ProfilesYou are in: Dorset > People > Profiles > Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall interview Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall interviewThe hit River Cottage television series saw Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall swap the London rat race for West Dorset. Stephen Stafford caught up with Hugh for a chat about his passion for the county's food and rural traditions. - Q: What made you choose Dorset for the River Cottage ‘project’?
- A: I didn’t choose to escape to River Cottage - I’d been renting River Cottage, sharing it with some friends as a weekend getaway before I had the idea for the series. It was because I was a frustrated weekender - I thought ‘wouldn’t it be nice if I didn't have to go back on the train on Sunday evening', so I came up with the idea for the series – to create a proper smallholding, a vegetable garden, raise a few chickens and pigs. Once I had started that I couldn’t stop – it was inevitable I would make the decision to live in Dorset full time, and I love it. Luckily I persuaded my family to come down and join me.
- Q: What's the best selling point of Dorset food?
- A: I think Dorset has one of the best local food traditions in the country. I feel there is so much going on - so much innovation and passion from small producers who are genuinely concerned about tradition, quality and not just mass production and turning a profit. The whole of the west country is a real bastion of what you might call ‘real food’ and we’ve got to protect those artisan food crafts. You may think they are looking backwards when you are thinking about food traditions, but they are safeguarding the future of our food culture from the bland homeogeneity of mass production. It's really important that these young people are passionate about food - its very encouraging that young people are going into this, it's fantastic.
- Q: How worried are you about how children know about where their food comes from?
- A: It concerns be hugely – it's incredibly important that we educate our kids about food and it should be a matter for the national curriculum. Kids are the future of food and have a natural curiosity and enthusiasm for food and sometimes it’s the lazy approach of adults which stifles their curiosity. Whether it's knocking up some pastry or kneeding some bread, making cakes and then moving on to some exotic stuff - kids love that stuff all you have to do is give them a chance and it’s a great way of entertaining them. I get the impression the River Cottage programmes are watched by a very, very wide age range – kids on their half term told me they’ve been allowed to stay up and watch it – I love that, it's fantasic. And hopefully that’ll stimulate some young minds about food. Lots of food programmes don’t address where food really comes from – the basic fundamentals are lost in a pile of polestrene and cling film packaging.
- Q: What were the high and low points from your time at River Cottage?
- A: Taking on livestock is a big responsibility. The first time an animal dies on the farm, not because you want to kill it to eat it, but because it gets sick – that was a big shock. I remember I lost a sheep – it was in the river, we hauled it out and thought it was ok, but the next morning we found it lying dead, I felt helpless and saddened by that. But that’s farming and you’ve got to take the ups and downs. I had some disasterous things in the vegetable garden – the cabbage white absolutely massacred all my brassicers this year. Things llike that can be very frustrating when you have nursed these things from seedlings only to see them shredded like doillies when you are just about to pick them.
- Q: Do you think you have inspired many people to move to the country and do the whole self-sufficiency thing?
- A: It seems to have done – I’ve had some lovely letters from people who say they are now keeping a couple of pigs, or stating an allotment or having their own eggs for breakfast - they are all loving it. But it's not an all-or-nothing thing, you don’t have to up sticks and move to the country and do the whole smallholding thing – people who still live in the town can start growing herbs in a window box and realise that small gestures can save you from the encroachment of industrial food production - it is good for the soul and is a good feeling to have in the kitchen.
- Q: The Beyond River Cottage series saw you moving to a small farm – how difficult was that?
- A: It was very exciting – the idea was to think beyond the TV series and create something I was involved with on a daily basis. We've effectively started a cooking and gardening school so people can learn some of the skills. One of the things we are doing is a course ‘a pig in a day’ – we start at 9 o’clock with a whole pig and by 5 o’clock we have taken home sausages and salamis, we’ve got some hams hanging up and made a bit of bacon. That’s really exciting as those were the things that I learnt to do for the first time when I went to River Cottage and am now in the position to pass them on.
- Q: One of the most moving things was seeing the dairy farmer who you bought the buildings off having to sell up and ship out because he couldn't make a living out of farming – how difficult was that for you?
- A: It is, and also it makes me aware of how lucky I am. It would be unrealistic of me to pretend that because I’ve got a TV programme it doesn't help me a lot and gives me a good chance of succeeding, whereas people who are trying to make a living out of small scale farming alone are having a tough time and I appreciate that. I'm also impressed how farmers are also becoming producers and finding ways of adding value to their products. A lot of people are turning little farms into little business producing milk and then cheese, and maybe soups – these literally 'cottage' industries are great for the food culture and are a lifeline for small farming. People are putting themselves on the line, they don’t make a huge profit with this. What they need is the support of the community through selling direct to the public through farmers markets – often it's priced very fairly compared to the supermarket, given the quality.
- Q: Is there any food item you can’t live without?
- A: Gosh – I’d say apples. For several months I tend to gorge myself on the best local apples. There are allsorts of things I couldn’t live without – funnily enough some of them are the best regional foods. We had a great summer of fish – mackerel, bass, brown crabs, even the odd lobster. That’s the wonderful thing about living down here. With food that good, you don’t have to be a good cook. You just have to try hard not to wreck it as it's already fantastic!
last updated: 03/04/2008 at 14:28
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