Fighting the winter chill (From Craven Herald)

Fighting the winter chill

12:41pm Thursday 2nd February 2012 in From The Farm By Liz Hird

It seems a long time since all the festive celebrations of Christmas, and here we are bidding farewell to January. You can already tell the difference, each day the hours of daylight a little longer.

I can’t remember the dark days of winter affecting me much when I was growing up, but I can remember the cold mornings (we had no central heating) when everything was frozen up and Jack Frost had been busy painting on the bedroom windows. We would run downstairs to get dressed in the kitchen next to the wonderful “Flatley” – a clothes drier, like a white square tin box with a lid, about the size of a fridge, but a bit taller.

It had a heater, like a little electric fire, in the bottom and wooden slats that fitted into grooves at the top just under the lid, so you could hang small items of clothes inside to dry. It was warm enough to sit up against, but not too hot, and made the whole room feel lovely and cosy. I wonder where it went? Out of fashion I suppose and superseded by the good old tumble drier. The early 60s advert used to claim that “Mum wants a Flatley”, so I suppose in the early 60s it was regarded as quite a “mod con”!

Keeping warm at this time of year is quite a job. At home we have oil-fired central heating, but are currently struggling to find a supplier who has a tanker small enough to get over our bridge. I’m not a big fan of central heating, but I don’t like cold and damp either and old houses tend to have plenty of the latter.

There’s nothing better in the winter months than a good hearty stew, casserole or soup and last week, when I went up to Penrith to the watermill at Little Salkeld to pick up some organic oats, I stopped at the mill café for a bowl of spicy vegetable soup with some of the miller’s fresh hand-made bread. It was delicious and really warming.

February is a busy month in the “foodie” calendar, and we have several celebrations this week. Tomorrow (Friday) is National Carrot Day! And you might be interested to learn carrots did not come in orange until the 1500s – they used to be white, purple, red or yellow. It was Dutch scientists that came up with the carrot we know today and, as a result in Holland, the “new variety” was adopted as a national vegetable and emblem of the Dutch royal house of Orange!

On Sunday, Skipton Farmers’ Market coincides with British Yorkshire Pudding Day, followed by Bramley Apple Week.

In season this month is the celebrated forced Yorkshire rhubarb, which now has EU protected status (Protected Designation of Origin) joining the hallowed ranks of Champagne, Parma ham and Roquefort cheese. I bought my first tender pink stalks at Otley Farmers’ Market on Sunday, made a crumble using our granola in the topping and had it with custard...yum!