Beasley JOURNAL
N AT U R E
N OT E S
A LY S H U R N
A
C U T
A B OV E
RO OT B O U N D
S I LO
with
with
DOUGLAS MCCMASTER
SEBASTIAN COX
ALICE VINCENT
P. 9
P. 1 6
The first of a four-part series championing British woodlands.
How growing and nurturing plants can help mend a broken heart.
P. 4
R A I S E
T H E
P. 1 9
BA R
LUKE PEARSON
A L M A N AC L I A LE E N D E RT Z P. 2 3
P. 7
W I N T E R
2019 / 2020
N AT U R E N E W S PA P E R
The Beasley Journal is published four times a year by Seedlip Ltd.
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B E A S L E Y J O U R NA L
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THE
WORLD’ S ‘ W HAT
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D I ST I L L E D W H E N
YO U ’ R E
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N O N -A LCOHOLIC N OT
SPIR ITS
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’
WINTER
E D I TO R ’ S
L E T T E R
with A LYS H U R N
W
elcome to the first issue of the Beasley Journal. A quarterly read exploring the interests and values of Beasley Farm, a soon-to-be-centre of excellence for the non-alcoholic category. Beasley is the brainchild of Ben Branson, founder of Seedlip Drinks but heading up the project is Tom Harfleet, Seedlip’s Head of Nature. On page 29, Tom introduces Beasley and muses on the exciting journey ahead. The Beasley Journal follows the seasons and where better to begin than winter. Cold and dark, winter understandably has an unfavourable reputation, but there’s joy to be had in the first snowdrops and the bold, bright flavours of blood oranges fresh from the continent. You can read about the role citrus plays in drinks development on page 7. Environmentalist and furniture maker Sebastian Cox has a forward-thinking approach to forestry and on page 9 he begins his fourpart series on the importance of woodlands with an insight into the benefits of coppicing. Once a self-confessed rookie gardener, Alice Vincent is now a go-to name in the container garden and houseplant world. Her new book Rootbound documents how her love for gardening saved her broken heart and she shares a chapter on page 15. Douglas McMaster opened a new London venue for his zero-waste restaurant Silo this winter. I chat with him about the importance of reducing waste and his love of natural ingredients and flavour on page 19. The wonderful garden writer Lia Leendertz talks through her love affair with the Almanac, a seasonal guide to the seasons, on page 23, and on page 27 allow yourself to be dazzled by Elissa Brunato’s Bio Iridescent sequin made from wood cellulose. Thank you to all those who contributed to this inaugural issue of the Beasley Journal. It’s a privilege to share other people’s stories. I hope they inspire you to tune-in to the seasons and prompt new thinking about the natural world. Enjoy. {beasley}
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Contents
03
02
EDITOR’S LETTER
04
NATURE NOTES
07
RAISE THE BAR
A CUT ABOVE
09
ROOTBOUND
15
SILO
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23
THE ALMANAC MAKER
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BIO IRIDESCENT SEQUIN
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INTRODUCING BEASLEY
WINTER
N AT U R E
N OT E S
with A LYS H U R N
A compendium of seasonal highlights, recipes, natural phenomena and unusual facts.
S K Y AT N I G H T Orion’s Belt Orion, or the hunter, is one of the most recognizable constellations in our night sky and appears in the northern hemisphere from late November to February. Its most defining feature is an asterism known as Orion’s Belt, which is made up of three bright stars positioned in a linear pattern. These stars are called Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintaka and they were formed inside the same molecular cloud around four million years ago. Ancient Egyptians believed that the Gods descended from the belt of Orion and instigated the human race.
W I L D L I F E S P E C TA C L E Starling Murmurations Thanks to the Gulf Stream our archipelago has a unique climate and, although it may not feel like it in January, Britain is a hot spot for migrating birds seeking out warmer weather. From November, starlings begin to arrive from the continent in their tens of thousands. All winter they fill the skies with their murmurations, the name given to a flying flock of starlings, swirling back and forth in an ever-changing pattern that seems to take on a life of its own. The Wildlife Trust recommends the best places to see this winter wildlife spectacle. www.wildlifetrusts.org
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Stellar Plates
Hexagonal plates
Stellar Dentrites
Double Plates
Needles
Fern-like Stellar Dentrites
T H E A R T O F N AT U R E Snowflakes On a molecular level, no two snowflakes are the same. Patterns emerge as water vapour condenses into ice inside clouds and then freezes onto other frozen crystals that have formed around a tiny particle in the air, such as a speck of dust. These frozen crystals build on one another, often connecting into a hexagonal lattice, but the shape changes depending on temperature and humidity. Here are some of the most common snowflake shapes.
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B O TA N I C A L H I G H L I G H T Snowdrops, Galanthus nivalis It seems miraculous that snowdrops are able to survive harsh mid-winter conditions. But although dainty in size and appearance, snowdrops have built-in defence mechanisms including a type of antifreeze, which allows them to withstand frost. Classified in 1753 by the Godfather of plants, Carl Linnaeus, Galanthus is Greek and roughly translates as milk flower, whereas nivalis is Latin and means ‘resembling snow’. Snowdrops are ideal plants for small gardens. Here are a few tips for planting them: I. Buy snowdrops ‘in the green’. This is when the plant has finished flowering, but the leaves are yet to spoil. II. When you get home, plant them immediately at the same depth as they were previously grown. III. Add some compost or leaf mould so they have enough food, and then water in. IV. Keep in a partly shady position and make sure the soil is moist but well-draining. Fresh blooms will appear the following year.
S E AS O NA L R E C I P E Roast Rhubarb with Amaretti Crumble Taken from THE ALMANAC: A SEASONAL GUIDE TO 2020 by Lia Leendertz, this recipe makes use of forced rhubarb, which is at its best in the first few months of the year. You can read more about The Almanac on page 23. You can make the components of this ahead of time and keep the rhubarb in the refrigerator and the crumble in an airtight container for 24 hours, then assemble them at the last moment. Serve topped with a dollop of Greek yoghurt.
INGREDIENTS
METHOD
• • • • • • • • • • •
Preheat the oven to 180C, Gas Mark 4. Place the rhubarb pieces in a deepsided baking tray with the honey, orange zest and juice and star anise. Bake for around 20 minutes, or until the rhubarb is tender but still holding its shape. For the crumble topping, melt the butter and honey in a saucepan and add the crushed amaretti biscuits, almonds and oats. Stir until all is combined, then spread out the mixture on a baking tray and bake alongside the rhubarb for 15–20 minutes or until lightly toasted. Remove from the oven, stir and leave to cool, stirring occasionally. Serve the crumble scattered over the rhubarb, and eat at room temperature topped with chilled Greek yoghurt.
10 stems forced rhubarb, sliced into 5cm pieces 4 tablespoons runny honey Zest and juice of 1 Seville orange 2 star anise For the crumble topping 80g butter 2 tablespoons runny honey 60g amaretti biscuits, lightly crushed 60g flaked almonds 60g oats Greek yoghurt, to serve
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R A I S E
T H E
BA R
with LUKE PEARSON
An exploration of the world of non-alcoholic drinks through seasonal ingredients, flavour, legendary bartending and ingenious techniques. For winter Luke Pearson discusses citrus.
F
lavour to me is a memory. Every time I prepare vine tomatoes it reminds me of my childhood. My mother had a greenhouse, and summer after summer we would make pasta sauce, ketchup and chutney. These memories are what make flavour so powerful. To start talking about flavour in the depths of winter may seem strange but at no other time of year is the anticipation of ingredients so high. The dark and gloomy months are almost over and with the arrival of January and a new year, comes a bright spark in the calendar of seasonal ingredients; citrus. Citrus fruit originates from Asia. There are four main species: citron, mandarin, pomelo and papeda. Citrus’ eagerness to get a little fruity and hybridise means that now, a couple of millions of years later, we have around 1,200 different species and cultivars. For me, the cultivated varieties are the most exciting. Bergamot, for example, is an incredibly aromatic citrus fruit and is responsible for some of the most respected perfumes in the world, as well as the classic British staple, Earl Grey tea. Another stunning example is the finger lime, one of the most bizarre looking citrus fruits you can buy. It is native to Australia and despite looking like a
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gherkin, it houses tiny little caviar-like pearls of citrus flesh, which burst with flavour.
may end up feeling disappointed with your purchase. So instead of citrus fruit, use vinegar.
If I was to recommend one fruit for this time year, the quality of blood oranges is hard to beat. In winter they are widely available and absoloutely delicious. When sliced, the fruit reveals magenta pigments within the orange created by anthocyanins, the same chemical colouring in blueberries. The flavour is likened to an intense raspberry but it’s the balance of sweet and sour that draws me in.
It may seem strange to think of vinegar being used to make cocktails but it is perfectly equipped to balance the sugar in drinks because, like citrus, it’s acidic. Any fermented alcoholic drink can be turned into vinegar and our good friends at CULT are showing people how. They started making small batch live vinegars from waste wine a few years ago. From a 1995 Bordeaux red wine vinegar to Oloroso Sherry vinegar, their range of unpasteurised vinegars is impressive, and a good source of inspiration if you’re thinking about making your own.
Using citrus in cocktails is essential because of its acidity. A fruit-based cocktail without a strong enough citrus element will taste incredibly sweet. Cocktails are designed to be complex, multi-layered in flavour and need to pack a punch. For this, sweetness alone won’t cut it. It will be like an under-seasoned plate of food. Acidity also provides ‘mouthfeel’ and dryness to the palate. The cocktail, Blossom [pictured top left] uses blood orange juice and follows a very simple flavour triangle of base spirit, sweet and sour to keep the drink balanced. As the season progresses and spring edges closer, citrus fruits become less available. You can buy lemons out of season but in the same way out of season strawberries taste fairly watery, you
Using vinegars instead of citrus fruits in drinks is a shining example of why it’s important to push the boundaries of ingredients. As well as replacing citrus when the fruit falls out of season, vinegars can be the solution to using up gluts of some of our best UK produce, especially autumn fruits such as plums and apples [see Damascus, bottom right]. Looking at better ways to utilise resources and reduce waste unlocks new flavours, and with that comes enjoyment, respect for what we consume and new memories. {beasley}
WINTER
BLOSSOM
INGREDIENTS 50ml S E E D L I P G R O V E 4 2 15ml F R E S H L E M O N J U I C E 20ml B L O O D O R A N G E J U I C E 15ml S U G A R S Y R U P One E G G W H I T E
METHOD Shake all the ingredients with ice in a cocktail shaker. Fine strain into a chilled coupe glass and garnish with an orange leaf.
DA M A S C US
INGREDIENTS 50ml S E E D L I P S P I C E 9 4 35ml Æ C O R N A R O M A T I C R E D 10ml S Y R U P F R O M H I G H Q U A L I T Y , JARRED MARASCA CHERRIES
5 drops D A M S O N V I N E G A R
METHOD You’ll need to make the damson vinegar at least a day in advance. To make it, pierce the skin of the clean damson multiple times. For every 50 grams of fruit, mix in 100ml of high-quality red wine vinegar so the fruit is submerged under the liquid. Keep covered and leave to infuse at room temperature for 24hrs. Then strain, bottle and refrigerate. To make the cocktail, stir all the ingredients together and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a preserved damson.
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A
C U T
A B OV E with
SEBASTIAN COX
Each winter, designer and environmentalist Sebastian Cox spends much of his time demonstrating that cutting down trees is good for the planet. Here he explains why, in the first of a four-part series championing British woodlands and the role they can play in securing a more optimistic future for us and the environment.
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L
eft to their own devices, woods change very slowly. Aside from the cycle of leaf loss, and save for a windblown tree or shed branch, there is little to distinguish them from year to year. Our small four-acre woodland in Kent is different. Each season, it changes drastically. Perhaps none more so than in winter when we fell the trees.
We have a mix of hazel, chestnut, birch, hornbeam, field maple, cherry, ash, oak and crab apple, and each year we cut them right back to the ground in strips on a north-south axis roughly 20m wide. Being temperate hardwood trees, they respond to being cut, with new growth in the spring, much like pruning, and vigorously race up towards the sky almost with elbows out, reaching above other competing trees to maximise their photosynthetic potential. The method of cutting trees at ground level for regrowth is known as coppicing. It’s a form of woodland management that allows the stumps to see the sky through the open canopy. Light is everything to plants and woodland disturbance creates a fight for leaf cover, changing the dynamic of a woodland hugely. Coppicing creates a new seasonal cycle; the usual early wildflowers such as primrose and anemone are followed by species of flora which may not have been part of the cycle the year before. Foxgloves flower and seed in summer and won’t get enough light to grow in a closed-canopy woodland. However, after our winter wood harvest, the foxgloves that have been lying dormant enthusiastically grow in the new light. Bluebells, preferring closed-canopy conditions, may take a back seat in this new cycle while brambles and broom form low ground cover a year or so after coppicing. Bluebell activity resumes when the trees reclaim the canopy and the brambles die back. This change in the floral cycle attracts new insects, which in turn builds a new food chain. The red kites at the top of this chain, circle over my head as I work on a new clearing in our wood. They signal that all is well here.
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“That 300-year old oak, perhaps standing over the woodman’s coppice, would be their children’s inheritance. They would leave the tree for the next generation. This again, is something from our ancestors that I wish we’d learn.”
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An ecologist will tell you that the meeting points of any two habitats have higher biodiversity than one habitat on its own; think riverbanks, beaches or hedges. Coppicing creates ‘edge effects’ within the woodland. An area of mature wood will provide cover or shelter, while the cut and open areas might yield food or mating opportunities. The scruffy bits in between help keep the mosaic of flora and fauna diverse and ever-changing. We do our best to cut our strips in patches near to the previous year’s cut to keep the differing habitats within reach of any species that aren’t good travellers; those that are common in, and often indicators of, an ancient woodland. For thousands of years, woodmen punctuated lowland woodlands with cut areas each winter to keep the wildlife humming. Their objective was to obtain wood of a usable size by cutting the trees on relatively short cycles. This would prevent them from becoming too cumbersome to fell and work into everyday objects such as baskets, fences, or tool handles. It’s much easier to obtain material for a gate by harvesting a 12-year-old chestnut, which could be carried on one shoulder, than a 15-tonne oak. Coppicing was the men’s livelihood. If they had 12 acres and cut an acre a year, they’d have a resource that replenished at the rate that they used it, something that I wish we’d understand today. That 300-year old oak, perhaps standing over the woodman’s coppice, would be their children’s inheritance. They would leave the tree for the next generation. This again, is something from our ancestors that I wish we’d learn. This culture of coppicing and the many crafts associated with it, stopped somewhat abruptly last century with the democratisation of plastics. Baskets are no longer made from hazel but soulless and synthetic, injection-moulded plastic. The response of wildlife to the coppicing activity carried out by our ancestors was an evolutionary accident. Woodmen, with their infrequent cutting, were inadvertently mimicking the large herbivores that would have once trampled through our woodlands. Mammoths, for example, would push trees over to eat the leaves and a small herd would have easily made a clearing the size of one of our coppiced strips, before
moving on to another grazing ground. As a result, the trees have evolved to invest in the energy stored in their roots to create new shoots that can reach beyond the mouths of hungry herbivores. Coppicing is a process that yields a material that nature is happy to give us. The natural lifespan of a hazel tree is around 80 years but when coppiced regularly the root system will throw up new shoots for millennia. One of the oldest trees in the UK is a coppiced lime tree at Westonbirt Arboretum. It’s presumed to be two thousand years old, but the wood above ground is only a couple of decades old. The trees in our woodland in Kent are potentially nine hundred years old but appear modest and young above ground. This is a fact that supports all I know about woodlands: since the Second World War, woodland cover in the UK has gone up but biodiversity in woodlands has gone down. Having the trees is not enough; we must manage them. This formula, familiar to anyone who studied photosynthesis at school, supports all I know about wood.
6 [CO2 + H2O]
C6H12O6 + 6 O2
When you have a shoulder laden with a small tree, made almost entirely of carbon and water, you gain an acute understanding of its ability to fight climate change and hold back flooding. We’re living in a time where we shouldn’t only use wood because it’s familiar and pretty, we should be using wood because we need to. We need to use wood as much as we can. If the UK doubled its woodland area and used the harvested timber in construction, we could absorb enough CO2 to compensate for all of the UK’s industrial processing. As long as new wood is growing and we are storing that wood in our homes and offices [i.e. not burning it], we could make a beneficial
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intervention in the carbon cycle. New technologies like cross-laminated timber [CLT] are becoming affordable and viable alternatives to conventional, carbon-intensive building materials like concrete. There are lightweight and durable mid-rise buildings in London constructed from CLT, which are eight to twelve stories tall. It would be gamechanging if the construction industry became a major investor in our native woodlands. Every product a business sells should be seen as a manifesto of its beliefs and its attempt to improve the world. There are plenty of opportunities for businesses to work with the annual cycles of nature, but they need the support of consumers because every purchase they make is a vote for that business’ way of doing things. Small, positive interventions like taking a few poles of coppiced hazel from a managed woodland to make furniture is exciting, because it can be scaled. In the furniture we’ve made for our customers, we have stored somewhere in the region of 250 tonnes of CO2, and we’re only just getting started. Imagine if we could commodify well-managed native woodlands to the point that it more profitable to grow trees than rear sheep? Each winter I spend much of my time demonstrating that cutting trees down is good for the planet. Between October and March, we invite our friends, customers and collaborators down to the wood to help us coppice. We get cosy around a bonfire and share food and beers. When you see a woodland as a place of work, rather than simply a lovely spot for a walk, you will appreciate it all the more for it. Felling and hauling trees by hand is arduous but incredibly good for the soul. As they sweat in the fresh, cold air, our volunteers always comment that they could ditch their gym membership for working in the wood. It’s hard graft, but where better to spend your winter weekends than in a t-shirt, in a woodland, in the frost, fighting climate change and helping wildlife? It’s heaven. {beasley}
U S E F U L I N F O R M AT I O N There are lots of opportunities to get involved in woodland management. Leeds Coppice Workers are one example; a cooperative of coppice workers who offer dates each winter for volunteers to lend a hand and there are similar schemes in Bristol and Manchester. To find out more about Sebastian Cox, visit his website www.sebastiancox.co.uk and follow him on Instagram at @sebastiancoxltd
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WINTER
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WINTER
RO OT B O U N D with ALICE VINCENT
Part memoir, part botanical history and part biography, Rootbound documents how growing and nuturing plants helped writer Alice Vincent to overcome her broken heart. Here, Alice shares an extract from her new book.
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ootbound didn’t start as a book, as such. I’m a writer first and a gardener second. I’ve long understood things by encountering them and then writing about them, sometimes with some reading in between. So, in the midst of my learning about what gardening could give me - the still and quiet space described in the extract below - I began to write about it. Just paragraphs at a time, then longer thoughts, until I realised I was charting the seasons and how they became a year. And it had been quite a year. One in which my notion of what life was going to be, was unexpectedly broken down and a new one gently started to emerge from the rubble. Among this turbulence the ground, new growth, and working one to achieve the other, gave me something to hold onto. A few years have passed now, but I still rely on gardening to ground me and give me life. There is so much calm to be found in observing the tiny shifts in the seasons, working with the ground and with plants, growing them and writing about it.
JA N UA RY I watch the shorter days meticulously. The longer ones catch us by surprise, greeting us with a bright dawn or tricking us into thinking the evening hours belong to the day. But there is no such absent-mindedness with the short days, which take their time to wake up and then, docile, fall back to sleep again, rushing us back into houses and pubs, ending
walks and outdoors things. During the shorter days, I barely see the light. I prefer to start my work when it is quiet, early in the day, and dawn crests while I sit in the office. Sometimes the sunsets begin a little after lunch, or even while it is still happening. Another day spent and another long night ahead, wet leaves picking up the orange lamplight. The winter solstice, the shortest day, has become something I count down to as the year grows grim and dark. Because this is when the year turns. After December 21st [or thereabouts, sometimes it shifts onto the early hours of the next day], the days will get longer by a few minutes at a time. The afternoons will still be dreary in January and drab in February, but the days are growing. Even when the weather is uncanny and out of season – weirdly hot in October or suddenly freezing in spring – we can count on the promise of more hours of daylight every day until June 21st, when it starts to wind down again. It’s the hope of what’s to come that I cling to. It’s why I find joy in the winter solstice where others see only misery in the extended gloom, and why I find the summer solstice always lightly painted with melancholy; I see it as the beginning of the creep into darkness and nature’s necessary retreat rather than a night of bacchanalia. It feels strange to herald it as the beginning of summer when I know the next three months, while warm, will also be full of ever-shrinking days. This time-travelling of gardening – to imagine months ahead – offers a balm. It feels like a magic trick, and one that only gets better with knowledge and experience. That, if you know enough about the plants
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“I’ve never known any calm like that which I have gained from gardening. It diffuses my angst, my anxieties, my worries. It stretches time.”
in question, you can stand in a garden and look at it in the depths of winter and see a vision of lush foliage and frothing blossom, opening flower buds and autumn-painted leaves. It’s a sober hallucination built from anticipation, science and sure-footed faith, much needed when the basic questions of life feel towering. I’ve always been someone whose dreams lie in the near-future, fascinated by the mysteries of what will be and how, and whether I’ll remember my earlier trepidation when the events finally come to pass. I spent a childhood vaguely frustrated that, when I tried to make or draw something, what appeared at the end never quite looked like it did in my head, and so much of life thereafter panned out like that. I could never grasp the satisfaction I had been promised. And yet with gardening that doesn’t happen – to me, at least. Even the predictable things, the fattening teardrop buds of a Pelargonium, the surety of a green bulb tip pushing up through cold, packed earth, are more wonderful in reality than in imagination. To come home and find a half-inch of growth on something you’d vaguely forgotten about is never not astonishing. Not only cheering but so of its moment, a feeling that resists capture. The lightness of it, the simple pleasure of it, is so innate as to be one of those increasingly rare happenings that only takes place offline, and often alone. A dollop of quiet, personal happiness that is far more difficult to find at work or at home or even in love. And when they don’t work – when the bulbs are blind, the shrubs don’t flower, the colours collide in the wrong way or there just isn’t enough sunlight for things to grow beyond limp, straggling shoots – the disappointment of it arrives as a challenge, a mystery to unravel. I try to suss it out, establish if the quantities of water or feed were enough, if those plants were put too through much or given too little. I’ll chalk it up in my head and try to adapt the practice a whole year later, all the while time-travelling to see better results. To me, this is a mark of patience, something I still possess so little of. But what patience I do have I have learned through gardening. Part of the reason I got so swiftly hooked on pottering around the balcony is because it quietened my mind like nothing else. Others claim that exercise helps give them mental space, that running or swimming or climbing helps them to make peace with the goals they have not reached. For some, release comes with mindfulness or meditation. As our lives have become busier, we have developed ways to escape the technology and speed that drives them. But I’ve never known any calm like that which I have gained from gardening. It diffuses my angst, my anxieties, my worries. It stretches time. I follow the tasks that need to be done and take comfort in the fact that some of those results won’t appear for weeks – or, indeed, at all. That much of this life finds its own way. {beasley}
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ALICE VINCENT WINTER
U S E F U L I N F O R M AT I O N Alice is The Telegraph’s gardening columnist and is Features Editor at Penguin Books. ROOTBOUND: REWILDING A LIFE
by Alice Vincent Published by Canongate Books Ltd. £14.99 Follow Alice on Instagram @noughticulture
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S I LO Interview with DOUGLAS MCCMASTER
Sat on a park bench with half an hour to spare, chef Douglas McMaster chats to Beasley Journal about opening his zero-waste restaurant Silo in London and the importance of putting nature first.
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ward-winning chef and zero-waste pioneer Douglas McMaster has had a busy few weeks. When this interview took place, Doug’s restaurant Silo had just opened its doors in London. Previously in Brighton, the world’s first zero-waste restaurant moved to join CRATE Brewery at The White Building in Hackney Wick in November 2019. Silo runs on a pre-industrial food system and the aim is to close the loop in the food production process by working with farmers directly, ensuring the whole food that comes into Silo is package-free, and composting anything that isn’t used or eaten. Changing the status quo hasn’t been easy but for Doug, championing nature and changing people’s perception of waste is worth the time and effort. Tell me why you decided to open a zero-waste restaurant? I had a fortunate series of events that gave me a vison of the future. It started with an artist who told me not to have a bin. We then spoke about why waste exists and discussed pre-industrial food systems and the idea of a zero-waste restaurant suddenly became so clear, so simple and so necessary. You only have to look at the state of the planet to understand why it needed to happen. Waste is suffocating nature. Explain what you mean by a pre-industrial food system. Industrialism is making us ill and it’s making the planet ill. Waste exists because of industrialism and the bin is a product of that. A pre-industrial food system is one that doesn’t create any waste. It’s also a system that is natural, it tastes of nature. It’s the way things are meant to be. Nature didn’t evolve over millions of years to have plastic, polystyrene and pollution. Did you always have a concern about the effects of waste? Maybe? but without knowing it. Whenever I chopped a cabbage for sauerkraut, I’d chop every little bit of it, whereas other chefs would just throw huge chunks in the bin. I always remember taking longer than everyone else because I’d meticulously try and use every part of the ingredient. Other than that, not really. Growing up I wasn’t a foodie; my parents weren’t foodies. I grew up on fish fingers, beans and turkey twizzlers. How did you reduce waste in the restaurant? The first thing we needed to do was reverse engineer the supply chain and trade directly with producers to get everything we needed. We side-stepped the processing of ingredients by taking the whole food upon ourselves. We mill flour from whole wheat to make bread, turn milk into cheese and yoghurt and roll our own oats. Anything that isn’t used or eaten is put into our closed loop, organic compost machine. It’s an aerobic digestor that can turn up to 60kg of organic waste into compost in just one day.
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How did you go about working with suppliers to cut-out road miles?
Did you have to get on the road to visit farmers and explain what you were doing to get them to understand?
When we were in Brighton, we had more road miles than we now have in London. The chef’s farm provides all of our wheat, all of our oil, 30% of our vegetables and takes all of our compost. It’s 35 minutes away, so in terms of road miles that’s pretty incredible.
Yeah, there was a lot of teaching old dog’s new tricks. Some of the farmers remember a time when it was pre-industrial, but for them there’s a sense of convenience in delivering to a wholesaler rather than individual chefs.
Thinking about road miles is important but we’ve found there are other things that take precedence. For example, having natural wine rather than unnatural wine in the restaurant is more important to me than road miles. Our natural wine can come from as far as Italy, because that is where we have to get natural wine from. If we opened a restaurant that didn’t serve wine, we’d have a problem, we wouldn’t be sustainable because people who go to restaurants expect it. Before road miles, comes nature and natural wine is essentially a fermented, natural product in liquid form. Going for a more local, unnatural wine would be wrong for me. What was the biggest challenge when you started out? The industrial food system is a huge knot that needs to be continually unravelled. Once you take away the bin there are a million other actions you need to create. It’s like opening one door and seeing ten more doors in front of you. We found farmers only deliver once a week, then when they do deliver it’s late or they don’t have what you want, when you want it. I’d get milk from a cow delivered in a pail, but then you think “oh okay cool, but now I need to make cheese, how do you make yoghurt?” There are suddenly all these products that need to be made from scratch and it kept going on and on. It was a world of challenges and new systems, and it was all about trying to make it all make sense.
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What has been the biggest change from opening Silo Brighton in 2014 and opening Silo London in 2019? The conversation of our generation is climate change and the penny has dropped globally, but that has only really been in the last three years. Five years ago, before the penny dropped and Silo opened in Brighton, it was pretty alien what we were doing. I’m sure people like Ben [Branson] and Seedlip can identify with the reaction you get for doing something unusual. Now, the timing for Silo opening in London is quite good. Have you seen the reactions of customers change? Customers less so. Customers don’t think about the concept, they come for a meal and judge it on how delicious it is, what the service was like and their experience. They don’t come because it’s a zerowaste restaurant. Saying that, we are seeing more and more customers visit because they’re interested in the zero-waste element. Before, 2% would come because the restaurant was zero waste, now it’s maybe 10%. There are zero-waste bloggers and there’s a larger body of people who are interested in reducing waste and that’s really good. But it’s still a minority.
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What do you love most about Silo, London? Being in the CRATE Brewery is what I love most. They are just the most amazing organisation and I love the beautiful people who are doing everything in their power to fight for Silo. I’m very grateful to them. Is there anything about the restaurant’s interior you’d like to champion? Yeah, I’ve coined a new term. I’m calling it NUwaste, like NUwave. I’m putting a new perspective on waste to see it as something that needs to be reborn as a new material. I don’t mean turning it into the same material necessarily, but something better that is relative to where that waste is created; upcycling waste to give it better value and better purpose in the system. All of the furniture is made from NUwaste: medical food grade packaging, bar tops and leather, to mycelium furniture and glass porcelain lamp shades that you’d never know is waste. You just walk in and see a spectacular looking restaurant.
When looking for ocean produce, that is what we should eat. We need to react to the effects of human behaviour on earth, such as over-fishing. Regardless of a vegetarian diet, eating cephalopods is definitely something that needs to happen. Champion an ingredient that you love to use in the restaurant that people should eat more of. Cephalopods and male dairy cows. There are a lot of male dairy cows in the industry that just get killed because they aren’t of any use. Vegans and vegetarians wouldn’t eat it at all but there are billions of cows on earth. To abstain from those ingredients completely is wasteful, regardless of your ethical belief, but it gets philosophical after that. For me, after spending a lot of time thinking about it, I think it’s a really good choice, a smart choice and if people are going to eat meat they need to choose wisely and that’s what those ingredients represent for me. Where do you see flavour heading? Nature. Flavour is heading back to what is natural.
Do you have a favourite dish on the new menu? Grilled cuttlefish, white kimchi, chicory and caramelised butter. We’re cooking the cuttlefish over a fire in the open hearth within the visual display of the kitchen. We cook it really quickly and serve it with red flesh apple and white kimchi made from local ingredients. The rising temperature of the ocean and over-fishing has led to the over population of cephalopods, including cuttlefish. They have less of a predator and a warmer climate to breed so they’re taking over.
I know the best dishes I do are the ones where you can really taste the ingredients. When you mask flavour in a way that it is not clear on the palate, it confuses the brain and the brain doesn’t like it. When you have clarity of ingredients, and the dish is executed very well so the flavours are in balance with one another, the experience is so much greater. That is when people go “wow.” {beasley} For more information visit silolondon.com
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B E A S L E Y J O U R NA L
T H E
A L M A N AC M A K E R with
LIA LEENDERTZ
Lia Leendertz has spent the last three years exploring how the natural world changes from month-to-month in order to write her Almanac; a seasonal guide to the year covering moon phases, gardening tips and recipes. Here Lia explains why she wanted to revive it.
I
am an almanac maker. Over the past three years I have made three almanacs, one per year, filled with everything I love about the way our year changes, month on month. It is the most gorgeous and fulfilling work I have ever done, but I stumbled across the idea to create my own almanac almost by accident, when I was hunting for words. As a garden and food writer I am always on the lookout for the next book idea and so I was idly thinking of words that related to seasonality, to year-round enjoyment of the garden and its produce. ‘Almanac’ I said to myself, and rolled it around my mouth for a bit. Back then I knew only that it had something to do with the year and that it sounded nice. Perhaps – I thought – I can steal the word and drop the rest of its meaning. But then I started looking at what an almanac actually is and got hooked. The first almanacs were published thousands of years ago, an early example being the Babylonian Almanac from the second millennium BC, which listed such important annual information as the timings for the flooding of the River Nile. Almanacs have always been full of such useful stuff: when the sun will rise and set, the dates of the solstices and the equinoxes, moon phases and planet spotting. When I was having
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these early almanac-related thoughts I was staying at the seaside, in a little shack in the dunes, which looked out over sandflats and across the sea. While I did the washing-up, I could see the sun setting, the moon rising, the tide coming in and going out. I wanted to take some of this massive cosmic loveliness home with me to my terraced house in the city, because it’s still all going on out there, even if you’re not lucky enough to be able to see it when you glance out of your window. I wanted a reminder, in book form. I may not be a farmer and my livelihood may not depend upon the timing of the rising and falling water levels of the nearest river, but this information – the tables and timings of the way the world and the cosmos wheels around us – is a kind of poetry, and I want to know it. I started by looking at what other almanacs existed, and found that despite being so ancient, the almanac is still very current. In the UK the meaning has morphed somewhat, and an almanac has come to mean a book that is about a year. There are sporting and political almanacs that tell you about what has happened in the previous year as well as astronomical and tidal almanacs that tell you what is happening in the year ahead. The closest to what I had in mind is Old Moore’s Almanac, which has been continually published since 1697, but it has a strong
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leaning on predictions, presumably a hangover from a time when predictions were the basis for weather forecasting and more. In the modern version of Old Moore’s Almanac this translates into predictions about the goings on in the lives of various celebrities in the coming year. Fascinating as it is to speculate on what the year ahead holds for Michael McIntyre, I felt there were more beautiful things to be found in the factual world, in the rising and setting of the sun, and the turning of the seasons. Sorry Michael. And so, I decided to make an almanac of my own. It’s been an extremely steep learning curve. Almanacs have been made for thousands of years but no one is about to tell you how it’s done. But slowly, over the past few years, I found my sources of tide times, sunrises and sunsets, the exact moment of each solstice, and began piecing them together along with the things that I love about the turning of the year: the spectacles of nature such as bluebell woods, autumn colour, the first frosts and gardening; sowing and planting and then reaping what I have sown. Seasonal foods from wild garlic pesto to mince pies. Plus, all of the folklore that accompanies our journey through the year. On a personal level almanac making has changed the way I look at the year. It has forced me to really think about each month and each moment and to dig deep for what is special about it. I used to only long for summer but now I feel I really appreciate how our world changes from month to month. How different in atmosphere December is from January, or August is from September. It is easy to enjoy a glorious June day, but try looking for the beauty in a chilly wet February one. I hope my almanac helps others to take each moment in the year as it comes, and to enjoy them all for what they are. {beasley}
“The tables and timings of the way the world and the cosmos wheels around us is a kind of poetry”
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B E A S L E Y J O U R NA L
NA M E S O F W I N T E R M O O N S From the The Almanac 2020 JANUARY
• • •
Wolf Moon Stay Home Moon Moon after Yule
MOON PHASES
• • • •
New moon – 6th January 1st quarter – 14th January Full moon – 21st January 3rd quarter – 27th January
The full moon on the 10th January will rise bright and clear over a bare, cold countryside, but just an hour later it will dim and may take on shades of pink. This is a penumbral eclipse. You may hear it called a ‘blood moon’ – which sounds both dramatic and ancient, although it is, in fact, fairly recent eclipse nomenclature – but there are far older Celtic and medieval names attached to each month’s full moon. January’s moon has several old names: Wolf Moon, from the time wolves howled particularly loudly to their packs through January nights; Stay Home Moon, a sensible idea in the cold and the frost and with all those wolves about; and Moon after Yule, which was given to the first full moon after the winter solstice.
FEBRUARY
• • •
Snow Moon Ice Moon Storm Moon
MOON PHASES
• • • •
1st quarter – 2nd February, 01.42 Full moon – 9th February, 07.33 3rd quarter – 15th February, 22.17 New moon – 23rd February, 15.32
Even if there is not enough snow to justify the medieval moon name Snow Moon this month, the full moon on the 9th will light up snowy expanses across meadows, woodlands and river banks as snowdrop time reaches its peak. Snowdrops began popping their heads out of the cold ground in January, proving that even though the ground is still bare and hard with frost, spring is straining at the bit. The names Ice Moon and Storm Moon also hint at an understandable preoccupation with this month’s weather in the past, when heating meant a few logs on the fire to fend off the deep chill of February. The nights are still long and dark and there are likely to be hard frosts – a wonderful time for spotting constellations if you can stand the cold – but nights are noticeably
shortening as spring draws nearer and the days start to lengthen.
Follow Lia on Instagram @lia_leendertz
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WIN A COPY OF T H E A LM A NAC 2 0 2 0 To help you tune-in to the seasons over the next year, we’re offering you the chance to WIN one of five available copies of The Almanac 2020. To enter, all you have to do is visit seedlipdrinks.com and fill in the online competition form. T&Cs apply. Ends 14th March 2020.
THE ALMANAC: A SEASONAL GUIDE TO 2020
by Lia Leendertz Published by Mitchell Beazley. £10 Illustrations by Julia McKenzie
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B E A S L E Y J O U R NA L
B I O
I R I D E S C E N T S EQ U I N with ELISSA
I
n the last few years a spotlight has been firmly fixed on the impact human activity is having on the environment. Excessive amounts of waste and plastic has dominated headlines and many companies have come under fire, including those in the fashion and textiles industry. Cheap, fast fashion has created a linear model of make, use, dispose; leading to an estimated £140 million worth of clothing going into landfill each year.
The sequin is made from the crystalline form of cellulose. A wood - originating matter that can imitate the alluring visual aesthetics of beetle wings and peacock feathers. The structural colours found in the cellulose don’t fade in sunlight and can refract light, giving the end product a natural shimmer free of added chemicals or pigments. But it’s not only wood that produces cellulose. This naturally abundant material can originate from fruit peel, algae, used denim and wastepaper.
Sewn into this throw-away clothing are embellishments such as beads and sequins, industrially made from petroleum-based plastic or synthetic resins. These also sit in landfill and then enter the environment through various waste streams as microplastics, which are incredibly difficult to get rid of. Thankfully, there has been a huge response from innovative designers who want to rethink these harmful, outdated production processes.
Elissa has re-thought the production process too. In the current system, sequins are stamp cut in sheets, which creates a lot of waste material. Elissa’s sequins are lab grown in different shaped moulds and then sewn on to fabric individually, avoiding any waste produced from off cuts.
Shining a light on the environmental impact of the use of petroleum - based sequins is design student Elissa Brunato. Through her research of bio technologies, technology that utilises living organisms, Elissa has created a Bio Iridescent Sequin that is as lightweight and as strong as plastic, and as vibrant in colour as a traditionally made sequin, but is compostable and non-toxic.
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B R U NAT O
Working alongside material scientists Hjalmar Granbery and Tiffany Abitol from the RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, and Claire Bergkamp, Worldwide Sustainability and Innovation Director at Stella McCartney, Elissa has completely re-built the structure of a sequin. Inspired by the way nature makes and remakes in an entirely circular way Elissa has created an opportunity for the fashion world to make bio-sustainable occasion wear that can be disposed of at the end of its life without becoming a burden on the planet. {beasley}
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U S E F U L I N F O R M AT I O N Elissa’s award-winning Bio Iridescent Sequin is a material research and design project for the MA in Material Futures at Central Saint Martins. You can read more about Elissa and her project at elissabrunato.com She can be found on Instagram @elissabrunato.
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B E A S L E Y J O U R NA L
TO M
H A R F L E E T
Head of Nature
W
hat better time of year to reflect on the past twelve months and glance optimistically to the future than during the long nights of winter.
Sitting down to write this on a dark December afternoon, I quickly find myself reflecting on a year of planning permissions, costings, contracts and false starts. An experience similar to that of trudging up a big hill with the top in sight only to discover it’s yet another false summit. Although I will remember 2019 with a sense of frustration, it has more often than not been balanced by a sense of optimism. No one likes the feeling of being delayed or behind on a project. Still, we have used this time to assemble a crack team tasked with breathing new life into the derelict shell of the 19th century grain store, that will soon become Beasley. But what is Beasley? Put simply, Beasley will be a centre of excellence for the NA category, and home to the Seedlip portfolio set within 1000 acres on Ben Branson’s family farm deep in the Lincolnshire Wolds. Beasley will be much more than the typical brand home. A 500 square meter walled garden will focus on growing for flavour by experimenting with new plant varieties and regenerating the soil. The drinks lab will push the boundaries of the DNA of the NA category and explore the future of the NA space, and the tasting room will bring the lab and garden together in a celebration of ingredients. So, all in all Beasley will act as a space to celebrate our heritage, preserve what we hold dear and focus on continuing to change the way the world drinks by solving the dilemma of ‘what to drink when you’re Not drinking.®’ The most exciting news of all has just come in, we are breaking ground in the new year. As you can imagine I’m raring to go and really excited to share the journey of the build with you over the upcoming issues of the Beasley Journal. {beasley}
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G R E AT F O O D D E S E R V E S G R E AT D R I N K S @AECORN_DRINKS
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E D I TO R
H E A D
O F
N AT U R E
D E S I G N E R
alys.hurn@seedlipdrinks.com
tom.harfleet@seedlipdrinks.com
ed.collins@seedlipdrinks.com
A LY S H U R N
TOM HARFLEET
ED COLLINS
Printed by Newspaper Club on recycled paper. Please recycle responsibly.
