The Stuff We're Made Of

and The Marks We Make

The floor of the event barn still contains the holes for the posts that made up the cattle pen when Gartur was a dairy farm. While many of them are simply gaps in the concrete where a fitting once stood, a few are stone, with the post holes made by hand, the chisel marks still visible.

The stones on the walls are the same - a few showing the lines of carving implements that squared them off for the entrance or knocked an edge off to fit just right. The beam at the back of the barn was hewn out of one tree, again by hand, to fit across the length of the space, holding up the roof for more years than we know. We don’t know the names of the makers, merely the names of the landowners and farmers who lived here, but their part in the story of Gartur lives on.

On Thursday night, I walked down to the Fire Kitchen (built from local wood, milled and built by one of our dearest friends Gregor of Wild Edge Woodwork) and sat in the old rocking chair given to us by Eilidh and I looked around and I cried.

I was surrounded by things made, built and given by friends and family. From the market stalls from Jane, converted into tables with greenhouse staging from Hilary, covered with tin from the fire by Lucy’s dad to the paper towel holder Kevin’s dad built, the story of reopening the farm for events is one of community, family, reuse and hard work.

Throughout every farm tour we run, we try to convey that our aim with everything we do at Gartur is to leave it better than when we moved in - whether that is the soil in the garden, the diversity in the field or the buildings themselves. It is the aim for most of us who work to regenerative practices and for the most part we are succeeding (with a few notable exceptions *cough* Lady Nicola’s rose bushes *cough*).

In many ways Kevin, Lucy and I play the smallest role in Gartur. We are merely stewards and coordinators for this special place for the time we are here and we hope any marks we leave on the land are good ones that will last. We want our chapter in the book of Gartur to be one of community. From the food we serve on the plate to what it is cooked on to the barn you sit in or the tin you sit under, I want people to know that anything we do isn’t just us.

At our launch party for Fodder + Farm on Saturday, I looked around at the group we had assembled - family, friends, customers who have come to many many events over the years, neighbours who cycled up, my children circulating with drinks and kittens and even some tourists from Argentina who’d got lost and were welcomed to join in.

This new chapter of the story is exciting and scary all at once. We have all spent many sleepless nights hoping everything comes together, that we can build something incredible together.

As I looked around on Saturday, I realised that it wasn’t just the farm that had changed, we have. The marks have gone both ways. Some for the better, some for the worse.

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We have a host of events throughout the season, something for everyone as they say.

Thursday nights in July and August, we have Wild Pizza Nights. Last week the menu was “Dough a Deer” with Venison Salami and Wood Sorrel and “That’s so Vetch” with Goat’s Cheese, Courgettes and Vetch. The menu will change throughout the season (already thinking up Chanterelle related puns).

Every Friday and Saturday from 10:30am we will be hosting a Meet the Goats Farm Tour and the farm shop will be open.

And Jane is back with her Intro to Botanical Flatbed Printing on the 8th of July. Learn to make your own prints on paper and fabric using Jane’s innovative technique.

Lucy is also running an Intro to Fire Cooking course that will cover the various techniques of managing a fire for cooking, as well as how to smoke, slow cook and sear a range of fruits, meats and vegetables on the fire. It will be a day of A LOT of eating.

We also have a few farm to table dinners in July. Come experience the best and freshest local produce (most of which is grown in our field!) cooked over the fire.