm organically wasn’t a decision for me. Once I’d learned about what was being done to our countryside, our food and our planet there was simply no way back – I couldn’t go back.
It was a very hot summer – the heatwave of 1976 – when I was in the garden with my first baby Alice and noticed that my newly-planted roses were beginning to wilt. I could hear these big machines spraying something so I went to see the farmer next door to ask him about it and he told me they were spraying Roundup. I didn’t like the sound of that, and I could smell it; it was everywhere. I learned later that Roundup is a strong herbicide and its toxins had been carried by the air and had caused my roses to wilt.
Not long afterwards I went to the Royal Agricultural Show in Coventry and came across this little tent run by an organic farmer. I spent two hours with him and he explained to me what being organic meant and how we could raise our animals and grow our crops in a sustainable and natural way without pesticides or antibiotics. On the way home I recall saying to my husband, ‘We can’t carry on farming the way we are; we have to do it differently.’
I went to our farm manager who showered me with arguments about how we wouldn’t be as productive and that profit would go down, but he agreed to try it on 30 acres. It took three years to get them up and going, and seven for the whole farm to become organic. And I remember our wonderful shepherd Dick coming to me and saying, ‘Do you know, you were so right – the animals are happier; they’re healthier because we’re treating them homeopathically, and the lamb has a better flavour.’
Organic farming isn’t the easy path – crops fail, the weather interferes with your plans and you have to pick yourself up from the ashes sometimes – but I’ve never looked back.
When we started to farm in this way I often came up against resistance. People couldn’t understand why we wanted to do it, and I was battling against fixed notions of what being organic meant and whether organic food really was better for you. But it feels as though we’re currently at a turning point. There’s a wider awareness and acceptance that what goes into our body is so important for our overall health and well-being; and people are understanding that we do need to live in a holistic way – to look after our body, mind and spirit – not just because it makes sense for us but because it makes sense for the world and for the long-term health of our planet.
In a way we’ve come full circle. More and more people want to know what they’re eating and how their food is produced, and they’re asking more questions. Organic food is more expensive. It has to be. There was a time when eating organically was considered an extravagant luxury, but attitudes are changing. People are shopping more consciously, and instead of going around a supermarket and buying far too much and wasting it, they are buying what they know they need and finding out where their food is from and how it was produced; they’re moving away from supermarkets towards supporting local shops and smaller, artisan producers and businesses who are mindful of their ethical and environmental footprint.
I do eat things that aren’t organic – it’s not possible to eat organically all of the time, especially if you travel. Life is for living and you’d miss out on all kinds of experiences if you were militant about always eating organic produce. I do eat the occasional avocado – we can’t grow them successfully in this country – but 80 per cent of what I eat is organic, and above all it’s local and it’s seasonal. And if an ingredient has travelled far then I think about it; that choice is considered.
I don’t follow any kind of food philosophy. Eating well is about flavour and nutrition and balance. I eat in sync with the seasons in a way that’s balanced for my body and mindful for our planet; and as far as is possible that means eating organically and locally, healthily and happily. Yes I have a cold-pressed juice most mornings, but I also love a wonderful cheeseboard and that can be as nourishing for my soul as any green juice can be for my body. I am not going to fixate on eating something organic if it doesn’t taste as good as food that’s been grown locally, or farmed with care and intelligence. The only thing I truly avoid is processed food.
This book features recipes for different times of the day and for different occasions, whether you’re eating alone, preparing food for family and friends, or eating outdoors, which I adore. The recipes are organised by season. I like my food to really taste of its ingredients, which means it has to be simple, fresh and designed to celebrate produce rather than be flashy or fussy. There are, however, a few dishes in the book that are a little bit more complex. I love entertaining and a dinner party is a time when I do want to impress, so these recipes are for times when you want to push the boat out a little. There is also a section at the end with a particular focus on well-being – recipes for days when you’re feeling like you need a boost or want to nurture your body with extra vitamins and goodness.
You will find several recipes that encourage reducing or preventing food waste; designed to enable you to preserve produce, use up your leftovers or cook the lesser used, often discarded, parts of an animal, such as offal. Waste, and the resulting greenhouse gases it creates, has become one of the greatest threats to the health of our planet and atmosphere and the statistics outlining how much food and packaging we discard each year are frightening. It is something I am committed to tackling as much as we can, so buying, eating and packaging in a mindful way is one of our key sustainability principles at Daylesford. None of our London food waste is sent to landfill and our unsold fresh food is sent to charities and local soup kitchens (see here). At the farm, all our scraps from the café and production kitchen are a valuable source of goodness for our compost heap, which in turn is used to nourish our market garden. Our packaging is also a primary concern. Of course there are always improvements to be made, but we do our best to package as lightly as we can, using natural materials that can be reused, recycled or composted. Since we opened the farm shops we have had ‘bags for life’ and have never had a plastic carrier bag anywhere at Daylesford.
Our milk packaging is something I am particularly proud of. The innovative pouch that our creamery uses is made from Calymer, which contains 40 per cent chalk, a natural material that requires no chemical processes to extract it and uses minimal energy to produce. The packaging’s carbon footprint is significantly lower when compared to a standard HDPE plastic bottle.
Nature is of course the beating heart, the life and soul of everything we do on a farm. But beyond the fields, remaining connected to the earth; nurturing and working in tandem with its bounty is fundamental to everything I do and believe in. I feel an almost acute need to be in nature. For me it is our richest source of beauty and that is why I’m so passionate about the work we do at Daylesford to care for it. There’s a poem by Keats titled ‘A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever’ and those words have always resonated with me because I want us all to be able to surround ourselves with beauty whenever we can. Nature is God’s gift to us and it’s up to us to look after it, to ensure that future generations can enjoy its miracles too.
People often ask me how I find the energy and it’s simply because I love life. I’m permanently curious. I always think I’m going to go round the next corner and find a treasure and I believe there’s forever something more to learn. Life is a feast, and it’s up to us to enjoy every minute of it.
Daylesford was born out of a desire to make a difference, and the core principles on which it was founded continue to govern my decisions and drive my ideas. Above all these principles are at the heart of all the work that my team and I do at the farm and through my other endeavours. Below are some of the beliefs and principles I strive to follow as best I can, and as far as is possible, in order to lead a more conscious way of life. My hope is that they will inspire you to adopt some of them too.
Nurture nature; don’t fight it
Look after the long-term health of our planet by working in harmony with the environment
Farm sustainably and responsibly – farm organically
Shop and eat locally and seasonally
Be mindful of our ethical and environmental footprint; reuse, recycle and package lightly
Nourish body, mind and spirit
Pass on knowledge: teach and inspire the next generation
Safeguard artisan traditions, skills and values
Give back
At the farm the day begins at around 5am when our herdsman leads our cows into the parlour for milking. We founded Daylesford with a small herd of dairy cows and today our pedigree British Friesian and rare-breed Gloucester herds and the organic milk they each provide are still at the heart of what we do.
Just a few steps from the milking parlour is the farm’s busy creamery. The fresh milk is pumped directly from the parlour into our milk house and cheese room.
Everything we produce at the creamery is designed to ensure that none of our milk is wasted. In the milk house, most of the milk is packaged up to be sold in our sustainable pouches. We skim the cream from certain batches of milk to make skimmed and semi-skimmed milk, but instead of being thrown away, the cream is churned and rolled by hand to produce our pats of butter. The by-product of that churning – the buttermilk – is also collected and sold in our farm shops. I’m particularly fond of it in scones; it gives them a wonderfully light texture.
Live cultures are added to one batch of milk to create thick, creamy yoghurt, while in a separate vat, the milk is mixed with live yeasts to produce our fermented milk drink, kefir. The natural ferments are easier to digest and kefir is believed to help restore the natural balance of healthy flora in our guts.
In the cheese room our small team develops, matures and moulds nine different cheeses, from blues and goat’s cheese to Single and Double Gloucesters, Cheddar and another hard cheese named after the local village of Adlestrop. We continue to honour traditional methods of cheesemaking, separating the curds from the whey by hand, using wooden pulley systems to weight and press the cheeses, and relying on intuition and skill to judge when the cheeses have ripened to be at their best.
The nature of organic milk means that it will change throughout the year, according to the weather, the season and the behaviour of the herd, so our cheesemakers must understand and work in harmony with its natural properties and their mutations. Rather than standardising processes and flavours, we adjust our recipes to the milk and believe that it is this artisan, small-scale production that gives our cheeses their distinctive flavours.
The cooked cheese curds used to produce our hard cheeses are poured into moulds then pressed slowly and gently, and the cheeses are turned by hand. Pressing too quickly means that our cheesemakers might find liquid – essentially butter – stuck to the bottom of the moulds so they must check each cheese regularly to ensure it is being pressed at the right speed. Nothing is rushed. Our Single Gloucester cheese matures for eight weeks, while our Cheddar will be aged for anything up to 18 months. We monitor every stage of the process closely – even the muslin cloths we use to wrap our cheeses are made from organic cotton.
Gloucestershire has a long history of making cheese, and for many years the Single Gloucester was one of the most common in the county, a household staple made from the milk of the local Old Gloucester cattle.
In the mid-eighteenth century a cattle plague depleted stocks of Old Gloucester cattle to the point where it became a rare breed, and this, along with falling demand meant production virtually ceased. Eventually the cattle became so scarce that in 1994 Single Gloucester cheese was granted Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) status.
After rescuing and breeding a herd of pure Old Gloucester cattle, we are now one of only six producers in the UK to be allowed to make the cheese. To guarantee the purest, most authentic flavour, we choose only to use milk from our Single Gloucester herd and we milk them separately from our Friesians. The cheese’s mild, buttery flavour relies heavily on the quality of the milk; there’s nothing in the production process that can hide any faults.
Single Gloucester was obsolete for such a long time that for me and for our cheesemakers it’s not only a privilege to have been part of its renaissance, it’s rewarding to think we’re part of a small group trying to reinvent it; writing a new chapter in its history. It also just happens to be my favourite.
I cannot resist a cheeseboard. I love the depth of flavour that comes from a good cheese and while I definitely have my favourites, I’m always keen to learn about and try new types and experiment with the kinds of cheeses I serve. As with all seasonal produce, there are times of the year when certain ones will be at their best but I don’t believe cheese should be something to cause confusion; it is there to be enjoyed. When making up a board I generally just choose a hard cheese, a sheep or a goat’s cheese, a blue, a soft cheese and then a cheese that is particular to that season, like a Mont d’Or in winter or Wigmore in the summer.
In terms of what to pair with them, you’re never going to find something that marries with all of the different flavours so just pick a single cheese and serve accompaniments that work well with it.
Below is a brief guide to what you can expect if you choose some of our cheeses; though of course, choosing cheeses that are local to you will inevitably enrich your enjoyment of one of life’s greatest joys.
Baking good bread takes time. It’s a simple fact, yet it’s a philosophy that has for the large part been lost at some point in Britain’s bread-making history. At the farm, our bakery team has taken baking back to its origins. We make our bread following artisanal, hand-led methods, using no more than the basic ingredients loaves have been baked with for centuries: flour, water and salt.
We source the highest quality organic flours and natural ingredients to bake breads, cakes and pastries that reflect the philosophy at the heart of the way we cook and eat.
While commercial bakeries rely on a processed ‘fast-action’ yeast to shorten a dough’s leavening process, then pump their goods full of preservatives and additives to inject flavour and improve shelf life, we bake our breads using a natural leaven – a sourdough culture or ‘starter’ – made from a simple mixture of flour and water and natural bacteria from the surrounding environment.
Our loaves slowly ferment for at least 10 hours, allowing the dough the time it needs to develop the bread’s elasticity and texture.
It is this nurturing, this respect for an ingredient’s natural properties, that gives our breads their depth of flavour and our sourdough loaves their distinctive chewiness and tang.
Beyond the better flavour, embracing this slowness has also been proven to be kinder to our bodies. During the long fermentation process, important nutrients, such as iron, zinc and magnesium, folic acid and other B vitamins, become easier for our bodies to absorb. For us, this is one of the reminders that a slower, simpler way of living and respecting the produce we are lucky enough to enjoy is not just about keeping traditions alive; it’s about ensuring a healthy future.
Making a sourdough loaf at home does require more time and patience than a standard loaf, but you’ll be rewarded in terms of its more complex flavour, its wonderful chewy texture and in the benefits it brings to your body (see here). This hearty, herby offering is perfect comfort food in the autumn and winter months; I think it makes wonderful cheese on toast, served with a little mustard on the side for a hint of heat.
500g waxy potatoes such as Desiree, peeled
2 tbsp olive oil
500g strong white bread flour, plus extra for dusting
400g sourdough starter
1½ tbsp olive oil
280ml lukewarm water
2 level tbsp chopped thyme leaves
1 level tsp salt
Preheat the oven to 180°C/gas 4. Cut the potatoes in half and place in a baking tray. Toss with the oil and roast for about 50 minutes, making sure they don’t burn. Remove from the tray and cool, then cut into chunks.