August 22, 2025 • 37 mins
Richard P sat down with Avian Sandercock - regular cohost of the Guns on Pegs podcast, ex-gin distiller, current gin drinker, woodland manager and proud Cornish man.
The pair talk about Cornwall's different coastlines and Avian's struggle to find local apple trees, experimenting with gin flavours - Clotted cream infused gin anyone?, and the realities of being in a syndicate shoot and managing a small woodland. The conversation flows from topic to topic like a river full of pools and gives vibes of a pub chat between friends.
This episode was recorded on the Guns on Pegs stand at The Game Fair with a backdrop of chatter, drinks and George Browne's faded Salmon shorts.CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.
Send us photos of your interesting trinkets that your other half wants to burn or bin as submissions to the calendar or for fun at: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Links
- Subscribe on Patreon for extra content (you can cancel at any time)
- If you enjoy what we do, consider a one-off tip on Ko-fi
- Avian's Instagram
- Avian's YouTube channel - A Year in the Woods
- CountrySlide website
- Negus' book tour dates can be found here
The Hosts
Richard Negus website
Callum McInerney-Riley website
Richard Prideaux website
Edited and Produced by Amy Green for Rural and Outdoor.
The pair talk about Cornwall's different coastlines and Avian's struggle to find local apple trees, experimenting with gin flavours - Clotted cream infused gin anyone?, and the realities of being in a syndicate shoot and managing a small woodland. The conversation flows from topic to topic like a river full of pools and gives vibes of a pub chat between friends.
This episode was recorded on the Guns on Pegs stand at The Game Fair with a backdrop of chatter, drinks and George Browne's faded Salmon shorts.CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.
CountrySlide is a podcast that looks at farming, conservation and life in the British countryside.
Send us photos of your interesting trinkets that your other half wants to burn or bin as submissions to the calendar or for fun at: contact@countryslide.co.uk
Links
- Subscribe on Patreon for extra content (you can cancel at any time)
- If you enjoy what we do, consider a one-off tip on Ko-fi
- Avian's Instagram
- Avian's YouTube channel - A Year in the Woods
- CountrySlide website
- Negus' book tour dates can be found here
The Hosts
Richard Negus website
Callum McInerney-Riley website
Richard Prideaux website
Edited and Produced by Amy Green for Rural and Outdoor.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Just as David from Field Sports Britain goes past behind us.
There as I point out our microphones and the fact
we're here on the Guns on Pegs stand, so countryside
and Guns on Pegs on the same stand together, we
cannot be beaten, certainly not in the would be podcast charts.
(00:21):
And I have well the only member of Guns on
Pegs that I actually wanted to speak to on the
other side of the table from me. So Lush Roos, Well,
this is the Cornish contingent is so this is the
Cornish episode really, despite the fact we are a long
way from Cornwall and most of my Cornish accents has gone.
Although I think sitting opposite you too, it's going to
(00:42):
drift back in about thirty minutes and I'll be knowing
about Emritts on ethery. So would you like to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yes, Sally Well, I'm Avian Sander, good old North Cornish
name wasn't quite so wonderful when I was growing up
in Buckingham Shure, but it's always been fun. I'm part
time host on the Drums and Pigs podcast, Beard Grower,
Gin Drinker near do Well and general boyk really and
Richard's very nicely asked me to come and join him
(01:14):
sat drinking a beer at nine o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Doing the podcast. It's the best thing to do with
it on a Saturday, really, Yeah, to a complete crap
over beer. Absolutely. So something we have to get out
of the way initially is that there are different parts
of Cornwall. So Cornwall is one contigious mass when it
comes to talking about things like Devon and stuff, the world,
the rest of the world, the real world. But your
(01:39):
North coast, yes, the proper coast, yes, so I'm South Coast.
I'm Andy soft coast. I say pirate coast, you see,
because we're the record coast, your wrecking coast. We're pirate Coast. Yes, yeah,
we were overly confident and comfortable with France Coast.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I think our side is your side, definitely is ours
is a little more wind swept and don't really like anybody.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
No, you just stare at the Welsh in the Irish,
depending which direction you're looking at.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
It's also cause weird to realize that island is actually
north from us. I think if you go directly west
from our house, it's Canada, and that's where all the
weather sits.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
It's quite far north in Canada like Nova Scotia.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, it is, it really is. So why we get
palm trees and you know, mild weather. I don't know,
but it's one of those things I think what everybody
forgets about Cornwell, it's May and September of fantastic, but
you can almost guarantee come school holidays mid July it's
gray and rainy, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
It's it's almost like an in build defense mechanism. I
think against tourism.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Either that or it's a way of selling more plastic
swords and fish and chips, or incredibly overpriced past is
with strange fillings that shouldn't be in there.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, Stilton shouldn't be in that. There are basically two
flavors are passive. They should ever exist and that's it.
Ideally in the same thing one end fridge. Is that
not a myth? I think it's a myth. Yeah, I
think it's. I think it's a Welsh ogy thing that
they've hands laid down. Yes, yeah, it's not going to
see the West Cornwall Pasty company around in different shops.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
We've got one in the village that call themselves that
there was a big who had as I think the
family started at a Canadian and they got their crimp
in the wrong place. So they call themselves top crimpers,
which I think is just wrong crimper. Yeah, but we digest.
We're sort of getting too stuck in.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
We'll be on scums before you knows. Cider needs to
come in at some point. Whether there needs to be
a dead rat in there.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Well, it's probably because that's where it was made in barns.
They kind of couldn't stop the rats toccumbing to the
co two and plopping in. Yeah, so it just became
part of the recipe. It does sound a bit like
justification after the fact. Definitely, why is there a dead
rat in there? We need that for the flavors to
be there for the flavor.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yeah, it's easier than fishing it out, my dad said rabbits.
I don't know whether he was just talking crap. Probably
I've heard badger, but I think that sounds a bit
too stressful, trying to get hold of the badger and
put it in. Yeah, what's the after the badger Act?
What's the sort of legally acceptable way of having a
badger in your side of me?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I don't know, do you need like if you were
having it having its stuff, do you need a section
whatever it is, a you allowed to scoop up some
roadkill like that chap on the law used to do
possess parts thereof yes, yes, but I think in the
quantities you make, you must get bristles in your finished
product sually.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, I mean filtering at the end. There's always a
contentious issue. I think that's what teeth were invented for us. Yeah,
do you make much a home? I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I mean I've been challenged on the pond to make
this decide why I'm wondering is this a historical thing
or is it? No?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I think it was just dropped on me as a
West Country can Yes, correspondent, I think it's racistem anyways,
you know you're from the West Country. Ergo you know
how to make excited.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I mean, in fairness, I've got fourm I did have
a Jindae sillery for ten years, so I've got some
sort of idea how works. But I wasn't quick enough
on the because George sort of dropped on me, so well,
why don't you make sider that's what you're making?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Side?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
And then I realized we haven't got any trees. We're
on the north coast, all the sided orchards. There are
a few in the Camel Valley, but most of them
a don your neck of the words, isn't they.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I've got this theory about George that he has this
like vicarious desire to do things, but he doesn't want
to do them himself, so he lines up other people
to do that. I think that's a very good idea
for you to do, because he wants to, but he
can't be asked for himself, so he just wants other
people to do it.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's not a bad way to go about things, because
anything works, you take all the glory.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I mean, maybe he's just middle management. That's kind of
the ethos. He does look like middle management. And it's
over there in the quite faded salmon salmon will sort
of peach fuzz. I think salmon wants that's sun bleach salmon.
Maybe they were salmon the last time he caught salmon.
It's the loafers, is the god? Yea? The loafers or
(05:53):
car shoes. It's hard to know, isn't it. We clearly
didn't go to the right schools to be richally, No,
I can't turke my eyes off, and let's talk about
something else. So let's talk about woodlands, and let's talk
about Because you drip out these things on social media
and through our WhatsApp group for the patrons and country Slide,
(06:15):
you have an interesting little bit of habitat there.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I love it, absolutely love it. We kind of inherited it.
I mean I came late to proper game shooting. I
mean I think I had my first air rifle when
I was about nine. Yeah, and back in the day
when it was all different, used to bother the local sparrows.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
And what have you. So I didn't really start game shootings.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And I moved back down here through various civil syndicates
that didn't quite fit, and you know, some as they do,
they sort of fell over. It was actually my wife
Clary got us introduce to this lovely little syndicate down
near Callington, so to north coast. Down to there, it's
much more of Oxfordshire country side. It's some rolling hills
and you know, lots of dairy farms and woodlands and
(06:57):
we've got a bit of forestry block and the old
sim been there. They've been there since the sixties in
a couple of different iterations, and it kind of come
to its end. We had a wonderful group of people there,
but they weren't country folk. They enjoyed being out in
the country, but none of them really got what needed
to be done. So unfortunately they've fell into the age
(07:17):
old trapper, just buying more and more birds every year.
I'm wondering why it was declining and declining. So they
disbanded the club. I managed to get in touch with
the farmer and the rights over and they very generously said, well,
we'd like to keep the shoot going, give it a go.
So we've got a band of idiots together, and instead
of having surgeons and engineers, we ended up with ratcatchers
(07:40):
and carpenters and are much more practical bunch. That's incredibly practical,
bloody right. And I've just fallen in love with chopping
down copper, seeing hazels and I've been fertilizing brambles and
clearing rides and planting beetle banks and it's been amazing,
and the shooting has almost become second if they're on.
(08:01):
I've got this theory.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Another one that's land management, is actually the more fun
part of this. Yes, the gamekeepers get to have all
the fun all the way through the year. Yes, because
you you get so invested in that little bit of
habitat or that work or that thing. And absolutely it's
like having a giant, full size model railway that you
can play around.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
With completely, although the horse flies are a little sharper
on the full size and.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
You can still die with a chainsaw. Ye. Yes, yes,
but I.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Think you know that there are there's now a lot
of resource from a lot of the organizations. So I
recently did the one day gamekeepers skills, yeah, or part
time Bobby gamekeepers skills. We've done a few online with
the management bits and robs.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Listening to you twats ramble on on the country slide
occasionally gives me a good idea, but generally points me
at what we're not doing properly, although I would love
mister Niggas to come and look at my absolutely terrible
attempts at hedging. I think we've done a meter and
a half so far, so we've only got about ten
miles to go, but you know, at least we're trying,
(09:06):
and I agree with you, I think you know we've
got six days of shooting, which, knowing our lot in
that time of here, was probably three or four hours
sosagtroll and down the pub and may see a fesmal too.
Whereas we get to spend weeks seeing the woodland evolve,
and you know, you go through spring and into the
summer now and just looking back on it from when
(09:27):
we took it on two years ago to where it
was last year to where it is now, I think
you can see why the Bigges Saints really got invested
in planting trees for generations to come.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It's I don't know, it's addictive, isn't it It is?
And there's that sort of very local element to us
as well, because you can take the principle and work
learn from those courses, but you know your ground. You
know what works here and what doesn't work out well.
Like so we've got one of our woodlands and wet woodlands,
so it's basically tidal. Every winter it floods about three
or four times. So all of this it's a lot
(10:00):
older and hazel in there. But we've cut all the
stools at about eighteen inches up. Yeah, because we worked
out that if it's anything lower then when the floods
come in, it brings all this debris and it gets
stuck in the stools, and then that means it has
to be cleaned out by the time becomes a sprink.
So it's easier to cut a higher stool, which isn't
as good for perfect poles and things coming back off it.
(10:20):
But in terms of regrowth and vegetation, it's lower management,
lower maintenance because I have to account for that tidal
floodwater that's going to come in, and I can't find
that written down in any book.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
It's experimental, exactly, and I think, you know, as you
guys on country slide come across, it comes across a lot.
Is it's all very well being proscriptive for the country
and the wilderness needs this, but it isn't. It's this
sort of mosaic patchwork of little bits and bobs that
work here and won't work there. And you know, you've
got a bit of crack ground that won't grow anything
(10:56):
except nettles, So let the netals grow and you get
all the butterflies through there, and you know other stuff
comes with it. And you know, I do honestly think
that people idiots like us who spend time in the country,
so I know a hell of a lot more about
our little patch than somebody who's done fantastic work at
the university, but has more sort of a top down
(11:18):
view rather than that zooming into what your little area needs.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I think there's an element of over management sometimes as well.
People because they are professional managers, they want to manage
this to the end degree, which he almost becomes gardening. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And I think also that there's that Western ethos that
there must be an end product. You know, in some ways,
for us, the end product is a day shooting. And
you know, I've posed the question to myself several times.
Would I actually go and spend that much time in
the woods if I didn't have two three day shooting
at the end of it. Well maybe not with the
pharmer letters, if there wasn't some functional practicality to it.
(11:58):
But I think the problem with a lot of wildlife
management is either there's no product, so there's actually no
way of measuring whether what you're doing is worth the pound,
or there's kind of a cropping mentality where well, we're
going to plant these trees because in thirty forty years
they'll be worth this much. Well, actually, they're not worth
that much on harvest day, so we'll leave them the
(12:19):
other ten years and then it will you know, the
whole management side of it falls apart and you lose
a lot with it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
There's there's also the thing of parallel outcomes that the
farmer wants one thing, that your syndicate members might all
want something slightly different now to that. And it's almost
like a big ven diagram of where where is the
middle of the overlapple everyone's desired outcomes? What's the thing
that you can do that keeps everyone, keeps everyone happy, exists.
(12:49):
It's a good aim, it's someone to aim for. So
let's talk about GIN. So what's my favorite subject? What's
give me the potted version of your career? There?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So my GIN career started, as you can see from
looking at me, it doesn't translate very well onto a pod,
but I deny myself nothing. So my GIN career started
very strongly on the right side of the bar. And
as we came into was the end of the two
thousand and twenty ten twenty twelve, the chaps at sit
(13:20):
Smith managed to persuade HMRC to let people have the
right licenses to start doing some distilling it. He'd been
a complete close shot before that. The whiskey boys had
pulled the ladder up behind them and it was just
impossible to do. So the Gin market exploded and we
had a gin incorn when you may have heard of
it Tarquin's. So I wrote to Tarquin rather rambling email,
(13:44):
saying I'm not really doing much at the moment, I'd
love to come and sweep the floors. I'm just fascinated,
and he didn't bother replying. So a friend and I,
very drunkenly one night filled in the form send an
email to HMRC. Thought no more about it. At eight
weeks later we had a license to rectify Gin and
they have to do it, and then we had to
do it. So we started off in my brother's garage.
(14:08):
We had to kind of hole in the scening to
get the top of the still ohlse and we sort
of plodded along in there for the best part of
the first year, and then it just took off and
we were making Our signature was a clotted cream Gin.
So I'd worked out, oh god, right, this is in
my interest, So I'd figured out, but I say, I
(14:32):
where we are in North Cornwall just happens to have
an unnaturally high density of PhD chemists for some reason.
And our pub had four distillation professionals, so they were
making sort of high purity chemistry for the industrial market.
And we have this guy who we affectionately called Chemical Alley,
(14:54):
and he used to come and help us set up
this little glass vacuum distillation kit and I put everything
in it, cheese, bread rolls, all sorts. We discovered that
you can actually distill plotted cream, so we made a
clotted cream gin. No, we really did.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
I'm trying. There's so many layers to that. Okay. Well,
first of all, the chemist I wonder whether they're all there,
because if worked out likely drift of the clean Atlantic
air coming in off there that they'll be pretty safe
if anything happens in the rest of the.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Low population density, they could bury all sorts in the ground.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Yeah. On that, then there's how do you how stable
is that? Then the extraction from the very how what's
the shelf life on it? It's infinite because it comes
off the still at about ninety five percent alcohol by volume, right,
And it was great fun when we had because we
(15:51):
have to get the food licenses in Western so we
have health and safety and the food standards. Guys.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
There's a very lovely girl, very earnest, and they're trying
to make sure that you know your FIFO is correctly
your fridges and we sort we don't use fridges. I'd
go to the corner shop and I'd buy that day's
clotted cream when I need it. And I said, what
about your other ingredients and where they're all dried herb,
So no problem there. And she said what about spillage
And I said, well, anything we spill is ninety six
(16:19):
percent ABV pure ethanol, so it's whatever we spill gets cleaner. Yeah,
so we've got a clean bill of health of that.
And basically all it was doing was because you're disining
under vacuum, it's not curdling or cooking the cream and
you just get these sort of it was more texture
than flavor because some of those oils come across with
them and it just makes the spirit really rounded and
(16:41):
little hints of vanilla, but almost buttery and malefield.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Really, because I've got experience of this on the other
side of it, because I've worked for years doing commercial foraging, yes,
part of other things, but supplying gender cells. Yes, so
I supplying gender sellers and supplying restaurants as well, and
even skincare industry. So each customer had a specific set
of requirements for how it's to be shipped to them.
(17:08):
So restaurants they wanted it fresh as soon as possible,
and always the hazard with that what hazard. But the
thing they had to manage was you can't give You
can't do full hassip for wild plants from a heeder
or from a field somewhere to a commercial kitchen, because
where's the traceability for it? Where was how do you
ecolid test for that corner of that field, where was
(17:29):
the last time it was flooded? And all those things.
So we just had to sort of sidestep it. Are
selling selling edible plants, if you're eating them, that's not
my problem. But GIN was much easier because everything it
was a control process. But that took a while to
work out, going through Okay, dehydration for most of the
herbs we're sending over, but dehydration to strict control, so
(17:54):
never going above this temperature, never never below this moisture point,
and always everything had to be vacuum seals and then
kept out of UV lights and things like that. So
I think gorse flowers are the easiest one to work
with in terms of dehydration. Not very nice to pick. No,
we found the easiest thing to do is to take
the whole of the tip. You got the new growth
(18:14):
and the big flowers. Yes, put the whole thing in
the dehydrator and then shake petals off and to pick
a few up.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
But that's the easiest because it's funny. A lot of
the guys you started up similar time to us. Yeah,
you know, you do look around North Corny you think
what ingredients do we have and you know you've got gorse,
fog and mud. Yes, so all of them, and they're
all well and good until you need to scale up,
and then picking gorse yourself isn't so much fun. We
(18:41):
had a chap that did the foraging for us. There's
quite a few sat around, quite a few. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and yeah, how did how did you find your forager?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Was it just?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I think he because we did. We did some work
with an orchard down in Coombe Valley, so we got
key pluns and usually you can't get them for love
the money. They're pre bought and they had a bumper crap,
and I think she tried our gin and looked us
up and said, you want some key plumps. So I
bought a ton and three freezers with no real clear
(19:12):
idea what the hell I was going to do with him.
So I didn't get on the phone to my business
partner and say, I know that that's due this month,
but I've kind of spent eight grand on plums and
I don't know what I'm going to do with them.
And she introduces to him and he lovely. Our chair
ex builder started to get a bit on, wasn't really
climbing up ladders anymore. But the problem was he had
he had terrible short term memory. So you'd say to him,
(19:33):
I need this, and then you'd have to actually write
to him and email him and then phone him six
or seven times.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
But yeah, I mean he'd go out and pick one hundred.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
And fifty two hundred kilos of slows for us over
a weekend, which I think is absolutely herky leant.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Because that's the other thing that anything involving our plants
almost exclusively is nicked. It's so good.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
I mean, is it true that the WI is basically
the largest organized crime body in.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
The I love that. Yeah, yeah, it's when you think
about it so illegal under the nineteen sixty eighth Theft Act.
Or it is theft if you are picking things for sale,
because though for personal consumption it's not theft, yes, but
if it's for sale, it makes its theft. Even though
it's only for a penny. You know, it's not the
amount of profit, it's just the fact that it's for
sale and that. But that makes most slow Gin, most artists,
(20:21):
and slow Gin is indeed. I mean we were the
chat where we work with.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
He had most of his picking land was national trust
and he had written permission to forage. So for us
that was partly why we used him because we felt, well,
we've got that trace ability. He had his own liability
insurance to do it. It always worried me when people
were picking their own or even worse, they were saying
(20:47):
to the locals, you know, you pick us five kilos
and will give you the half bottle of slow Gin
or something, because you're relying on those sort of random
people picking to not pick you know, while hot berries
or night shaped berries, to have other stuff in there
that isn't and when you're working at scale, you can't
(21:07):
sift through, and when you've got a channel slows, it's
hard enough to get the snails out let alone. The
It's something that's quite common while garlic for restaurant picking
is that people are picking Aaron Maculart and Lords and
ladies by mistake that often ends up in there. So
you don't notice so much when it's cooked, but in
raw stuff or anything that's not processed too much when
(21:28):
they're dealing with it at scale that can be half
a percent. The other one that's got the sort of
silicon needles in it, yeah, that can be quite horrendous.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
It is, and it's you get the burning sensation as
soon as it hits your mouth. So it's that plant
is responsible for more admissions to hospital for wild plant
poisoning than anything else in the UK, because it's that
they grow together, don't they Yeah, same area, and then
you get the second bite at it at this time
of year where you get those red berries on a stick.
Kids eat them, Yeah, toddlers eat them and then they
(22:03):
so no one dies from it really and no one's
it's left with serious heart. But if your kids screaming.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Something, that's yeah, we get a lot of issues there
are always alerts on the beaches for the water drop
work and yes, you know the hogweed, and you know
there are some fairly brutal I think we think of
the UK as pastoral and lovely and everything's all fluffy
bunnies and happy foxes, but actually there's some brutal.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Things out there. You can have a completely organic, natural,
homeopathic death. It doesn't have to be around it. No,
it's it's it's that risk that's out there. But on
that thing about theft and no one cares, you know
that there's there's I think one of the last prosecutions
was the last Duke of Westminster and he was able
(22:49):
to prove that his ancestors planted that cherry tree. But
the finds are ridiculously small.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Didn't they have a problem in the New Forest a
few years back that there was sort of a blind
eyed into the commons for people scrumping mushrooms and what
have you, And then it ended up on an industrial
scale where there were teams of pickers just picking areas
clean from London restaurants.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
There's a by law in the Epping Forest, yeah, does
the Epping Forest Act or whatever it's called. And the
foresters can pick them, but no one else can. You
can't remove any part plant or wood or anything from
epping forests. So they tried to introduce a by law
in the New Forest to come up with something similar.
But commercial foraging is already illegal. They could enforce the
law that exists, but it's it's almost easier to enact
(23:33):
a new law a by law, yes, and then just
never prosecute anyone under that either. But it's this commercial
foraging is a weird world. It's sort of died off
now at scale, but mid two thousands it was really
really it was huge.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I think you know you saw on Clarksons farmed and
you need these micro mushroom. Yes, it's become viable. And
I think you know, before COVID we'd started working with
some really funky bars restaurants in London. If I know
a lot of people say, if it weren't for COVID,
but we're on the custom something wonderful. But even then
they were restricting into the kitchens a lot of forage goods.
(24:11):
And again it's like you said, the traceability was a
bit suspect and they couldn't take the risk. Although I
did always wonder when you go to a London restaurant
they're serving pigeon and you look outside and you think,
I like pigeon, but maybe not the club foot ones.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
That are in the KFC. I want more food, Miles.
I wanted to come from a long way away. How
far away are your pigeons from Dorset? Yeah? Food is
a it's a very strange thing. That's you can always
sell more with a story. Yeah, but something has a
story behind it, it will it adds value intrinsically? Is it?
(24:48):
How much of our food culture is based on storytelling?
Speaker 2 (24:51):
I think a lot of it, and I think a
lot of it in history as well, because obviously most
of our meat type are from the French French serivation,
and it's always puzzled me. You know, I love the
fact that venison's become popular, but it's always possibly why
we just call it all venison because all the breeds
and all the cuts they are very very different. We
don't eat bird now, you know, and you think, well
(25:13):
it must develop into you know, I prefer a bit
of fallow or yeah, you know this is munchak rather
than the whole thing. Because you have one bad experience
with venison and that puts you off the whole of venison,
whether it's burgers or sausages or steaks or joints for life,
you know.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And we sort of inherited this medieval understanding and venison
must be for the top table, it must be it
must be expensive meat. Yea, I mean that's venison is
a thing I barter with with people. We've got freezer
full of venison. There's a bit of goat in there.
There's there's other stuff, but that most of that we
didn't pay for it because it's I did a service
for somebody else. Do you or do you want this
(25:51):
carcass to meet me at the M six? You do
different sort of deals. In Wales, we have to we
have to get outs and whales to do it because
we haven't any deer virtually, no wild deer in North
Wales come back to Cornwall pretty much.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
I think Corn I always think, you know, for deer,
for you know, people out in the big cities. Corn's
like that sort of sock at the end of the
fishing there. I think people move and move and move,
and when they get to Cornwall and they're sort of
trapped in the bottom, there's nowhere else to go.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Really, is it? The sillies won't happen? How's your fishing going?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Terrible? My personal fishing, I've been once. But the commercial boys,
I think they're all struggling with octopus at the moment.
They all call the shellfish guys. I mean, you know,
HARKing back to COVID again when they couldn't export the
fish up country. I mean, we were getting kilo lobsters
for a tenor and if you bought two, they throw
(26:44):
in a dress crab for nothing. And now we can't
even get a cold water brawl. I mean, I think
the fishing clubs are doing quite well. We've got all
sorts of weird species coming in. You know, we've got
the bluefin tuna, which I think are pretty much eaten
all of the sandy.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, and this is an industry developing around that particular
south coast, isn't that? Yes? Yeah, folks going out of
ever and going out Yeah. And it's I think, you know,
the sport boats now, I don't think any are taking
for the market. No, they just saying yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
But I heard that they're not. They're not good for
the sushi market. The Japanese aren't that interesting? Because the
fat content isn't high enough.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
No, and we as we found out with Mike Warner
that the tuna get ranched, they get alive and then
fattened up on the way to their endpoint.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
That's but I mean, it's good to see them back
because it wasn't that many years ago, probably fifteen twenty
years ago, when the big Japanese corporations were catching them
all and freezing them. Yeah, waiting till they were extinct
because they increasing price tenfold, which I thought was probably
one of the darkest moments of capitalism I've seen.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
But again, it's story, isn't it. The things that used
to be poverty food are now because they have a
story has become attached to it.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Remarkable poverty food. Yeah, there were rulings on how many
days you could feed your your staff.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Lobster muscles and oysters. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm waiting for
limpits and waiting for limps to have that moment. Did
anyone really eat limpits? We did it, just our family
was weird. I suppose if you ran out of bicycle
in a chube, you had to chew on something and
wait to send upside down. Yeah, And then you put
them overheat upside down on a pan or something like
(28:25):
that and keep them upside down, and then put butter
into the shell. Okay, and then then that adds a
fat content and.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I can see where you go. I'm not sure if
I'm convinced unless of it it's quite good. I mean,
because we've got bleating, yeah, the ground, the rocks. I
remember as a kid, you creep up to them with
a flat piece of slate, yeah, and you try and
catch them before they sat down onto the rock. Otherwise
you'd never get the buggers off. But a quick flick
of the wrist and if you caught them whilst they
(28:52):
were still up with their eyes out, you'd have them
off in second.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Others with my other work, I don't talk about, but
so it's just something mentioning it. But I always mentioned
the work. They used to come down down that way
quite often to work on a contract. I'd be teaching
people what they could eat on the beach, yeah, if
it arrives on the beach unexpectedly, and limpets and periwing
calls where basically you're if you've broken your legs and
(29:18):
you still need to get calories in that you can
just crawl around the beach at Midtustraate and you would
get some kind of food.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
You wouldn't be happy about it, but it's reliable year round.
It's rather to be alive and slightly unhappy than nothing
at all. I mean, there's our local beach Trebar with
strand there are some bits that is very much a
tidal beach, and there are muscles and limpits that are
exposed to every tide. They're quite high up the beach
and you know they're probably half an inch long, and
(29:48):
it's always lovely seeing that the tourists come down and
pick a bucket of those and take them home. You think, well,
all the kids would weed on them, and they spent
most of their lives in the sun. But when we
get the big spring tides, a part of the beach
that only gets exposed at the very very extreme tides,
and the muscles there about four inches long and bloody delicious.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
They're the best ones that are tourist beaches now are
terrible for getting any kind of shellfish, because yes, people
just go along the written muscles off, put them in
a bucket and then I think they go online, look
can I muscle straight from the beach you find one
of my blogs. Yeah, and they find out they probably
shouldn't be doing it in August or July, and then
they get thrown back. Yeah they won't they won't Reattach
and them. Yeah, or they just get tipped behind the
caravan they yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah. How many airbnbs
(30:30):
have a pile of rotting muscles and right in the garden.
So how much wild food do you do you get
into your diet then throughout the year, not as much
as perhaps we'd like to.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
I mean I used to be a big fan of
having big freezer, and you know, we get half the
lamb off that our neighbors on the farm, and you know,
we share a third of a cow with the neighbors.
And then I've had too many feet freezers break down, Yeah,
and you lose the whole bloody lot.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
So there's only clear on myself.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
So we've we've ended up with one of these half
fridge half freezer things, which doesn't hold a lot. But
saying that, I mean, we get a friend on the
shoot as a deer stalker, so we get burgers and
venison sausages off him. Sam on the pod with a
Santan's got his own red deer herd, so we get
some bits off him. We still take pheasan and partridge.
(31:23):
Claire won't eat wood pigeon, but I quite like wood pigeon.
Fish is very rare and cormel. Even though we're surrounded
on pretty much all.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Sides, there's not much in the rivers, so we do try.
And I mean because I even took Gordon Ramsey foraging.
That was quite good fun.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
We did one of the TV shows with him and
I was trying to take We were going after scurvy
grass because we made a navy strength gin and.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
The whole story was scurvy and YadA, YadA YadA.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
So you know, we're trying to convince him to pick
above dog wee height, so nothing down at the bottom
of the hedge because especially where we are and tourist there.
But you know, we still I still pick slows. We've
planted a few bullus trees and you know, less food,
more booze.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
I suppose, Yeah, that's it's not a bad way to
go though. And preservation, you know, slow gin is effectively
preservation and berries and it's it's just another preserve. It's
just another home setting way of life. Isn't the fact
that it's got I think I'd rather have the salted
slows sound a bit awful. There's only so many things
(32:33):
you can do with slow as that are worth doing it,
and most of them involved putting them in some sort
of clear alcohol and sugar.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there was one time I had
some left over in the freezer because I don't do
the pricking with the silver pin and the rubbish, just
freeze them. And Claire was into these smoothies, so so
she got all this stuff out of the freezer and
I went, you're making and she went, I'm doing a
(32:59):
blueberries movie and I was like, okay, fine, put them
in the blender and it sounded like a concrete mixer
on on high. And apparently a natural yogurt and frozen
slow smoothie wasn't quite what the doctor will trying. How
are bilberries off Wimberry's or Yeah, I mean we don't
(33:19):
get any down near us on the moor. I mean
we used to pick them my mother's side of the family.
They're from Staffordshire, right, and that always used to be
on the edges of the more Rut through cannic Chase,
and we used to pick the bilberries there.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Absolutely wonderful. We're both foragers, yes, we are both large
West Country gentlemen with beards. Do you think we would
have done better as foraging influences if we wore more
floating dresses and walk with the baskets of the black
were and we'd probably have done better at everything. Foraging
sorts have been captured by the floating dress market. It
(33:56):
used to be memory beers and now it's I think
it has quiet. You know.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I've been trying to teach myself more wild plants. Yeah,
and you can use Google lens and plant life and
all the bits. And I'm still used to sort of
the Observer's Book of Plants, where you'd look it up
and get the wrong one, but it would tell you
where what it is and where it grew, and you
take left or right of the right. Thing wouldn't whereas
these days it goes straight into how it can be
(34:23):
used as an alternative medicine for pretty much everything. So
I don't, I don't know, I don't really, I'm not interested.
If it cures you know, sclerotic herpees. I want to
know what it's called.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And if it did actually cure sclerotic herpes, it would
be on set. It would be called sciencedale somewhere. Yes,
that's I mean most of this, say, do you know
this plant cure system? Do you know that Nicholas Culpepper
once wrote down in the in the sixteenth century that
there are tales that this plant is used to treat
this thing.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I think when the choice is exactly, when the choice
was arsenic or leeches, you'd probably go for dandeli.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
And yeah, yeah, And that's this thing about wild planned
law has sort of become its own industry on itself. Yes,
I feel like I should open my own social media account.
I'll get a size twenty four white float address from
TIMU and a blonde wig, and I'll go around and
dress myself up, and I'll go around with a basket
and say, did you know this plant has no effect
(35:21):
whatsoever on these things? And it's claimed for But it's
not the thing.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
If we didn't have any moral fortitude at all, it
would be quite easy to join the world of wo
yeah and really clean up if you just weren't interested
in feeding people alive.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Yeah, we're already an influencer, though, you've got your YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
My mum watches it. Mum says it's very good, although
she doesn't like the language. But it's one of those
things we did very creatively. Cooled it a year in
the woods because it was going to be charting our
year in which I bet you had a plan for
a calendar of our poems. Yes, how we'd map it
(36:01):
all through. And then I discovered that doesn't really happen.
But you know, I've got I think four or five
hundred people have subscribed, which to me is astonishing. I
have noticed when I put a video up sort of
extolling the virtues and leaving a sunny area for the butterflies,
I got about eight views. If I shoot a fox,
I've got about four thousand views. So I don't know
what it says about. Yeah, we need to get the
(36:26):
fox shooters interested in butterflies.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yes, yeah, yeah. I suppose you can't sell anything on
the back of butterfly conservation, can.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Well it doesn't seem to be, no, No, I think
that for me, it was many a case of just
charting the progress, and it has been good because you forget,
I think you get close to the work you're doing.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
And it's not until you look.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Back in a year's time you realize Christ, you know,
we've actually achieved something.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
I think that's a great place to end it. Because
my beer glass has just blown away and started rating.
I think it's time to go and bother for another point.
This is the rain that wasn't meant to arrive today.
Thank you very much. That's Richard. That's been about pleasure. Really. Yeah,
we'll do it again on topic. We can get you
over to our side of the fence. I'm down there
for nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
M
Just as David from Field Sports Britain goes past behind us.
There as I point out our microphones and the fact
we're here on the Guns on Pegs stand, so countryside
and Guns on Pegs on the same stand together, we
cannot be beaten, certainly not in the would be podcast charts.
(00:21):
And I have well the only member of Guns on
Pegs that I actually wanted to speak to on the
other side of the table from me. So Lush Roos, Well,
this is the Cornish contingent is so this is the
Cornish episode really, despite the fact we are a long
way from Cornwall and most of my Cornish accents has gone.
Although I think sitting opposite you too, it's going to
(00:42):
drift back in about thirty minutes and I'll be knowing
about Emritts on ethery. So would you like to introduce yourself?
Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yes, Sally Well, I'm Avian Sander, good old North Cornish
name wasn't quite so wonderful when I was growing up
in Buckingham Shure, but it's always been fun. I'm part
time host on the Drums and Pigs podcast, Beard Grower,
Gin Drinker near do Well and general boyk really and
Richard's very nicely asked me to come and join him
(01:14):
sat drinking a beer at nine o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Doing the podcast. It's the best thing to do with
it on a Saturday, really, Yeah, to a complete crap
over beer. Absolutely. So something we have to get out
of the way initially is that there are different parts
of Cornwall. So Cornwall is one contigious mass when it
comes to talking about things like Devon and stuff, the world,
the rest of the world, the real world. But your
(01:39):
North coast, yes, the proper coast, yes, so I'm South Coast.
I'm Andy soft coast. I say pirate coast, you see,
because we're the record coast, your wrecking coast. We're pirate Coast. Yes, yeah,
we were overly confident and comfortable with France Coast.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
I think our side is your side, definitely is ours
is a little more wind swept and don't really like anybody.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
No, you just stare at the Welsh in the Irish,
depending which direction you're looking at.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
It's also cause weird to realize that island is actually
north from us. I think if you go directly west
from our house, it's Canada, and that's where all the
weather sits.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
It's quite far north in Canada like Nova Scotia.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Yeah, it is, it really is. So why we get
palm trees and you know, mild weather. I don't know,
but it's one of those things I think what everybody
forgets about Cornwell, it's May and September of fantastic, but
you can almost guarantee come school holidays mid July it's
gray and rainy, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
It's it's almost like an in build defense mechanism. I
think against tourism.
Speaker 2 (02:38):
Either that or it's a way of selling more plastic
swords and fish and chips, or incredibly overpriced past is
with strange fillings that shouldn't be in there.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
Yeah, Stilton shouldn't be in that. There are basically two
flavors are passive. They should ever exist and that's it.
Ideally in the same thing one end fridge. Is that
not a myth? I think it's a myth. Yeah, I
think it's. I think it's a Welsh ogy thing that
they've hands laid down. Yes, yeah, it's not going to
see the West Cornwall Pasty company around in different shops.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
We've got one in the village that call themselves that
there was a big who had as I think the
family started at a Canadian and they got their crimp
in the wrong place. So they call themselves top crimpers,
which I think is just wrong crimper. Yeah, but we digest.
We're sort of getting too stuck in.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
We'll be on scums before you knows. Cider needs to
come in at some point. Whether there needs to be
a dead rat in there.
Speaker 2 (03:29):
Well, it's probably because that's where it was made in barns.
They kind of couldn't stop the rats toccumbing to the
co two and plopping in. Yeah, so it just became
part of the recipe. It does sound a bit like
justification after the fact. Definitely, why is there a dead
rat in there? We need that for the flavors to
be there for the flavor.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Yeah, it's easier than fishing it out, my dad said rabbits.
I don't know whether he was just talking crap. Probably
I've heard badger, but I think that sounds a bit
too stressful, trying to get hold of the badger and
put it in. Yeah, what's the after the badger Act?
What's the sort of legally acceptable way of having a
badger in your side of me?
Speaker 2 (04:06):
I don't know, do you need like if you were
having it having its stuff, do you need a section
whatever it is, a you allowed to scoop up some
roadkill like that chap on the law used to do
possess parts thereof yes, yes, but I think in the
quantities you make, you must get bristles in your finished
product sually.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Yeah, I mean filtering at the end. There's always a
contentious issue. I think that's what teeth were invented for us. Yeah,
do you make much a home? I don't.
Speaker 2 (04:34):
I mean I've been challenged on the pond to make
this decide why I'm wondering is this a historical thing
or is it? No?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I think it was just dropped on me as a
West Country can Yes, correspondent, I think it's racistem anyways,
you know you're from the West Country. Ergo you know
how to make excited.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
I mean, in fairness, I've got fourm I did have
a Jindae sillery for ten years, so I've got some
sort of idea how works. But I wasn't quick enough
on the because George sort of dropped on me, so well,
why don't you make sider that's what you're making?
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Side?
Speaker 2 (05:04):
And then I realized we haven't got any trees. We're
on the north coast, all the sided orchards. There are
a few in the Camel Valley, but most of them
a don your neck of the words, isn't they.
Speaker 1 (05:12):
I've got this theory about George that he has this
like vicarious desire to do things, but he doesn't want
to do them himself, so he lines up other people
to do that. I think that's a very good idea
for you to do, because he wants to, but he
can't be asked for himself, so he just wants other
people to do it.
Speaker 2 (05:26):
It's not a bad way to go about things, because
anything works, you take all the glory.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
I mean, maybe he's just middle management. That's kind of
the ethos. He does look like middle management. And it's
over there in the quite faded salmon salmon will sort
of peach fuzz. I think salmon wants that's sun bleach salmon.
Maybe they were salmon the last time he caught salmon.
It's the loafers, is the god? Yea? The loafers or
(05:53):
car shoes. It's hard to know, isn't it. We clearly
didn't go to the right schools to be richally, No,
I can't turke my eyes off, and let's talk about
something else. So let's talk about woodlands, and let's talk
about Because you drip out these things on social media
and through our WhatsApp group for the patrons and country Slide,
(06:15):
you have an interesting little bit of habitat there.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
I love it, absolutely love it. We kind of inherited it.
I mean I came late to proper game shooting. I
mean I think I had my first air rifle when
I was about nine. Yeah, and back in the day
when it was all different, used to bother the local sparrows.
Speaker 1 (06:31):
And what have you. So I didn't really start game shootings.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
And I moved back down here through various civil syndicates
that didn't quite fit, and you know, some as they do,
they sort of fell over. It was actually my wife
Clary got us introduce to this lovely little syndicate down
near Callington, so to north coast. Down to there, it's
much more of Oxfordshire country side. It's some rolling hills
and you know, lots of dairy farms and woodlands and
(06:57):
we've got a bit of forestry block and the old
sim been there. They've been there since the sixties in
a couple of different iterations, and it kind of come
to its end. We had a wonderful group of people there,
but they weren't country folk. They enjoyed being out in
the country, but none of them really got what needed
to be done. So unfortunately they've fell into the age
(07:17):
old trapper, just buying more and more birds every year.
I'm wondering why it was declining and declining. So they
disbanded the club. I managed to get in touch with
the farmer and the rights over and they very generously said, well,
we'd like to keep the shoot going, give it a go.
So we've got a band of idiots together, and instead
of having surgeons and engineers, we ended up with ratcatchers
(07:40):
and carpenters and are much more practical bunch. That's incredibly practical,
bloody right. And I've just fallen in love with chopping
down copper, seeing hazels and I've been fertilizing brambles and
clearing rides and planting beetle banks and it's been amazing,
and the shooting has almost become second if they're on.
(08:01):
I've got this theory.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
Another one that's land management, is actually the more fun
part of this. Yes, the gamekeepers get to have all
the fun all the way through the year. Yes, because
you you get so invested in that little bit of
habitat or that work or that thing. And absolutely it's
like having a giant, full size model railway that you
can play around.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
With completely, although the horse flies are a little sharper
on the full size and.
Speaker 1 (08:26):
You can still die with a chainsaw. Ye. Yes, yes,
but I.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Think you know that there are there's now a lot
of resource from a lot of the organizations. So I
recently did the one day gamekeepers skills, yeah, or part
time Bobby gamekeepers skills. We've done a few online with
the management bits and robs.
Speaker 1 (08:45):
You know.
Speaker 2 (08:45):
Listening to you twats ramble on on the country slide
occasionally gives me a good idea, but generally points me
at what we're not doing properly, although I would love
mister Niggas to come and look at my absolutely terrible
attempts at hedging. I think we've done a meter and
a half so far, so we've only got about ten
miles to go, but you know, at least we're trying,
(09:06):
and I agree with you, I think you know we've
got six days of shooting, which, knowing our lot in
that time of here, was probably three or four hours
sosagtroll and down the pub and may see a fesmal too.
Whereas we get to spend weeks seeing the woodland evolve,
and you know, you go through spring and into the
summer now and just looking back on it from when
(09:27):
we took it on two years ago to where it
was last year to where it is now, I think
you can see why the Bigges Saints really got invested
in planting trees for generations to come.
Speaker 1 (09:38):
It's I don't know, it's addictive, isn't it It is?
And there's that sort of very local element to us
as well, because you can take the principle and work
learn from those courses, but you know your ground. You
know what works here and what doesn't work out well.
Like so we've got one of our woodlands and wet woodlands,
so it's basically tidal. Every winter it floods about three
or four times. So all of this it's a lot
(10:00):
older and hazel in there. But we've cut all the
stools at about eighteen inches up. Yeah, because we worked
out that if it's anything lower then when the floods
come in, it brings all this debris and it gets
stuck in the stools, and then that means it has
to be cleaned out by the time becomes a sprink.
So it's easier to cut a higher stool, which isn't
as good for perfect poles and things coming back off it.
(10:20):
But in terms of regrowth and vegetation, it's lower management,
lower maintenance because I have to account for that tidal
floodwater that's going to come in, and I can't find
that written down in any book.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
It's experimental, exactly, and I think, you know, as you
guys on country slide come across, it comes across a lot.
Is it's all very well being proscriptive for the country
and the wilderness needs this, but it isn't. It's this
sort of mosaic patchwork of little bits and bobs that
work here and won't work there. And you know, you've
got a bit of crack ground that won't grow anything
(10:56):
except nettles, So let the netals grow and you get
all the butterflies through there, and you know other stuff
comes with it. And you know, I do honestly think
that people idiots like us who spend time in the country,
so I know a hell of a lot more about
our little patch than somebody who's done fantastic work at
the university, but has more sort of a top down
(11:18):
view rather than that zooming into what your little area needs.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
I think there's an element of over management sometimes as well.
People because they are professional managers, they want to manage
this to the end degree, which he almost becomes gardening. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
And I think also that there's that Western ethos that
there must be an end product. You know, in some ways,
for us, the end product is a day shooting. And
you know, I've posed the question to myself several times.
Would I actually go and spend that much time in
the woods if I didn't have two three day shooting
at the end of it. Well maybe not with the
pharmer letters, if there wasn't some functional practicality to it.
(11:58):
But I think the problem with a lot of wildlife
management is either there's no product, so there's actually no
way of measuring whether what you're doing is worth the pound,
or there's kind of a cropping mentality where well, we're
going to plant these trees because in thirty forty years
they'll be worth this much. Well, actually, they're not worth
that much on harvest day, so we'll leave them the
(12:19):
other ten years and then it will you know, the
whole management side of it falls apart and you lose
a lot with it.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
There's there's also the thing of parallel outcomes that the
farmer wants one thing, that your syndicate members might all
want something slightly different now to that. And it's almost
like a big ven diagram of where where is the
middle of the overlapple everyone's desired outcomes? What's the thing
that you can do that keeps everyone, keeps everyone happy, exists.
(12:49):
It's a good aim, it's someone to aim for. So
let's talk about GIN. So what's my favorite subject? What's
give me the potted version of your career? There?
Speaker 2 (12:58):
So my GIN career started, as you can see from
looking at me, it doesn't translate very well onto a pod,
but I deny myself nothing. So my GIN career started
very strongly on the right side of the bar. And
as we came into was the end of the two
thousand and twenty ten twenty twelve, the chaps at sit
(13:20):
Smith managed to persuade HMRC to let people have the
right licenses to start doing some distilling it. He'd been
a complete close shot before that. The whiskey boys had
pulled the ladder up behind them and it was just
impossible to do. So the Gin market exploded and we
had a gin incorn when you may have heard of
it Tarquin's. So I wrote to Tarquin rather rambling email,
(13:44):
saying I'm not really doing much at the moment, I'd
love to come and sweep the floors. I'm just fascinated,
and he didn't bother replying. So a friend and I,
very drunkenly one night filled in the form send an
email to HMRC. Thought no more about it. At eight
weeks later we had a license to rectify Gin and
they have to do it, and then we had to
do it. So we started off in my brother's garage.
(14:08):
We had to kind of hole in the scening to
get the top of the still ohlse and we sort
of plodded along in there for the best part of
the first year, and then it just took off and
we were making Our signature was a clotted cream Gin.
So I'd worked out, oh god, right, this is in
my interest, So I'd figured out, but I say, I
(14:32):
where we are in North Cornwall just happens to have
an unnaturally high density of PhD chemists for some reason.
And our pub had four distillation professionals, so they were
making sort of high purity chemistry for the industrial market.
And we have this guy who we affectionately called Chemical Alley,
(14:54):
and he used to come and help us set up
this little glass vacuum distillation kit and I put everything
in it, cheese, bread rolls, all sorts. We discovered that
you can actually distill plotted cream, so we made a
clotted cream gin. No, we really did.
Speaker 1 (15:13):
I'm trying. There's so many layers to that. Okay. Well,
first of all, the chemist I wonder whether they're all there,
because if worked out likely drift of the clean Atlantic
air coming in off there that they'll be pretty safe
if anything happens in the rest of the.
Speaker 2 (15:27):
Low population density, they could bury all sorts in the ground.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Yeah. On that, then there's how do you how stable
is that? Then the extraction from the very how what's
the shelf life on it? It's infinite because it comes
off the still at about ninety five percent alcohol by volume, right,
And it was great fun when we had because we
(15:51):
have to get the food licenses in Western so we
have health and safety and the food standards. Guys.
Speaker 2 (15:58):
There's a very lovely girl, very earnest, and they're trying
to make sure that you know your FIFO is correctly
your fridges and we sort we don't use fridges. I'd
go to the corner shop and I'd buy that day's
clotted cream when I need it. And I said, what
about your other ingredients and where they're all dried herb,
So no problem there. And she said what about spillage
And I said, well, anything we spill is ninety six
(16:19):
percent ABV pure ethanol, so it's whatever we spill gets cleaner. Yeah,
so we've got a clean bill of health of that.
And basically all it was doing was because you're disining
under vacuum, it's not curdling or cooking the cream and
you just get these sort of it was more texture
than flavor because some of those oils come across with
them and it just makes the spirit really rounded and
(16:41):
little hints of vanilla, but almost buttery and malefield.
Speaker 1 (16:46):
Really, because I've got experience of this on the other
side of it, because I've worked for years doing commercial foraging, yes,
part of other things, but supplying gender cells. Yes, so
I supplying gender sellers and supplying restaurants as well, and
even skincare industry. So each customer had a specific set
of requirements for how it's to be shipped to them.
(17:08):
So restaurants they wanted it fresh as soon as possible,
and always the hazard with that what hazard. But the
thing they had to manage was you can't give You
can't do full hassip for wild plants from a heeder
or from a field somewhere to a commercial kitchen, because
where's the traceability for it? Where was how do you
ecolid test for that corner of that field, where was
(17:29):
the last time it was flooded? And all those things.
So we just had to sort of sidestep it. Are
selling selling edible plants, if you're eating them, that's not
my problem. But GIN was much easier because everything it
was a control process. But that took a while to
work out, going through Okay, dehydration for most of the
herbs we're sending over, but dehydration to strict control, so
(17:54):
never going above this temperature, never never below this moisture point,
and always everything had to be vacuum seals and then
kept out of UV lights and things like that. So
I think gorse flowers are the easiest one to work
with in terms of dehydration. Not very nice to pick. No,
we found the easiest thing to do is to take
the whole of the tip. You got the new growth
(18:14):
and the big flowers. Yes, put the whole thing in
the dehydrator and then shake petals off and to pick
a few up.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
But that's the easiest because it's funny. A lot of
the guys you started up similar time to us. Yeah,
you know, you do look around North Corny you think
what ingredients do we have and you know you've got gorse,
fog and mud. Yes, so all of them, and they're
all well and good until you need to scale up,
and then picking gorse yourself isn't so much fun. We
(18:41):
had a chap that did the foraging for us. There's
quite a few sat around, quite a few. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
and yeah, how did how did you find your forager?
Speaker 1 (18:50):
Was it just?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
I think he because we did. We did some work
with an orchard down in Coombe Valley, so we got
key pluns and usually you can't get them for love
the money. They're pre bought and they had a bumper crap,
and I think she tried our gin and looked us
up and said, you want some key plumps. So I
bought a ton and three freezers with no real clear
(19:12):
idea what the hell I was going to do with him.
So I didn't get on the phone to my business
partner and say, I know that that's due this month,
but I've kind of spent eight grand on plums and
I don't know what I'm going to do with them.
And she introduces to him and he lovely. Our chair
ex builder started to get a bit on, wasn't really
climbing up ladders anymore. But the problem was he had
he had terrible short term memory. So you'd say to him,
(19:33):
I need this, and then you'd have to actually write
to him and email him and then phone him six
or seven times.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
But yeah, I mean he'd go out and pick one hundred.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
And fifty two hundred kilos of slows for us over
a weekend, which I think is absolutely herky leant.
Speaker 1 (19:47):
Because that's the other thing that anything involving our plants
almost exclusively is nicked. It's so good.
Speaker 2 (19:53):
I mean, is it true that the WI is basically
the largest organized crime body in.
Speaker 1 (19:57):
The I love that. Yeah, yeah, it's when you think
about it so illegal under the nineteen sixty eighth Theft Act.
Or it is theft if you are picking things for sale,
because though for personal consumption it's not theft, yes, but
if it's for sale, it makes its theft. Even though
it's only for a penny. You know, it's not the
amount of profit, it's just the fact that it's for
sale and that. But that makes most slow Gin, most artists,
(20:21):
and slow Gin is indeed. I mean we were the
chat where we work with.
Speaker 2 (20:26):
He had most of his picking land was national trust
and he had written permission to forage. So for us
that was partly why we used him because we felt, well,
we've got that trace ability. He had his own liability
insurance to do it. It always worried me when people
were picking their own or even worse, they were saying
(20:47):
to the locals, you know, you pick us five kilos
and will give you the half bottle of slow Gin
or something, because you're relying on those sort of random
people picking to not pick you know, while hot berries
or night shaped berries, to have other stuff in there
that isn't and when you're working at scale, you can't
(21:07):
sift through, and when you've got a channel slows, it's
hard enough to get the snails out let alone. The
It's something that's quite common while garlic for restaurant picking
is that people are picking Aaron Maculart and Lords and
ladies by mistake that often ends up in there. So
you don't notice so much when it's cooked, but in
raw stuff or anything that's not processed too much when
(21:28):
they're dealing with it at scale that can be half
a percent. The other one that's got the sort of
silicon needles in it, yeah, that can be quite horrendous.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
It is, and it's you get the burning sensation as
soon as it hits your mouth. So it's that plant
is responsible for more admissions to hospital for wild plant
poisoning than anything else in the UK, because it's that
they grow together, don't they Yeah, same area, and then
you get the second bite at it at this time
of year where you get those red berries on a stick.
Kids eat them, Yeah, toddlers eat them and then they
(22:03):
so no one dies from it really and no one's
it's left with serious heart. But if your kids screaming.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
Something, that's yeah, we get a lot of issues there
are always alerts on the beaches for the water drop
work and yes, you know the hogweed, and you know
there are some fairly brutal I think we think of
the UK as pastoral and lovely and everything's all fluffy
bunnies and happy foxes, but actually there's some brutal.
Speaker 1 (22:27):
Things out there. You can have a completely organic, natural,
homeopathic death. It doesn't have to be around it. No,
it's it's it's that risk that's out there. But on
that thing about theft and no one cares, you know
that there's there's I think one of the last prosecutions
was the last Duke of Westminster and he was able
(22:49):
to prove that his ancestors planted that cherry tree. But
the finds are ridiculously small.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
Didn't they have a problem in the New Forest a
few years back that there was sort of a blind
eyed into the commons for people scrumping mushrooms and what
have you, And then it ended up on an industrial
scale where there were teams of pickers just picking areas
clean from London restaurants.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
There's a by law in the Epping Forest, yeah, does
the Epping Forest Act or whatever it's called. And the
foresters can pick them, but no one else can. You
can't remove any part plant or wood or anything from
epping forests. So they tried to introduce a by law
in the New Forest to come up with something similar.
But commercial foraging is already illegal. They could enforce the
law that exists, but it's it's almost easier to enact
(23:33):
a new law a by law, yes, and then just
never prosecute anyone under that either. But it's this commercial
foraging is a weird world. It's sort of died off
now at scale, but mid two thousands it was really
really it was huge.
Speaker 2 (23:48):
I think you know you saw on Clarksons farmed and
you need these micro mushroom. Yes, it's become viable. And
I think you know, before COVID we'd started working with
some really funky bars restaurants in London. If I know
a lot of people say, if it weren't for COVID,
but we're on the custom something wonderful. But even then
they were restricting into the kitchens a lot of forage goods.
(24:11):
And again it's like you said, the traceability was a
bit suspect and they couldn't take the risk. Although I
did always wonder when you go to a London restaurant
they're serving pigeon and you look outside and you think,
I like pigeon, but maybe not the club foot ones.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
That are in the KFC. I want more food, Miles.
I wanted to come from a long way away. How
far away are your pigeons from Dorset? Yeah? Food is
a it's a very strange thing. That's you can always
sell more with a story. Yeah, but something has a
story behind it, it will it adds value intrinsically? Is it?
(24:48):
How much of our food culture is based on storytelling?
Speaker 2 (24:51):
I think a lot of it, and I think a
lot of it in history as well, because obviously most
of our meat type are from the French French serivation,
and it's always puzzled me. You know, I love the
fact that venison's become popular, but it's always possibly why
we just call it all venison because all the breeds
and all the cuts they are very very different. We
don't eat bird now, you know, and you think, well
(25:13):
it must develop into you know, I prefer a bit
of fallow or yeah, you know this is munchak rather
than the whole thing. Because you have one bad experience
with venison and that puts you off the whole of venison,
whether it's burgers or sausages or steaks or joints for life,
you know.
Speaker 1 (25:29):
And we sort of inherited this medieval understanding and venison
must be for the top table, it must be it
must be expensive meat. Yea, I mean that's venison is
a thing I barter with with people. We've got freezer
full of venison. There's a bit of goat in there.
There's there's other stuff, but that most of that we
didn't pay for it because it's I did a service
for somebody else. Do you or do you want this
(25:51):
carcass to meet me at the M six? You do
different sort of deals. In Wales, we have to we
have to get outs and whales to do it because
we haven't any deer virtually, no wild deer in North
Wales come back to Cornwall pretty much.
Speaker 2 (26:06):
I think Corn I always think, you know, for deer,
for you know, people out in the big cities. Corn's
like that sort of sock at the end of the
fishing there. I think people move and move and move,
and when they get to Cornwall and they're sort of
trapped in the bottom, there's nowhere else to go.
Speaker 1 (26:19):
Really, is it? The sillies won't happen? How's your fishing going?
Speaker 2 (26:23):
Terrible? My personal fishing, I've been once. But the commercial boys,
I think they're all struggling with octopus at the moment.
They all call the shellfish guys. I mean, you know,
HARKing back to COVID again when they couldn't export the
fish up country. I mean, we were getting kilo lobsters
for a tenor and if you bought two, they throw
(26:44):
in a dress crab for nothing. And now we can't
even get a cold water brawl. I mean, I think
the fishing clubs are doing quite well. We've got all
sorts of weird species coming in. You know, we've got
the bluefin tuna, which I think are pretty much eaten
all of the sandy.
Speaker 1 (27:00):
Yeah, and this is an industry developing around that particular
south coast, isn't that? Yes? Yeah, folks going out of
ever and going out Yeah. And it's I think, you know,
the sport boats now, I don't think any are taking
for the market. No, they just saying yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:16):
But I heard that they're not. They're not good for
the sushi market. The Japanese aren't that interesting? Because the
fat content isn't high enough.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
No, and we as we found out with Mike Warner
that the tuna get ranched, they get alive and then
fattened up on the way to their endpoint.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
That's but I mean, it's good to see them back
because it wasn't that many years ago, probably fifteen twenty
years ago, when the big Japanese corporations were catching them
all and freezing them. Yeah, waiting till they were extinct
because they increasing price tenfold, which I thought was probably
one of the darkest moments of capitalism I've seen.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
But again, it's story, isn't it. The things that used
to be poverty food are now because they have a
story has become attached to it.
Speaker 2 (27:58):
Remarkable poverty food. Yeah, there were rulings on how many
days you could feed your your staff.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Lobster muscles and oysters. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I'm waiting for
limpits and waiting for limps to have that moment. Did
anyone really eat limpits? We did it, just our family
was weird. I suppose if you ran out of bicycle
in a chube, you had to chew on something and
wait to send upside down. Yeah, And then you put
them overheat upside down on a pan or something like
(28:25):
that and keep them upside down, and then put butter
into the shell. Okay, and then then that adds a
fat content and.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
I can see where you go. I'm not sure if
I'm convinced unless of it it's quite good. I mean,
because we've got bleating, yeah, the ground, the rocks. I
remember as a kid, you creep up to them with
a flat piece of slate, yeah, and you try and
catch them before they sat down onto the rock. Otherwise
you'd never get the buggers off. But a quick flick
of the wrist and if you caught them whilst they
(28:52):
were still up with their eyes out, you'd have them
off in second.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
Others with my other work, I don't talk about, but
so it's just something mentioning it. But I always mentioned
the work. They used to come down down that way
quite often to work on a contract. I'd be teaching
people what they could eat on the beach, yeah, if
it arrives on the beach unexpectedly, and limpets and periwing
calls where basically you're if you've broken your legs and
(29:18):
you still need to get calories in that you can
just crawl around the beach at Midtustraate and you would
get some kind of food.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
You wouldn't be happy about it, but it's reliable year round.
It's rather to be alive and slightly unhappy than nothing
at all. I mean, there's our local beach Trebar with
strand there are some bits that is very much a
tidal beach, and there are muscles and limpits that are
exposed to every tide. They're quite high up the beach
and you know they're probably half an inch long, and
(29:48):
it's always lovely seeing that the tourists come down and
pick a bucket of those and take them home. You think, well,
all the kids would weed on them, and they spent
most of their lives in the sun. But when we
get the big spring tides, a part of the beach
that only gets exposed at the very very extreme tides,
and the muscles there about four inches long and bloody delicious.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
They're the best ones that are tourist beaches now are
terrible for getting any kind of shellfish, because yes, people
just go along the written muscles off, put them in
a bucket and then I think they go online, look
can I muscle straight from the beach you find one
of my blogs. Yeah, and they find out they probably
shouldn't be doing it in August or July, and then
they get thrown back. Yeah they won't they won't Reattach
and them. Yeah, or they just get tipped behind the
caravan they yeah, yeah, that's true. Yeah. How many airbnbs
(30:30):
have a pile of rotting muscles and right in the garden.
So how much wild food do you do you get
into your diet then throughout the year, not as much
as perhaps we'd like to.
Speaker 2 (30:43):
I mean I used to be a big fan of
having big freezer, and you know, we get half the
lamb off that our neighbors on the farm, and you know,
we share a third of a cow with the neighbors.
And then I've had too many feet freezers break down, Yeah,
and you lose the whole bloody lot.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
So there's only clear on myself.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
So we've we've ended up with one of these half
fridge half freezer things, which doesn't hold a lot. But
saying that, I mean, we get a friend on the
shoot as a deer stalker, so we get burgers and
venison sausages off him. Sam on the pod with a
Santan's got his own red deer herd, so we get
some bits off him. We still take pheasan and partridge.
(31:23):
Claire won't eat wood pigeon, but I quite like wood pigeon.
Fish is very rare and cormel. Even though we're surrounded
on pretty much all.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Sides, there's not much in the rivers, so we do try.
And I mean because I even took Gordon Ramsey foraging.
That was quite good fun.
Speaker 2 (31:41):
We did one of the TV shows with him and
I was trying to take We were going after scurvy
grass because we made a navy strength gin and.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
The whole story was scurvy and YadA, YadA YadA.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
So you know, we're trying to convince him to pick
above dog wee height, so nothing down at the bottom
of the hedge because especially where we are and tourist there.
But you know, we still I still pick slows. We've
planted a few bullus trees and you know, less food,
more booze.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
I suppose, Yeah, that's it's not a bad way to
go though. And preservation, you know, slow gin is effectively
preservation and berries and it's it's just another preserve. It's
just another home setting way of life. Isn't the fact
that it's got I think I'd rather have the salted
slows sound a bit awful. There's only so many things
(32:33):
you can do with slow as that are worth doing it,
and most of them involved putting them in some sort
of clear alcohol and sugar.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there was one time I had
some left over in the freezer because I don't do
the pricking with the silver pin and the rubbish, just
freeze them. And Claire was into these smoothies, so so
she got all this stuff out of the freezer and
I went, you're making and she went, I'm doing a
(32:59):
blueberries movie and I was like, okay, fine, put them
in the blender and it sounded like a concrete mixer
on on high. And apparently a natural yogurt and frozen
slow smoothie wasn't quite what the doctor will trying. How
are bilberries off Wimberry's or Yeah, I mean we don't
(33:19):
get any down near us on the moor. I mean
we used to pick them my mother's side of the family.
They're from Staffordshire, right, and that always used to be
on the edges of the more Rut through cannic Chase,
and we used to pick the bilberries there.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Absolutely wonderful. We're both foragers, yes, we are both large
West Country gentlemen with beards. Do you think we would
have done better as foraging influences if we wore more
floating dresses and walk with the baskets of the black
were and we'd probably have done better at everything. Foraging
sorts have been captured by the floating dress market. It
(33:56):
used to be memory beers and now it's I think
it has quiet. You know.
Speaker 2 (34:01):
I've been trying to teach myself more wild plants. Yeah,
and you can use Google lens and plant life and
all the bits. And I'm still used to sort of
the Observer's Book of Plants, where you'd look it up
and get the wrong one, but it would tell you
where what it is and where it grew, and you
take left or right of the right. Thing wouldn't whereas
these days it goes straight into how it can be
(34:23):
used as an alternative medicine for pretty much everything. So
I don't, I don't know, I don't really, I'm not interested.
If it cures you know, sclerotic herpees. I want to
know what it's called.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
And if it did actually cure sclerotic herpes, it would
be on set. It would be called sciencedale somewhere. Yes,
that's I mean most of this, say, do you know
this plant cure system? Do you know that Nicholas Culpepper
once wrote down in the in the sixteenth century that
there are tales that this plant is used to treat
this thing.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
I think when the choice is exactly, when the choice
was arsenic or leeches, you'd probably go for dandeli.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
And yeah, yeah, And that's this thing about wild planned
law has sort of become its own industry on itself. Yes,
I feel like I should open my own social media account.
I'll get a size twenty four white float address from
TIMU and a blonde wig, and I'll go around and
dress myself up, and I'll go around with a basket
and say, did you know this plant has no effect
(35:21):
whatsoever on these things? And it's claimed for But it's
not the thing.
Speaker 2 (35:26):
If we didn't have any moral fortitude at all, it
would be quite easy to join the world of wo
yeah and really clean up if you just weren't interested
in feeding people alive.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
Yeah, we're already an influencer, though, you've got your YouTube channel.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
My mum watches it. Mum says it's very good, although
she doesn't like the language. But it's one of those
things we did very creatively. Cooled it a year in
the woods because it was going to be charting our
year in which I bet you had a plan for
a calendar of our poems. Yes, how we'd map it
(36:01):
all through. And then I discovered that doesn't really happen.
But you know, I've got I think four or five
hundred people have subscribed, which to me is astonishing. I
have noticed when I put a video up sort of
extolling the virtues and leaving a sunny area for the butterflies,
I got about eight views. If I shoot a fox,
I've got about four thousand views. So I don't know
what it says about. Yeah, we need to get the
(36:26):
fox shooters interested in butterflies.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yes, yeah, yeah. I suppose you can't sell anything on
the back of butterfly conservation, can.
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Well it doesn't seem to be, no, No, I think
that for me, it was many a case of just
charting the progress, and it has been good because you forget,
I think you get close to the work you're doing.
Speaker 1 (36:43):
And it's not until you look.
Speaker 2 (36:44):
Back in a year's time you realize Christ, you know,
we've actually achieved something.
Speaker 1 (36:49):
I think that's a great place to end it. Because
my beer glass has just blown away and started rating.
I think it's time to go and bother for another point.
This is the rain that wasn't meant to arrive today.
Thank you very much. That's Richard. That's been about pleasure. Really. Yeah,
we'll do it again on topic. We can get you
over to our side of the fence. I'm down there
for nothing. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (37:18):
M
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