Month: June 2011
Reducing food miles around Bridport with Open Farm Sunday 2011
Many of us like to know where our food comes from these days. In West Dorset, we are particularly lucky to have a wealth of amazing produce and Open Farm Sunday is a great opportunity to discover behind the scenes of a couple of our local farms and really see where our meat, dairy products and vegetables come from.
Open Farm Sundays started in 2006 with 300 farmers sharing their knowledge and love of the countryside and every year tens of thousands of people enjoy asking questions, sampling produce or buying direct from the farmers.
My family went to visit Denhay and Washingpool Farms last year. I must admit that my husband and children were not totally convinced when I suggested it but they did enjoy it, much to their surprise.
Denhay Farm, run by the Streitfield family in Broadoak are famous for their Farmhouse Cheddar. We hopped on a trailer, hay bales for benches, tractor taking us up through the large farm to the dairy whilst George explained the importance of edges, how and why they have changed over the years and talked a bit about organic agriculture.
In the dairy, we discovered 21st century milking from a balcony. It’s quite a sight and was interesting for the children to see the first part of the milk journey to their glass. We might live in West Dorset and have friends who are farmers, it’s always interesting to see a farm on that scale.
Amanda Streitfield then did a talk on how their award-winning Farmhouse Cheddar is made and showed us the huge cylinders being matured into pure taste. We stocked up on cheese and bacon whilst drinking a welcome cuppa and went on to Washingpool Farm.
Locally, we all know Washingpool Farm shop in North Allington, a few minutes outside of Bridport so it was really interesting to walk through the market garden behind the shop and see where these fruits and vegetables are grown; food miles, what food miles?
For Open Farm Sunday 2011 Washingpool Farm also have sheep shearing and a photography competition. Click!
Les Ateliers Ouverts de Bridport, Dorset Occidental
Bridport et sa région du Dorset Occidental est un petit coin qui inspire les artistes, un peu comme la Normandie et ses ciels changeants avait inspiré les Impressionistes. Depuis 1999 les ateliers de Bridport s’ouvrent au public pour le ‘Bridport Open Studios’ et chaque année le nombre grandit. En 2011, c’est 100 artistes dans 58 lieux d’exposition qui ont offert à un public grandissant leurs oeuvres d’art au mois de Mai.
Les artistes sont variés, certains sont déjà cotés, d’autres débutent. Les prix sont en conséquence très différents suivant les artistes et les supports. Il y a bien sur des peintres, mais également de la sculpture, céramique, mobilier, photographie, textiles, illustrations, chapeaux, bijouterie ou gravure sur bois.
Même si tous les artistes ne représentent pas directement la Côte Jurassique dans leur art, les collines rondes ou les vallées cachées qui nous entourent, ils sont tous inspirés par l’atmosphère particulière et variée du Dorset Occidental. Au milieu d’une campagne agricole où bio est plutôt la norme, de monts d’où les vues sont un patchwork aux couleurs qui changent avec les saisons, d’une côte unique recélant des fossiles préhistoriques, on trouve une ville pleine de contrastes: Bridport.
Les temps ont changé pour ce port qui fournissait des cordes dans le monde entier, y compris aux bourreaux de Londres. La longue usine où les cordes étaient tressées à été adoptée par des artistes qui ont fait revivre cet espace industriel. Dans des petits villages proches mais presque perdus, d’autres artistes et artisans ont redonné vie à des écuries ou autres bâtiments agricoles, d’autres travaillent simplement de leur maison ou cottage.
C’est peut être cet éclectisme artistique et géographique qui fait que Bridport Open Studios attire maintenant des collectionneurs d’oeuvre d’art non seulement de la région mais également du Sud-Est de l’Angleterre.
La communauté d’artistes de Bridport m’ont demandé d’être leur ‘directeur d’évènement’ pour Les Ateliers Ouverts de Bridport de 2012.
Pour plus de détails sur les artistes qui ont exposé en 2011:
Artiste Andrew Leppard, copyright Nathalie Roberts
Bridport Open Studios finds new director via twitter
It started with a tweetup in Bridport and ended with the next director for Bridport and West Dorset Open Studios: me!
“What’s a tweetup?” friends always ask. Well, it’s a “Let’s meet up for a coffee” organised on twitter, in this West Dorset case by @tim_harrap
So a bunch of West Dorset tweeters had a coffee and a chat in Bridport in April. We discovered new faces behind the 140 characters and caught up with friends.
@kitglaisyer mentioned that the ‘Bridport and West Dorset Open Studios’ group were looking for a new director for 2012 as Philomena Harmsworth, the current director is moving away from the area. @RealWestDorset suggested to @kitglaisyer that he thought I would do a good job. Very kind.
Let’s hope he was right as Kit and Philomena have asked me to be their next director and I have agreed. We had our first meeting tonight with many artists who took part this year giving us feedback on this year’s event. It was great to see such a good turn out. There were many ideas for us to work on for next year, good things to keep and things we can try and improve on to make BOS an even bigger and better event next year.
I’ll keep you informed, via twitter of course, here and on the BOS website
Here is my post about the event and the launch.
and here is an image of the tweetup!
Pardon my Franglais 