FARMING & THE ENVIRONMENT
The power of Vraic!
Cathy Le Feuvre meets a couple who are inspired by the mounds of seaweed washed up on our Jersey beaches
W
alk along most Jersey beaches at low tide and you can’t fail to miss the mounds of seaweed, sometimes also known locally by its generic Jèrriais name – Vraic. But while most of us just step around it, for Francesca Stammers and Loftur Loftsson it’s become their passion.
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Just two years ago the young entrepreneurs came up with an idea to turn vraic into liquid fertiliser and today the Jersey Fertiliser Co is a young but already thriving business which, most importantly for them, also harks back to a proud Jersey farming heritage. Vraic is still harvested and laid on some potato fields in Jersey, but Francesca and Loftur want more people to realise the power of seaweed.
‘Vraic gave Jersey Royals their distinctive taste. Back in the day, vraic was put on either raw or washed, sometimes it was burnt and turned into potash and used for the potassium in the seaweed, but in terms of fermenting it and making it into a liquid, that wasn’t done so much,’ Loftur said.
