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Unwild Wales – this settled country

‘Unwild Wales’ was my original, slightly provocative title to ‘Tir’ (which comes out now in six short weeks!) It was a deliberate provocation though – not just an allusion to George Borrow’s 19th century jaunt through the country and subsequent long-burn bestseller on Wales from the outside, but also to current hot debates on land use and wildlife in Wales.

One of the salient points about that current debate, contested and high-stakes as it is, is the extent to which people bring different cultural frameworks and reference points to bear on it. In this sense, there seemed to me to be a deeper underlying link with Borrow’s recounting of his experiences in the 19th century, and his depiction of Wales as above all ‘wild’. He may well have chosen that adjective with his tongue firmly in his cheek, given his knowledge of and affection for Welsh culture. But he was at any rate tapping into a trope that was already well-established by the time he was writing, whereby Wales had long since been imagined from the outside, and experienced by outside visitors, as the epitome of wilderness – or at least, as the epitome of wilderness-near-at-hand. (The answer to the question, ‘what does wilderness look like when it’s only a day’s coach travel away from London?’)

There were of course reasons for this, to do with ‘backwards’ conditions in the bulk of Wales’ mountainous and resolutely non-English speaking interior. Unlike the Alps, Wales was not home to long established trans-continental trade routes. It had no major cities to speak of, nor an urban bourgeoisie that represented its own power centre. On the other hand, it was not ‘heathen’ as for much of western European history the Baltic countries or Africa were perceived to be. There was, in other words, a long memory of Wales being near-at-hand and approachable while also not conforming neatly in terms of its ways of life and culture to western European norms.

The extent to which this has been a long-standing phenomenon can be seen in a 13th century encounter between Stephen Lexington, Abbot of Stanley and Clairvaux, and the monastic community of Whitland Abbey. Abbot Stephen objected strongly to the Welsh monks’ practices, asserting that they were more concerned monks in associated monasteries spoke the Welsh language, ‘than that they do the will of God and the order’.[1] To readers in the 2020s, with sixty years of prominent language activism behind us in Wales, this may seem unsurprising. Given, though, the vast cultural gulf on so many other fronts between today’s Wales and that of the high Middle Ages, this medieval clash of worldviews within the regulated confines of a monastic order is noteworthy. It betrays of course a difference of outlook between Stephen and the Welsh monks on the question of language, and this I think contains an important nugget of insight that applies, mutatis mutandis, to perceptions of land use and nature too.

We could get at that quite neatly by reflecting on the simple question of what a landscape is. To the 18th century artist, Paul Sandby, the mountainous north Wales landscape was the epitome of the picturesque, with as Schama puts it, ‘the language spoken by the natives [heard] as the phonetic equivalent of the landscape.’[2] It was, in other words, a place that through all the senses took you outside the normal realms of civilised life and into something ineluctably different – slightly barbaric, perhaps, and ‘wild’.[3]

Interesting though this all is, and perpetuated though it continues to be (in guidebooks and tourist writing), it also when viewed from a certain angle becomes almost unbearably comic. The particular angle I have in mind – and one I cannot given my own upbringing get away from – is that of Welsh (language) culture, the inhabitants of which had, have and have left an almost diametrically opposed way of experiencing, viewing and interpreting the Welsh landscape.

There was and is in this culture an utterly assumed familiarity with the landscape, rooted above all in the culture’s sense of its own continuity within it. This familiarity, as I explore in the book, can be seen from the earliest written records we have in Welsh from the 1st millennium AD and is amplified from that point forward throughout the cultural record. Its expression is utterly varied in nature, ranging from the onomastic tradition of poems and myths explaining place-names, through to medieval poetic theorizing on Welsh princehood whereby the term ‘marriage’ (priodas) was used to denote the connection between ruling princes and their land.[4] It formed a dense web of association, that manifested in the early modern period in traditions linking geographical boundaries with the supernatural[5] and in ongoing cultural practice that identifies individuals and families in conversation through the names of farmsteads and places. Perhaps the most striking modern expression of this is the continuing cultural salience of Dafydd Iwan’s ‘Yma o Hyd’ ballad, that draws on repeated Welsh myth-making going back to the late 4th century ‘Magnus Maximus’ of Wales and Rome; the key point here being that it is the emphasis on the Welsh being ‘here’ in the land that clearly resonates with the boisterous crowds.

There is a hillfort at the top of those woods near Bridgend, first constructed in the second millennium BC…

This is all the domain of cultural narrative, but it corresponds interestingly with archaeological consensus that the land-mass of Wales been settled since well before the beginning of recorded history. As cropmarks in hot summers continue to testify, the landscape even of poorly endowed Ceredigion shows dense settlement by the Iron Age[6], with much of the land by then already in continuous use for thousands of years. The combined archaeological and documentary evidence we have is of continuous settlement, with all that implies for farming and wider land-use for timber, firewood and textiles at a minimum. This point should not be taken for granted; it stands for instance in sharp distinction to what we know about early medieval Germany, where the knowledge of manuring seems to have been lost by 6th century meaning settlements had to be moved around the landscape every three generations or so.[7] In Wales, as I explore in the book, there is every suggestion that the oldest inhabited spots across the landscape have remained so without a break for, now, thousands of years.

This matters not only for our understanding of Wales but particularly when it comes to current environmental questions of civilizational import. Here, much of the discourse that is amplified and repeated across the western world is anchored in analyses of modern human ecological impact in the USA, Australia and so on, where the cultural-environmental dynamics through colonialism are vastly different. I have much time for Wendell Berry’s writings and reflections; but so much of what they take for granted as environmental backdrop simply does not apply here in Wales. What does apply is a narrative that recognizes first of all a long history of being settled; a profound absence of wilderness; and an often painfully defiant culture that asserts its own right of place here. From that narrative, we can start asking important questions about the balance between domestic life (and animals) and wildlife, between human knowledge of a place and its own ‘natural’ dynamics, between using a landscape and celebrating it, and so much more.

This was some of what I wanted to open up in the book – out now in 6 weeks’ time…

[1] p.128, Williams ‘The Welsh Cistercians’

[2] p.469, Schama ‘Landscape and Memory’

[3] There is, of course, nothing uniquely Welsh in this experience. There is an enormous literature examining the ways and extents to which this has been the case for cultures throughout the world over the past few centuries and indeed in the ancient world. The word ‘colonialism’ can’t be kept too far from such a discussion.

[4] p.140 in ‘Ar drywydd enwau lleoedd’

[5] pp47-69 in Badder and Norman, The Folklore of Wales: Ghosts

[6] p.4 Driver, Iron Age Hillforts of Cardigan Bay

[7] p.29 Brunner in Ed Sweeney, Agriculture in the Middle Ages

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Tir: The Story of the Welsh Landscape (extract)

Hen Gymru fynyddig, paradwys y bardd,
Pob dyffryn, pob clogwyn, i’m golwg sydd hardd;
Trwy deimlad gwladgarol, mor swynol yw si
Ei nentydd, afonydd, i fi.

O land of the mountains, the bard’s paradise,
Whose precipice valleys are fair to my eyes,
Green murmuring forest, far echoing flood
Fire the fancy and quicken the blood

From ‘Hen Wlad fy nhadau’, national anthem of Wales

The golden sun of early autumn is warming our backs as we pick the apples in the old orchard of Cwmyrarian, a stone’s throw from the Tywi river in south-west Wales. My daughter munches a sweet one off the floor. These dozen or so straggly trees with their red-and-green bounty are all that’s left of orchards on this farm that go back at least 200 years and used to be much more extensive. Kites are circling overhead, and some of the cattle in the next field are bleating impatiently. We’re deep in the Welsh countryside here and so much about this semi-ruined place that was once a prosperous farm chimes with the complex history of the wider landscape in this country.

On the one hand, this beautiful country of Wales – Cymru – has a landscape as intimately known, cherished and stewarded as any in the Western world, with a unique, native culture that is umbilically connected to the land. Here, deep currents and stories place real value on community and all that is local, from ancient standing stones to farming tradition. This is the home of the National Trust’s first property, one of the birthplaces of the Romantic rediscovery of nature and now of the pioneering Future-generations act. In Wales, as I’m reminded every time the national anthem is sung in sporting fixture or Eisteddfod meet, we pride ourselves on the beauty of the ‘Land’ of our fathers. The land around Cwmyrarian is still farmed by a local family with deep roots here, and if I want to hear the tales that have been handed down about this place, the early nonconformists who secretly met near here and the old route across the river at low tide, there are still people in this community who can recount them.

Yet understanding the tale of the Welsh landscape is no easy task. Differing stories about the landscape run deep and, for centuries, have led to controversies of one sort or another. In many ways, the Wales of today is a blasted landscape: industrialized and polluted earlier than any other Western society. Wracked by bad management and corporate power, it is now one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world.[1] The Welsh landscape has also been despoiled in myriad ways by its governing authorities, resulting in everything from zombie conifer plantations to dead rivers and “sheepwrecked” hills. The beautiful stone farmhouse at Cwmyrarian now lies ruined, the people gone, while the orchard it once supported has not only been neglected but even the orcharding heritage it represents has almost been wiped from memory and the historical record; a symptom of a wider malaise.

Buarthau’r Gyrn sheepfolds, Carneddau

But this small landscape that covers only 8% of the UK’s land area is enormously diverse in composition and contains in microcosm almost all the different sorts of habitat and terrain that exist across the British Isles.[2] Astonishingly, with 1467 out of a total of 1727 species, Wales has representatives of almost all the plant species present across the island of Great Britain as a whole. Given how much further north Scotland extends, and how much nearer to the Continent much of England lies, the Welsh number is surprisingly high and betrays the range of geologies and microclimates that makes Wales Wales.[3]

Such biological diversity may also reveal something about Wales’ land-use history, reflected also in the at-first-glance surprising fact that Wales has more than 20 times as much ancient woodland as nearby Ireland, and may have as many as the whole of France.[4] But whatever may be said about this profusion of plants and land-use history, there is clearly also an important riddle to be solved related to what has happened to Wales’ landscape over the past century or so of Cwmyrarian’s decline. Despite the fact that there were fewer trees, smaller woodlands and a lot more industrial pollution in 1910 than now, overall levels of biodiversity as measured by bird and insect life were substantially higher.[5] Over a quarter of Wales’ land area is protected either as national park or area of outstanding natural beauty, and well over ten percent of the land is now designated as belonging to SSSIs – sites of special scientific interest.[6] All these have come into existence over the course of the last seventy years, but the decline in wildlife has only accelerated over this period. The countryside now contains substantially less nature and substantially fewer working people than it did a century ago. To everyone I have spoken to in the Welsh countryside, both these things feel like profound failures.

What has happened here? The broad contours of what has gone wrong may well feel familiar thanks to accelerating climate change and the slow death of the natural world, but as one of the first industrialized societies, understanding the specifics of what has happened to the Welsh landscape may well help bring out wider principles. In particular, getting under the skin of both the death of some parts of the Welsh landscape and the reasons why other parts have remained in comparatively good health seems like an important question to ask in the early 2020s.

Musing on this question, it seemed increasingly clear to me as well that there was an important aspect to it that had hardly been touched upon in English, namely the cultural attitude towards the land and landscape contained and expressed within Welsh culture. The second verse of the Welsh national anthem, reproduced above, may well at first glance reflect mid-Victorian romantic sensibilities, but scratch deeper at both this and the wider corpus of Welsh culture and you find an attitude towards the land that differs in notable ways from that of the dominant European cultures – whether English, French, German and others.[7] This attitude, I think, is an important part of the story of the Welsh landscape as it has developed, and I wanted an account of it to be a central part of the mix as I explored its human and ecological history.

Aspects of Traditional Life, Llyn 1960 (Geoff Charles Collection, NLW)

To that end I am going to draw in this book on a broad and perhaps at times eclectic range of disciplines. I have travelled the country, mined libraries, stood in fruit-laden orchards and wet peat bogs and invited myself to farmhouses, historians’ offices and conservation sites to do this. I have drawn on everything from ecological science to archaeology, myth and literature to explore the people and trees, the traditions and motivations that have shaped this homely and contested landscape. As a result, this book is about many things, including farming and conservation, literature and ecology, nature and culture. But perhaps above all it is about how Welsh attitudes to nature and place allow us to chart the tale of the Welsh landscape from the inside. There is, of course, no one essential ‘Welsh’ attitude to nature and the land that all inhabitants of the land share; but the distinct emphases we find in the record that has been deposited within Welsh culture for over a thousand years does contain a set of standpoints that may well have relevance for the future,[8] and that matters. 

I’ll argue that understanding the landscape without that nuanced cultural archive is next to impossible. Though I won’t do it full justice here by any means, language and culture contain the keys to any rounded understanding of the mechanisms by which this landscape has changed – for good and ill.[9] And to that end, I want to start our tale by taking you back in time some seven hundred years…

Over coming weeks I plan to start posting a series of articles and reflections explaining more of where the book is coming from, and giving some detail on areas there was no space in the book to cover. It’s available to preorder here, now. For details of launch events, sign up to emails below.

[1] https://www.wwf.org.uk/future-of-uk-nature accessed 27th May 2023. The ‘corporate power’ here refers not just to recent examples but also to early precursors of the modern corporation, that mined and poisoned the vale of Rheidol and Ystwyth, left gaping pits where previously had been mountains on Anglesey, and raped much of the lower Swansea valley, to give just a few early examples.

[2] The only notable exception to this are chalk downs, with their wonderful flora and threatened chalk streams – all entirely absent from Wales.

[3] And is a great deal higher than that of nearby Ireland at 1211 species; a country almost four times as large as Wales.

[4] See https://herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk/bol/ancientoaksofengland/Numbers for comparative figures for England and the rest of Europe; note the westerly distribution of such oaks in England and compare with ancient oak map produced by Woodland Trust in 2013, showing comparable densities of such oaks on the Welsh side of the border in Monmouthshire, Breconshire and Montgomeryshire; http://www.landscapearchitecture.org.uk/ancient-and-veteran-oaks-and-natural-capital/

[5] It is hard to know for sure, as hard data are scarce and assessments of this necessarily rely on proxies. But reports like one this from a team at the Natural History Museum https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/news/2020/september/uk-has-led-the-world-in-destroying-the-natural-environment.html estimate that half of biodiversity has been lost since the industrial revolution.

[6] https://community.rspb.org.uk/getinvolved/wales/b/wales-blog/posts/how-much-of-wales-is-really-protected-for-nature

[7] See for instance discussion of the traditions around the idea that ‘it is not too much to say that classical civilisation [and its later instantiations in European culture] has always defined itself against the primeval woods’. This and many other well-commented aspects of the set of attitudes towards the land inherited from Greek and Roman civilisation – the Arcadian idyll, the rural retreat from urbanity etc – although also influencing educated opinion in Welsh, nevertheless shape the overall discourse to a strikingly small degree. Much the same could be said of Irish. See discussion in Schama, Landscape and Memory.

[8] Or at a minimum, for the future of this particular landscape both insofar as it remains a home for people and insofar as the ways they use it has rebound effects on other people’s ability to provide for themselves.

[9] I am indebted to Seimon Brooks for his heuristic term, ‘yr archif Gymreig’ that has done so much to enlighten my work, both here and in my previous Welsh Food Stories.

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Why there are no Welsh restaurants

“It is graduation day in Carmarthen, and we are going to celebrate my daughter’s toil and tears over the last few years with a meal out. There are a couple of different options to choose from but we opt for the trad restaurant – it has a homely vibe with oak benches, woollen throws and a log fire in winter.

We also like the food here, and have a few family favourite dishes; the brine-and-oat flavoured Cocos a Wya with a side of wilted sea beet is always a treat, as is their take on Anglesey Eggs. Today I order a light starter of Cig Moch Caerfyrddin ar dafell amyd[1] while my wife goes for a whipod; we decide to get a bottle of dry 2020 Radnorshire diodgriafol for the table[2].

These moments are precious, and it’s strange to realize that with a sudden pang in my heart. I had underplayed my own graduation, and it’s only now that I get that I was withholding something valuable from my own parents in so doing. Ironic to suddenly grasp a platitude during an event destined for the family album. Such is life! My reveries are interrupted by the arrival of the glasses and tipple. It’s a close run thing for me between a good Monmouthshire perai and this; the old Welsh drink dichotomy between the fruit of the vales and the fruit of the hills. That takes me back to several walking holidays over the Epynt when I was younger, picking whinberries as we went. I am immensely proud that our daughter has opted for a career in horticulture; and still amazed that the little girl who was helping me with seedlings on what feels like yesterday managed to write that 20,000 word dissertation on the performance of Kazakh tomato varieties under different conditions in field cultivation in Wales.

Conversation swings around to the summer to come, and the building project she and her friends are getting up to – a building for the community tool library on the edge of the community park. My eog a winwns[3] goes down a treat, as do the Cig ar Wyneb Tato and Bwdram a Sgadan on the other plates. Dessert is a must today, and given the season and where we’re eating Sgons Enwyn with fresh strawberries from the restaurant garden and extra buttermilk over rounds things off.”

***

With a few, notable exceptions, there is nothing approaching a Welsh restaurant in Wales today; and again, with exceptions, there are very few Welsh dishes on menus. Locally-sourced ingredients aplenty (thankfully); but dishes that spring out from Welsh cooking…? I sketch some of the reasons as to why this lack came about in Welsh Food Stories but I wanted to outline briefly what eating out in a restaurant serving truly Welsh cuisine would be like, if such a thing existed in a parallel universe.[4] Real gastronomy involves judicious preparation of fresh ingredients at their best, presented as a complete dish. It is about an experience, that links producers to eaters in a moment of satiation and enjoyment and spans the full breadth of cultural life from husbandry to linguistic aplomb. All this could be done with locally produced food of the highest quality, accessible to allcomers in Wales using traditional Welsh dishes with their Cymraeg names. These dishes – ripe for exploration, interpretation and necessarily using the produce that grows best in this land – can sit nicely alongside the best of world cuisine. There is never a contradiction between Cocos a Wya and Paella, or between Teisen Lap and baklava.

That next to none of this Welsh cuisine is currently available to experience is a loss not only to our country, but the world. After all, there’s nowhere else we can go looking for this.

[1] Carmarthen Ham on a maslin slice – that is a traditional, dark sourdough slice made with a mix of barley, rye and wheat flour.

[2] A traditional alcoholic drink made from the fermented berries of the mountain ash.  See brief introduction to the drink on page 176 of Welsh Food Stories.

[3] See p.72 of Welsh Fare. It is of course served with creamy swede and potato Mwtrin (p.19). All dishes mentioned can be found in Tibbot or Freeman.

[4] At the risk of facetiousness, I direct the reader to Brittany to experience the nearest equivalent.

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Towards a history of food in Wales (II)

Last time I started sketching five of the key considerations that need taking into account should anyone come to write a food history of Wales. Here I want to outline six more; incidentally, my eleven considerations are not put forward as an exhaustive list (after all, food intersects in important ways with all sorts of other domains in life), but merely as a starting point:

  • A rounded food history of Wales would pay attention to ingredients and to dishes. This can be a thankless task due to the scattered nature of the evidence, and is of course all the more difficult the further back we go; but is nevertheless illuminating inasmuch as people’s experience of food tends to be framed around meals (of some sort) composed of dishes (of some sort). Here we necessarily touch again on social differentiation within food; sumptuous dishes prepared at Elizabethan or Georgian gentry houses compared to much more meager fare in labourers’ cottages. In either setting, and all in between, dishes illuminate lived experience; we know that there are multiple references to both cawl and potaes in Welsh before 1600, as well as to llymru (‘yng Nghymru llymru a llaeth’ – ‘in Wales [people eat] llymru and milk’; llymru being a fermented oat dish) and to pies and pastries containing both fish and bird-meat. Dishes, for the most part, are how we consume food and Wales historically is no exception. But these dishes are composed of ingredients, and the evidence for ingredients – whether in the form of regional staple grains, imports from abroad or local dairy production – is more widespread than for dishes. To get a full picture, we need to apply both lenses.
  • Food preparation is equally important, and throws further light on the question of dishes, ingredients and their use. For this we need to consider the kitchen space – or hearth as was the case in all but the richest dwellings. Cottage and farmhouse hearth layouts and implements have been well studied in Wales for the early modern period and there is some documentary and archaeological evidence to take us back further. Something as iconic as the humble Welsh cake can only really be understood within the context of widespread and long-lasting bakestone baking, which in turn calls for an understanding of fuel use within the household economy, in a country where coal, peat, wood and gorse all found their way onto cooking fires for centuries. Can we arrive at a nuanced understanding of womens’ strategies in opting for different fuels, that is nested within an entire way of life and goes further than mere economics?
  • As is implicit in the two points above, the historian of Welsh food needs to accept the need to rake through an enormous variety of evidence in order to paint our multi-layered picture. An interdisciplinary approach is essential, taking onboard insights from literature in at least three languages (Welsh, English and Latin), archaeology, travellers’ and geographers’ accounts, recipe books, tax returns, religious writing, folk songs, port books, personal diaries and letters, government reports, newspaper articles and much else.
  • Similarly, food needs to be located within the landscape; both the farmed, foraged and fished landscapes. Place-names from berllan to bryn haidd do this implicitly within the Welsh language, but an understanding needs to be brought to bear that the ruined lluest on a hilltop was indelibly associated with summer butter-making, or that the (now empty) chapel vestry was also the location of sociable eating. On a deeper level, geology and climate influence foodways; from the prevalence of cider-making to the drier east of the Cambrian watershed in Wales through to the mid 20th century to the popularity of diodgriafol in more mountainous districts due to the presence of mountain ash trees.
  • Food is also a seasonal and social phenomenon. From the wedding feast to harvest supper, food has punctuated the memorable occasions in Welsh life, and to squash people’s experience of food to their daily fare is to ignore the way food functions. If in the spring after a run of poor harvests there is little to be said in favour of food, so the carousing is justified when the pig is slaughtered in the autumn of a good year after a stroke of luck. Even within the testimonies collected by Tibbot and Freeman in the 70s, many foods are associated with particular times of year or occasions. This is of course no less true of a kebab after a Six Nations match in Cardiff in the late 90s than of mid-winter feast in 13th century Abergwyngregyn.
  • Sixthly and finally for this list, we need to foreground the social place of food and the cultural view(s) of food in sway during different periods. Were the poets of the nobility singing against the medieval Zeitgeist in praising fleshly feasting? Or is the ubiquity of this praise within a Welsh context – so different in timbre to the poetry of their northern French counterparts during the same period – a sign of a different cultural atmosphere? At another juncture, what influence did Welsh nonconformity have on attitudes towards food? Did personal piety and an emphasis on learning and improvement tend to downplay the place of food – or merely displace it? Above and beyond this, the social place of food preparation and consumption as being the domain of women and to some extent family life needs to receive full and detailed treatment (as I intimated in Welsh Food Stories) or our history will remain unforgivably myopic.

There is of course much more to be said; we can usefully divide Welsh history into periods when it comes to food, and the past decades of intense commodification and globalization probably deserve their own treatment. But I think I have been implying by means of these two pieces that food within Welsh history writing has generally been neglected, and where it is touched upon, historians have been perhaps a little too quick merely to assume peasant poverty and thereby monotony of fare. There can, and should be a little more texture to the narrative than that. In fact, I think that a food history of Wales, written along these outlines would give scope to usefully evaluate areas of universal relevance, or at least emergent themes that shed light on the trajectories of food within Western societies over the past few centuries.

Those trajectories include what are in my view some major wrong turnings and blind alleys. The question for Welsh food futures is whether intentionally or not we manage to address some of those.

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Towards a history of food in Wales

The history of Welsh food as such has not yet been written, as I started outlining in my last piece. I am now working on a new book (on which more another time) and in any case am not an academic historian; but I hope that the work of writing such a history is taken up by someone, not least because I think that much of relevance to the future of food will emerge from it if done with a suitably wide-angle lens.

This lens would avoid the pitfalls both of essentialism (‘Welsh food’) and of flattening Welsh experience to merely a regional subset of ‘British’ experience in food. It would instead place the full sweep of food history in this corner of Europe within a comparative perspective and draw on as diverse a range of sources as possible. So what would that lens encompass? Let me present eleven considerations that in my view are essential for any history of food in Wales:

  • Such a food history would need in the first place to take the history of food in England into account, in all its regional diversity (à la Thirsk), across social classes and across time. The literature here is copious, both in terms of original sources and in terms of modern scholarship. But without a firm grasp of the trends, dynamics and key questions, no history of food in Wales can be written. In terms of the history itself, there are two overarching reasons for this; firstly, that food influences have tended to come into Wales via England (whether we’re talking about 17th century gentry fashion, 18th century drovers or 19th century railways) and secondly, that only a detailed understanding of patterns in England can show us where different patterns prevailed in Wales – which allows us to get at the really interesting historical question of why. And incidentally, this is part of the reason why Welsh Food Stories is structured as it is – particular historic patterns in Wales of grain growing, cheese-making, shellfish and seaweed consumption etc. seem noteworthy to me, hence their inclusion in the book.
  • Beyond this – and for similar reasons – a work of food history focused on Wales needs to take into account European food history, and in particular that of neighbouring parts of north-western Europe. Areas with similar cultural history, climates and landforms – prime among them Ireland and Brittany – and areas with related patterns of land use, such as the Alps or northern Germany, bring out the texture in Welsh food history, and provide instructive areas of divergence. This matters particularly when it comes to the role of political economy or heavy industry in shaping food, as witnessed by the parallels and disjunctures between Wales and Brittany.
  • Just as importantly, interrogating the role played by colonialism in shaping Welsh food experiences, both directly and indirectly, is essential. Empire arguably brought Wales a significant measure of stability, certainly fueled heavy industry and allowed cheap imports of everything from tea and sugar to flour and apples into the country long before the 20th century had dawned. The Welsh ‘amser te’ that was exported to the 1860s Patagonian colony was thus a product of Empire just as much as it was a product of Welsh ‘peasant’ culture – and this is true not only of the tea and sugar but also of the flour and raisins in the bara brith. Or again: Empire made London; and London provided a booming employment market for Ceredigion dairywomen and -men, as it had a century earlier for Welsh women gardeners. There is much to be unpicked here.
  • Fourthly, such a food history needs to acknowledge and try to prize apart food as subsistence, food as commodity and everything in between. A nobleman’s Gwynedd table in the 13th century no less than that of a gentleman’s Pembrokeshire table in the early 20th is to a great extent the product of a household economy which only partly operates within a cash economy. But if there are aspects of wealthy households’ foodways that can be termed ‘subsistence’ then there are also aspects of peasant households’ food economies that link into commodified regional, national and international markets – from butter and eggs sold at a Carmarthenshire market town to store cattle on a smallholding in Ardudwy sold on to drovers. This approach in particular gives us the necessary space to evaluate the place of vegetables, fruits and foraged foods within the diet (as parts of the diet regarded historically in northern Europe as of marginal importance and holding both notably high and notably low cultural prestige) – neglected on the whole by pre-modern commentators, but not therefore absent by any means.
  • Fifthly, regional differences within Wales need investigating. Here we stumble into farming practices across landscapes and through time, which themselves are a subject of research and debate. But useful conclusions can be drawn on the basis of the available knowledge and eyewitness accounts in our possession from the 12th century through to the 20th. How similar was peasant and noble fare in Anglesey and Glamorgan to each other in the 13th century? Had the two regions diverged in this by the late 18th century? Why? Soil and climate, settlement pattern, Norman influence, the growth of different types of industry, of shipping and of roads and railways all have a part to play here.

Those are five of the key considerations for the kind of nuanced food history of Wales that needs writing. I will outline six more next week…

PS If you have read ‘Welsh Food Stories’ and enjoyed it, you’ll be doing me and my lovely publishers (brand-new Calon who exist to take Welsh stories to a global stage) a massive favour by leaving a review. Diolch!

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Why is there no history of Welsh food?

With Welsh Food Stories finally out I am planning to briefly address some of the bigger questions the book raises but wasn’t able to deal with head-on; questions around culture, food history, food futures and more (as time permits!). I also have an announcement to make over email fairly soon on what I am writing next – the link to my very occasional newsletter is below.

Today’s question is very simply this: why is there no history of Welsh food? One of the things that the book set out to do was to present several of the key strands in Welsh food history to a broad audience, and the thing that surprised me most as I started researching in 2018 was not only that no History of Welsh Food (or History of Food in Wales – more on this below) had ever been written but that no academic had ever included this even as one of their research interests. This is surprising when you consider that there are multiple histories of Irish food in print and works covering every imaginable aspect of English food history, often under the title ‘British’ but containing treatment of England only. One my hopes therefore for the book (as with Apples of Wales for a much more specific field) is that someone might pick up the strands and the broad narrative I have presented and do much more detailed work in the field, as it deserves. The fact remains; until the book came out, a presentation of Welsh food history was more or less unavailable to an English-language audience, and the situation in Welsh wasn’t much better.

Not that there is or was a scarcity of sources or material available within the field. As the general bibliography to the book shows, if you want the history of cheesemaking, cider, inshore fishery, baking and much else in Wales, there are volumes available in both languages. Traditional Welsh ‘peasant’ cooking received belated but heroic attention from Minwel Tibbot and Bobby Freeman in particular, who published between them the key recipe books in the field of Welsh food and rightly foregrounded the central place of women and women’s experience in this story. Tibbot in particular published academic pieces on several aspects of Welsh food during the early 20th century, not least in her wonderful volume on Domestic Life in Wales, now selling for £100 a copy. That and the introduction to Freeman’s First Catch your Peacock is the closest to a history of (modern) Welsh food available in English, and they sit alongside the sole volume in Welsh, Dysgl Bren a Dysgl Arian by Elwyn Hughes.

Though a valuable and scholarly collection of articles covering the topic from a helpful range of angles from foraging through early-modern alcoholic drinks to medieval calorific intake, this is also a disappointingly myopic view of Welsh food history. In short, the range of sources Hughes (a nutritionist at Cardiff University) draws on is admirable but his interpretation of the material leaves much lacking. I have written a brief rebuttal to the book’s main argument here, but in short it is a product of its time and consistently assumes that pre-modern actors on the whole had no agency, and what agency they had, they didn’t use. In this Hughes also departs from the tradition of portraying food found within the Welsh literary tradition, where a line of commentators from Gerald of Wales and the late medieval bards onwards to Dafydd Thomas in the 18th century and a growing chorus of bards, novelists and autobiographers in the 19th and 20th centuries are united in describing food in Wales, and the diversity of it, both regionally and between classes.

In other words, people have been commenting on Welsh food for a while, and the material is there for a wide-ranging study of this field. And yet this work has not been done, which is tantamount to saying that there have been no historians of Welsh food; which moves the question up a level but leaves us with the same quandary. Saying that there have been and are no historians of Welsh food (when in the last seventy years there have been numerous professional historians of every aspect of Welsh ecclesiastical, sporting, literary and political history) is itself, I think, tantamount to saying that no-one has considered this to be a sufficiently interesting field of study for them to work in it. If that is so, surely that tells us something significant about the place of Welsh food in the collective imagination (which I write about in the book’s post-script).

There are undoubtedly some practical obstacles; it is impossible to do any work on Welsh food history without a good grasp of the Welsh language. The sources needed to do the field justice are diverse in nature and scattered; from throwaway references in travellers’ accounts or poetry to newspaper articles, cookbooks, wills and housekeepers’ notes. But above and beyond this, I think that a certain romanticized and politicized flattening of Wales has much to do with this.

One way to unpack what I mean by that is by returning to the very salient distinction between ‘Welsh food’ and ‘the food of Wales’. By the former, we usually mean a perhaps essentialized (but nevertheless based in reality) group of foods prepared by people in Wales into the present day using methods handed down the generations. So cawl, welshcakes or laverbread. But by the latter we denote all the foods consumed in the country, whatever the provenance of the ingredients or the recipes; today it means oven pizza, curry, chicken nuggets and chips. Both of these are valid and helpful viewpoints to take when approaching Welsh food history (for a variety of reasons, environmental, social and scholarly I have deliberately chosen in the book to foreground the former) but until recently, it would I think have been hard to acknowledge this without suffering wanton accusations either of nationalism or of being anti-Welsh.

In other words, without a civic conception of Wales (and Welshness, very much including the language), it is difficult in an enlightenment-influenced cultural sphere to talk about ‘Welsh food’ without dragging in a romanticized conception of a tribal Welsh people living in hillside cottages, eating their time-honoured dishes and listening to harp music. And without a civic conception of Wales, talking about ‘the food of Wales’ becomes an exercise in foot-note making to the only relevant discussion, namely that of food in Britain (today or historically). Where food is involved – the woman’s domain, subject to changing fashions and fads and symbolic above all else of prosperity or poverty – all this is accentuated. And perhaps precisely because of the (exaggerated but again present) polarization within Wales between an anglicized gentry and Welsh-speaking peasantry, a history of Welsh food becomes (as in Hughes) a history of a downtrodden peasantry’s meager fare, while a history of food in Wales ignores anything Welsh about it.

All that amounts to the flattening of Wales, a complex place, in multiple directions depending to a great extent on one’s pre-existing political commitments. I don’t pretend that the history of Welsh foods I have presented in Welsh Food Stories entirely overcomes this; but it tries to do so, and tries at least to be honest about presuppositions and sources. Nevertheless, a full History of Food in Wales it is not – and in the next post, I’d like to sketch what such a history might look like…

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Pam ysgrifennu’r llyfr yn Saesneg?

Wrth geisio hyrwyddo ‘Welsh Food Stories’, sy’n cael ei gyhoeddi o’r diwedd yr wythnos hon, un sylw dwi wedi ei wneud sawl tro yn ddiweddar, gyda thinc ymddiheurol yn fy llais, yw fy mod wedi ceisio ysgrifennu llyfr Cymraeg yn Saesneg. Ydw i’n gallu amddiffyn honiad o’r fath? A oes angen ei amddiffyn? Sut beth fyddai llyfr Cymraeg yn Saesneg, tapini?

Dechreuwn gyda’r olaf o’r cwestiynau hynny. O dan y wyneb yn y syniad o lyfr Cymraeg yn yr iaith Saesneg yw’r syniad bod yna ryw nodwedd yn perthyn i lyfrau Cymraeg, at ei gilydd, sy’n eu cysylltu yn fwy felly na dim ond yr iaith yr ysgrifennir hwy ynddi. Dwi’n meddwl, ar ôl treulio blynyddoedd bellach yn ymgyfarwyddo gyda llenyddiaeth Gymraeg, Saesneg, Ffrangeg, Almaeneg a Lladin, ei bod yn anodd peidio â dod i’r casgliad hwnnw. Nid hanfodaeth mo hon, dim ond theori cyfieithu. Mae bob gair ym mhob iaith yn dod gydag ef llu o ystyron ac ymadroddion cysylltiedig, ac er bod y mwyafrif o’r rhain yn gorgyffwrdd rhwng ieithoedd y rhan fwyaf o’r amser, dyw’r gyfatebiaeth braidd byth yn un-i-un.

Meddylier am ymadrodd bwyd; caws a ‘cheese’ er enghraifft. Mae’r Gymraeg yn tynnu tref Caerffili i’r darlun wrth ei gwt, ac hefyd ‘caws bobi’ ac wrth gwrs caws llyffant, sydd yn beth gwahanol iawn. ‘Toad’ ddeuai â’r olaf i mewn yn Saesneg, a byddai gwenu i’r camera efallai ychydig yn agosach i’r meddwl yma nag yn achos y Gymraeg. Felly hefyd Double Gloucester, cheesecake, a bod yn ddig (‘cheesed off’, onide?). Go brin bod y gyfatebiaeth rhwng ieithoedd yn un-i-un, boed ni’n sôn am wenoliaid neu am winoedd.

Mae pob llyfr Cymraeg o reidrwydd yn dod â’r cyfystyron a’r cyfeiriadau Cymraeg hyn i mewn i’r naratif gyda nhw, a gwneud rhywbeth felly y byddai llyfr Cymraeg am fwyd; a pho ddwysa’r gyfeiriadaeth at hanes, diwylliant, daearyddiaeth a llên Cymru mewn llyfr am fwyd, po fwya y deuai’r cyfystyron hyn i mewn. Ail-greu hyn yn yr iaith fain gorau gellid y byddai llyfr Cymraeg yn Saesneg am fwyd, am wn i.

Oes angen amddiffyn yr ymgais i wneud hyn, os llwyddo a wnes? Ar un olwg oes, a hynny am y dylid bod wedi cyflwyno llyfr fel Welsh Food Stories, sy’n cyflwyno cyfoeth ac amrywiaeth bwydydd Cymru a’u hanes i’r cyhoedd mewn un lle am y tro cyntaf, yn y Gymraeg yn gyntaf. Os hoffai’r darllenydd ddarganfod hanesion bwydydd traddodiadol Cymru a hynny mewn un gyfrol, ni chaiff wneud yn Gymraeg. Mae trysorau di-ri yn Amser Te Tibbot; ond mae hwnnw’n fyr ar gyd-destun y bwydydd, ac allan o brint ers hanner canrif. Ceir trafodaeth hanesyddol yn Dysgl Bren a Dysgl Arian, ond er cyfoeth y ffynonellau yn y gyfrol academaidd honno, unllygeidiog yw ei golwg ar y maes. Fel dwi wedi esbonio i’r darllenydd mewn sawl ffordd trwy gydol Welsh Food Stories, Cymraeg yw priod iaith llawer iawn o’r hyn a drafodir; a dylid bod felly wedi trafod y pethau yn Gymraeg gan gyfrannu wrth wneud i ddisgwrs yr iaith am agwedd greiddiol o ddiwylliant y wlad.

Clawr y llyfr newydd

Ond yna, hwyrach nad oedd angen y gyfrol yn Gymraeg? Roedd hi’n deimlad gen i wrth roi pen ar bapur a chychwyn ar y gwaith yn 2018 bod llawer iawn o’r hyn roeddwn am ei holrhain eisoes yn adnabyddus o fewn y diwylliant Cymraeg. Bod lle canolog bwyd yn ein diwylliant yn hanesyddol yn amlwg i bobl lle mae te capel, ryseit Mamgu ar gyfer cawl a’r atgof o gwrw bach neu teisen lap yn dal i fod yno ar lawr gwlad. Bod y syniad o amrywiaeth o fewn ein bwyd môr, o’r ansawdd y gall ein tir gynhyrchu a’r awydd i ddathlu hynny fel peth naturiol ‘Cymreig’ am ei fod yn deillio o Gymru, yno yn naturiol o fewn diwylliant y Gymraeg mewn ffordd nad ydy ymhlith y Cymry di-Gymraeg, heb son am ein cymdogion boed yn Iwerddon, Ffrainc neu Loegr.

Dwi’n meddwl bellach fy mod ond yn hanner cywir ynghylch hyn; bod yr hyn a dybiais am y Cymry Cymraeg yn wir yn bennaf am y cenedlaethau hŷn yn eu plith, a bod bwydydd Cymru at ei gilydd yn fwy a mwy estron po ieuengaf y gynulleidfa. Ond er mwyn rhannu’r stori gyda nhw, efalllai mai ysgrifennu llyfr Saesneg am y peth fyddai’r cam cynta gorau i’w gymryd ta beth; mai yn sgil hynny y gellid dadlau i’r to sy’n codi, bod angen llyfr newydd am fwydydd cynhenid Cymry, ac mai ni sy wrthi’n ysgrifennu’r deunydd ar lwyfan hanes.

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Of this corner of Europe…

This is a short extract from the new book;

….Part of this is the fact that this culinary tradition is also very much of this corner of Europe. By that I mean that, as would be true of any cuisine or food culture, none of the foodstuffs mentioned in this book are uniquely Welsh but belong to a particular strand of the world’s culinary heritage that we can call European. Leavened bread is, famously, found in great variety across the continent, from the rye breads of Poland to the papos secos of Portugal. Cheese of all sorts is a speciality of European countries from Spain to Switzerland and the Netherlands. Salty butter is just as much part of the Breton food story as the Welsh one.

How can we understand this? It is true, for instance, that the ingredient list and smorgasbord of common dishes in this food tradition have much in common in particular with the fare of other mountainous regions of Europe but, then, we find a bounty of seafood that brings an entirely different twist to the menu. To have a penchant for cooked cheese, pairs Welsh fare with the peasant traditions of the Alps, as does a tradition of air-dried ham. Lamb is also a feature of mountainous diets (as are goat and mutton), uniting Wales with Norway and the Pyrenees. But oysters and cockles take us to the French and Iberian Atlantic coasts. Laver has a tradition behind it on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland. Cider on the other hand requires sheltered lowland with ample but not excessive rainfall, so uniting eastern Wales with parts of England, Normandy and western regions of Germany. And then a range of traditional grains, but with an emphasis on oats, brings us back to the windward Celtic landscapes of the British Isles.

Further reflection confirms the unsurprising observation that the family resemblance is closest to the cuisines of two countries in particular. These are neighbouring England and Ireland, the latter lying just within sight over the westward sea and sharing a related language and thousands of years of trade and petty warfare, the former just over Offa’s Dyke and bound to Wales by centuries of political union and economic ties. But strikingly, even in comparison with both these near neighbours, we find notable divergences in food and farming practices and in what we can only call culinary preference. Compared with Ireland, the continental influences – which brought the cider tradition, for instance – had a much more marked effect on Welsh eating habits. Wales was also always richer than her western neighbour, partly as a result of the early cessation of warfare due to the early and brutal conquest by England and the wealthy markets that eventually opened up to the Welsh in England’s large cities, and partly as a consequence of the industrialization that meant Wales’ population actually grew during a period when both Ireland and Scotland were losing the bulk of their population through emigration. This general economic stability led to greater variety in many people’s diet and to the adoption of new foods, particularly among wealthier lowland farmers and the aristocracy. So we find references to imports of figs, prunes and raisins into Welsh ports as early as the later Middle Ages, and by the 16th century recipe books and letters imply that imported spices, for instance, were just as familiar in well-off Welsh kitchens as they were in provincial England.[1]

Renaissance Glamorgan countryside

In comparison with England, however, we still find stark differences in the baseline diet, reflecting different customs and preferences, many of which have much in common with historic Irish fare – the predominance of oats, the love of dairy and the general lack of beef all notable in this regard. Indeed, many of the best records we have of Welsh food historically came about through the phenomenon of English tourists visiting Wales in the search of the exotic and the romantic on their very doorstep, and commenting on the strange customs they found in the country. Yet despite all these numerous interesting and informative commonalities, Welsh food taken as a whole differs in noteworthy ways, as we have seen, from the cuisines of both nearest neighbours.

What can we say, then, other than that we have on our hands a western European cuisine, very much of the British Isles, that draws on a common range of ingredients and preparation methods, but does so in its own unique way? It is clear that the particular combination of foodstuffs and emphases in traditional Welsh food is one that simply doesn’t occur elsewhere. Personally, I find it delicious.

This distinct culinary tradition deserves, in my humble but considered opinion, the moniker of a ‘cuisine’. The core palette of ingredients is surprisingly broad for such a small area, not much larger in surface than the Belgian Walloon region. It is a mostly peasant tradition that has made use of the produce of the seas and rivers, shallow tidal waters, fertile valley soils and rocky hills that form this country. We find animal products, grains, vegetables and top fruit all making substantial contributions to the list. In other words, there is enough breadth here to allow for further development and new departures.

Welsh Food Stories comes out with Calon in May, and can be pre-ordered now.

[1] https://carwyngraves.com/sbeis/

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Welsh food; childhood memories

The idea of Welsh food culture may seem like a misnomer to some. But there are a number of ways of preparing, sharing and eating food that have been common to Wales up to the present day. These are now the childhood memories of the older generation in Wales. They all remain living traditions, even if some currently seem to be on their last legs:

  • Buttermilk dishes

Dymunol, da yw ymenyn,—a chaws,

A chig- purlon enllyn;

Goreu o ddim geir i ddyn,

Lwyth haner o laeth enwyn.

(Cadwgan Fardd, Medi 1885 Y Drych)

‘Butter and cheese are pleasant and good

And meat a hearty food

But best of all for humankind

Half a weight of buttermilk’

This little englyn, published in a mass market Welsh magazine in the 1880s captures several key things; the preponderance of dairy in Welsh cooking, the poetic form used to praise everyday local food, and the love of buttermilk (llaeth enwyn). Poured over new potatoes, put into cakes (when eggs weren’t available), used in puddings and porridges and drunk with a touch of ginger, this byproduct of churning was ubiquitous. It was also – correctly – viewed as having beneficial health effects due to its fermented nature.

  • Home baking on the griddle

Griddles (gradell) or bakestones (maen/llechfaen) are versatile implements that have been used in Wales for baking in some form since before records began. But they are far from only being useful to make Welsh cakes – a whole range of bakestone cakes, turnovers, pancakes and other baked goods owe their existence to the presence of griddles in Welsh kitchens. And the most important of the bakestone cakes are not in fact sweet at all – oatcakes (bara ceirch).

  • Sioni Winwns

These Breton onion sellers have been a part of the Welsh food landscape since the early 1820s, with their sweet pink onions a favourite with discerning cooks. Many returned year after year, and though they went to other parts of the British Isles, a disproportionately large number came to Wales. Memories that some seemed to speak Welsh were indeed correct, with the similarities between Welsh and Breton allowing some who might spend 6 months of the year in Llanelli or Porthmadog to pick up the language with ease. The tradition continues, down to the use of bikes to advertise the plaited onions, though the sellers tend now to be Breton language students looking to improve their English, rather than Welsh.

  • Cockles and other shellfish

Vans would drive around the towns and cities of South Wales selling cockles and other fresh seafood caught along the coast until the early 2000s. Seafood cocktails can still be had as a protein-rich snack from Cardiff market among others. Always a working class food – as was laver bread – the taste for these seafoods has diminished over the past few decades, and the lion’s share of the cockle harvest is now exported to Spain and other countries, where they are enjoyed as a delicacy.

  • “Te capel”

“Yr oedd y capel wedi ei addarno yn brydferth; a gallesid meddwl wrth fyned i mewn iddo mai i ardd fiodeu yr oedd- yell yn myned. Cafwyd gwledd-de gysurus; ac ym- ddangosai pawb yn llawen a boddlawn.” Baner ac Amserau Cymru, Mehefin 1866; Capel Newydd, Machynlleth

‘The chapel had been beautifully decorated, and you might think as you entered into it that you had come into a flower garden. A comfortable feast-tea was hard, and everyone was merry and content’ (June 1866, Machynlleth)

The tradition of holding a chapel tea-time, with tea and cakes in a vestry or hall after a service, Cymanfa Ganu or other occasion, is one that united people from all parts of Welsh society for a hundred and fifty years. They are social occasions above all, with no alcohol ever served, but a steady contented hum of chatter and the enjoyment of tea and baked goods. Chapel teas, with bone china holding bara brith, are still held in all parts of the country, but now frequented generally only by aging congregations.

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The forgotten story of Welsh market gardening

This series of posts is exploring Welsh food culture, as it developed from the time of the earliest written records through to the 20th century. Much has changed in the last 50 years, so that only vestiges now remain of ways of growing, preparing and sharing food that had previously united much of the country in shared dishes and culinary cultures. The last post explored the tale of Sioni Winwns, onion growers from north-western Brittany who came to sell their sweet onions to Welsh housewives from the 1820s. This set me thinking of vegetable growing in Wales at the time….

The most iconic of Welsh dishes, cawl, depends above all on vegetables. Leek, swede, carrot and potatoes may be unromantic (by dint of sheer familiarity: they are exotic enough viewed through Filipino or Yemeni eyes), but they also have long tradition behind them in Wales. Cultivating gardens, growing and using veg are a neglected part of Welsh food culture that deserve much more attention than they have traditionally received. Victorian Welsh society, to pick up the thread of Sioni Winwns’ early visits to Wales, was known for industry and for its distinct nonconformist chapel culture. Wales was a core part of the British Empire, and from the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 onwards, cheap imports of food flooded into the country, altering and perhaps distorting the market for native-grown produce. Nevertheless, Wales had a long-established tradition of vegetable cultivation, both for culinary and medicinal use, which from the 18th century until after the Second World War allowed a small native industry of market gardeners and nurseries to flourish (see list here of Welsh market gardens and nurseries)

Market gardening in England only started to become an established branch of agriculture from the 1650s, after a period of steady growth in vegetable consumption over the previous century, and the realization that in years of poor harvests a plentiful supply of vegetables could mean the difference between survival and starvation.[1]  Records are too scanty to ascertain when the first market gardens appeared in Wales during this period. The earliest market garden in Wales that I can find mention of is Early’s Garden in Cowbridge, in a passing reference in 1738. But the culture of vegetable growing was already long-established in Wales by the time of the broader horticultural renaissance of the late 17th century.

The roots of growing vegetables in small plots for consumption in the home or on the estate almost certainly lie before our earliest written records, as both archaeological and linguistic evidence and Roman-era documents suggest. By the time of the laws of Hywel Dda, which remained in force in the country until the Acts of Union with England in 1536, vegetable cultivation in Wales was widespread enough to necessitate specific regulation. These include provisions for farmers to fence fields and gardens, and leeks – along with cabbages – are one of the few crops singled out for mention by name. Linguistic evidence in Middle Welsh supports this picture, with the now archaic word ‘lluarth’ – meaning vegetable garden – appearing frequently in medieval texts, along with ‘gardd fresych’ for cabbage garden. Alongside this cultivation of vegetables for the kitchen, there was clearly a strong native tradition of plant cultivation for various uses encapsulated in the records of the physicians of Myddfai who first appeared in the 13th century and whose tradition continued in various forms for some four hundred years. The notable feature of their writing, as opposed to other medieval collections of herbal lore, is their focus on native species of plant rather than only those known to classical writers in the Mediterranean basin. All of this suggests a culture that was familiar with plant cultivation and the different uses that could be made of garden plants – a picture I paint further in the opening chapter of Apples of Wales.

Consequently, although direct evidence for the establishment of market gardens in Wales during the 16th and 17th centuries is slim, there clearly existed a body of knowledge within Welsh culture for plant cultivation that was already widespread. Linguistic evidence also supports the view that market gardening as an occupation grew in Wales at around the same time as it did in southern England, with the terms ‘gardd fagu’ (plant nursery) and ‘gardd lysiau’ both making numerous appearances during this period for the first time.

By the late eighteenth century we are on much firmer ground. Walter Davies (Gwallter Mechain) mentions several nurseries and market garden enterprises in his reports into agriculture in South Wales published in the 1810s, and he makes no suggestion that most of these were newcomers on the scene. According to his report, the most important centre of market gardening in the Cardiff area, for instance, had become Llandaff:

‘The kitchen-gardens of the market-men at Llandaff, near Cardiff, are numerous and productive ; supplying the most convenient parts of South Wales, and in a certain proportion the Bristol market, with vegetables : such a group of gardens for the accommodation of the public, we have not noticed elsewhere within the district. To enumerate the several articles of the first-rate gardens, would be to write in part a botanical dictionary : the crops of a farmer’s- garden consist of the vegetables most appropriate to his table, viz. early potatoes, yellow turnips, early and winter cabbages, greens, varieties of pease and beans, carrots, onions, and other alliaceous plants, and varieties of salads; to which some add brocoli, cauliflowers, asparagus, seakale, rhubarb.’

The range of vegetables listed here is by Davies’ own admission only a part of what was known and grown. The presence of asparagus and salads on his list may go some way to dispelling some tired notions of historic Welsh fare. More telling still in this context are his remarks that ‘such a group of gardens’ are not seen elsewhere in the district, implying that although the Llandaff market gardens were exceptional in their extensiveness, that nevertheless single market gardens existed in other parts of South Wales, not to mention private garden and orchard plots. In the Teifi valley Felindre nursery was described as the ‘largest in the district’, operating on 18 acres. Over the fence, a competitor worked an 8 acre nursery. Nurseries and market gardens are not identical categories, but there is reason to believe that many businesses had a hand in both.

Welsh tithe map. Data exists for the use of almost every plot of land on these maps in the 1830s or 1840s, providing an invaluable resource for our picture of farming and food at the time.

The 1836-1850 Welsh tithe maps confirm the general picture, with small plots of land labelled ‘garden’ around various Welsh towns, including Aberystwyth, Carmarthen and Cardiff. Some of the plots so labelled are located some distance away from the nearest house or cottage, implying by this point a small amount of vegetable production on a field scale. These maps deserve further study, but provide strong evidence for the spread of the burgeoning Welsh horticultural industry during the early decades of the 19th century, confirmed by a 1877 government report on land use across the UK. Here the acreage of Welsh market gardens was put at cc. 446 acres with another 367 acres of nursery grounds – compared to some 12,000 acres in England.[2]  Market gardens are defined in this report as “land used by the gardeners for growth of vegetables and other garden produce, and as market gardeners are generally alive to the possibility of obtaining quick returns, and securing the most rapid succession of crops in, on, and above ground, the land so classed supports a considerable sprinkling of trees, and repays its cultivators by the variety of its fruit, root, and surface crops.”

In other words, a full range of garden crops were grown in these gardens, including leaves and fruit. The report goes on to note that Wales “has little over 3000 acres in orchards and market gardens put together; or considerably less than may be found in the large county of York” – which was at the time a few thousand square kilometres smaller in area than Wales. Of all the Welsh counties, however, only Anglesey is singled out for having no orchards[3] and Radnor alone as having no market gardens.[4] (Interestingly, Wales had significantly more acreage of land under orchard – 2619 – than Scotland, while Scottish market gardens come to 2939 acres, dwarfing Wales’ coverage).

There were therefore market gardens in almost all the counties of Wales by this point, though detailed information on where precisely these were found and what they grew is sadly lacking. After Walter Davies’ report mentioned above I know of no other account that mentions the crops grown in Welsh market gardens, or even the specific location of most of these growing sites. Partly this is to do with the well-noted fact that the railways enabled the industrial towns and cities of south-eastern Wales to be supplied by the Evesham horticulture industry, which was first established in the 17th century and benefited from economies of scale and a good climate for horticulture.[5] Welsh market gardens and nurseries continued to play an important part, however, in supplying some of the population’s dietary needs through the latter decades of the 19th century and well into the 20th century, becoming a familiar part of the landscape or townscape in many areas. As The Welsh Gazette notes on Jan 4th 1900: ‘market gardening is an old industry in and around Aberystwyth, and I don’t assume to teach old growers, who have learnt by experience the best methods and the best things to grow for profit. There appears to be a steadily growing demand for all kinds of garden produce, and the prospects for market gardeners in the district are good…’

Here we arrive back at the nub of the matter, insofar as this series of posts is concerned: in 1900 as in Hywel Dda’s time, Wales was home to a widespread, if slightly underdeveloped, culture of vegetable growing. Market gardening requires skill and practice, and is best learnt by imitation. It also requires a market, and at least between the late 18th century (though possibly earlier) and the early 20th century, there was a ready market for its produce across Wales. This, in short, is an important aspect of Welsh food culture as it adapted to early modernity. The extent of its neglect is shown in the fact that, to my knowledge, this short piece is the only study ever published in any language on the topic. I would be delighted to be corrected….

[1] Thirsk, Food in Early Modern England, pp. 59, 102

[2] Important to note here that England covers an area six times larger than Wales geographically – 21,000 km2 vs 130,000km2. If the same proportion of Welsh land were under market gardens as in England at the time this would have amounted to 2000 acres.

[3] Unlikely as orchards were known to exist at this point at Plas Newydd house and other estates – but the total acreage must therefore have been minimal)

[4] https://archive.org/stream/gardenillustrate1378lond/gardenillustrate1378lond_djvu.txt

[5] However, the old conker that vegetable growing didn’t fully take off in Wales because the climate and soils are simply unsuitable is misleading. The Vale of Glamorgan, Monmouthshire and most of South Pembrokeshire have very suitable climates for horticulture and rich soils, as do significant parts of the lowland NE, and the comparative lack of development has more to do with human factors than biophysical restraints.

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Ceirch/ Welsh Oats

This series of posts will explore Welsh food culture, as it developed from the time of the earliest written records through to the 20th century. Much has changed in the last 50 years, so that only vestiges now remain of ways of growing, preparing and sharing food that had previously united much of the country in a shared dishes and culinary cultures. But though the past may be a foreign country, it contains much that is of interest, and perhaps of value…

Early spring – March – in Wales is accompanied by a slow, gentle uptick in temperature and noticeably stronger daylight. By mid-month, one of the most important days in the annual calendar had arrived: Ffair Garon on the 15th, and the right time to sow oats. With the field ploughed and ready, the oats were broadcast, and slowly grew through the lengthening days for a crucial harvest as summer turned to autumn. Because oats can lay claim to being the most important of all Welsh crops – and ingredients – until the second half of the 20th century. Around the oat an entire culture grew.

Modern rolled oats – not the same as the oatmeal traditionally used

Oats are enjoying a bit of a renaissance today. The health benefits of oats are being widely lauded, with this once staid and old-fashioned peasant foodstuff now the core ingredient in bircher mueslis, cinnamon porridges and the multi-million dollar oat milk industry. In one sense, the newfound popularity of oats would have been no surprise to generations of Welsh, Scots, Irish and others living on the Atlantic fringes of north-western Europe. Oats are a versatile grain, and in the same way that entire food cultures grew up around rice, maize or wheat (think rice wine and paddies, tortillas and polenta, pies and pasta), oats as a staple can provide the basis for much more than simply breakfast porridge.

Oats (ceirch) were ubiquitous in Welsh food from the earliest records until the 20th century. It’s hard to convey just how much in the way of oat-based foods was consumed, particularly by people living in the western, windward side of the country. Oats found their way into bread, cakes, milk dishes (similar to porridge), broths, drinks and even sandwiches. Unsurprisingly there developed an array of traditions around preparing, storing and using oats with particular implements and a specific vocabulary associated with them.

Oatcakes

Oatcakes (bara ceirch) – round flat cakes made on bakestones – were one of the workhorses of the diet, depended on as a staple food in much of the country, from the hills of Glamorgan up to Snowdonia. They were used neat as an accompaniment to veg in a hot dinner, as a replacement to slices of bread and even as the filling for sandwiches in parts of North Wales.

The thing about oatcakes is the skill required in making them. Because oats don’t contain gluten, a mixture of oatmeal and water won’t form a workable dough in anything like the same way wheat or rye will. There were different traditions of making oatcakes, with variations around adding extra fat to the mixture (dripping or lard) or not and how to roll out the cakes. Suffice to say, the versions without the extra fat take considerable skill, and are crumblier even when well made. But in essence in both versions, water and oatmeal are mixed together to form a stiff dough, which is kneaded. This is turned out onto a surface sprinkled with dry oatmeal, and made it into cone shapes. These are then flattened – either with a rolling pin or with the palm of the hand – until you have a large, thin oatcakes ten inches in diameter. This is baked on a moderately hot bakestone until it turns golden, and then hardened further in a warm place.[1]

An 1814 image of making oatcakes

With a good store of these, the larder was full for the week and the staple ingredient for numerous dishes was ready. One of the most intriguing of these is an example of a traditional Welsh streetfood, Cocos a Wya. Here eggs and cockles were fried together with a pinch of salt and pepper. Some people added cuts of bacon too. This mixture was then served hot between slices of oatbread. In some coastal areas of northern Wales these were available to buy on the street or at the markets along the coast. A rhyming ditty hailed the availability of this snack:

Cocos a Wya, Bara Ceirch tena,

Merched y Penrhyn yn ysgwyd eu tina!

[‘Cockles and eggs, thin oatbread sliced

The Penrhyn girls’ butts looking nice’]

Note the reference to the oatcakes being thin – that was a mark of a good oatcake in this now-vanished food culture, and was a sure sign of the baker’s skills. There were other oatcake dishes too: picws mali, brwes, siot, and for these the oatcakes are crushed and then combined with buttermilk or beef broth to create further possibilities.

Many of these traditions of making and using oatcakes, along with numerous other oat dishes (which may form the basis for a future piece) survived into the 1980s and 1990s, before dying out with the last generation of women who had been raised in this culture.

Oat implements

The differences that arose even for a procedure as basic as making oatcakes have already been mentioned, and they are symptomatic of the omnipresence of oats in most Welsh kitchens for thousands of years. Around this a range of specific implements were developed, with their own particular purposes and uses. Staying with the oatcake theme, one of these is a drying or storage rack for oatcakes, not dissimilar to a toast rack, called car bara ceirch or diogyn. These were handcrafted, made of wood and a distinctive feature of many Welsh kitchen spaces. See the image here from 1964 for a lovely example. When placed or hung in the hearth at a suitable distance from the fire, they were useful as a location to put oatcakes fresh from the griddle that still needed drying and hardening – away too from curious childrens’ fingers!

Another implement, which goes by various names, was the crafell or rhawlech, a sort of spatula or turner used on the bakestone. These had particularly long, thin blades used for turning the oatcakes as they cooked and varied in size and design from craftsman to craftsman. They were also used for turning the numerous other baked goods prepared on griddles in Welsh kitchens until the middle of the 20th century – breads, welsh cakes, pikelets and more.

The quantity of oats consumed in the course of a year, particularly in more mountainous regions where other grains yielded poorly, called for a proper way to store them. Enter the Cist styffyliog or Oatmeal chest (and see here). In a touch of vernacular space-saving genius, the lids of these store chests were often removable, and could be used as hand barrows. These hand-made pieces of furniture, centuries old, now command several hundred pounds at auction, which is only right considering the care and effort that went into them.

But perhaps the most evocative of these oat-food implements goes by the names wtffon, myndl or pren llymru. Like a slender wooden spoon, with only a narrow bulge at the head, this was used not only to stir llymru ­– a thin, oatmeal dish borrowed in English as flummery – but also to test its consistency. When the mixture forms a thin ribbon or tail and runs smoothly back into the pan from the stick, as the stick is held the right distance above the saucepan, the llymru was ready. Poor llymru in a household had consequences; word would get around and farmhands would stay away.

‘Ceirch du’

The Welsh oat traditions, like so many other Welsh food traditions, have come close to total extinction. But the links with the past have been maintained by a few thin threads; enough to form for the basis, perhaps, for a future revival. For one thing, as mentioned, many of these dishes and preparation methods were still practiced within living memory, and a great many people in Wales today will not only have strong recollections of eating these oat dishes, but also of how to make them. And beyond this, a small number of farmers kept the tradition alive, growing oats on their farms throughout the 20th century, in the teeth of government guidance and industry recommendations.

Field of ripe oats

One such farmer has kept the tradition of growing the local black oats going on his farm into the 2010s. In addition, far-sighted plant scientists at Aberystwyth University ensured that a significant number of Welsh oat varieties were kept in a seed bank there, awaiting rediscovery. The full story is told in this touching film, and this article. These local oat varieties, in all their genetic diversity, were selected and grown over the full range of Welsh soils and climatic conditions, and produced a staple crop in sometimes difficult growing conditions. With subtle but perceptible differences in flavour, use and growth habit, these Welsh oat varieties could form the basis for a rediscovery of oats in the Welsh diet. There always was more to this grain than just porridge (uwd).

[1] NB This takes practice and patience to get right, and the extra fat from using lard, dripping or butter makes the job easier on an initial attempt. See Tibbot, Welsh Fare, for detailed descriptions and images of various traditional methods, of which there are a selection here.

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Bwydydd amgen Cymru

Ces i’r pleser o annerch cynhadledd Gwir Fwyd a Ffermio Cymru ym mis Tachwedd, a rhoi cyflwyniad cryno yno ar werth hanes bwyd Cymru wrth i ni ystyried posibiliadau ar gyfer bwyd ac amaeth Cymru i’r dyfodol. Penderfynais roi teitl ychydig yn smala i’r anerchiad: ‘Dim ond cennin a chig oen? Gwerth hanes bwyd Cymru i’r dyfodol’, neu yn Saesneg ‘Just leeks and lamb? Why Welsh food history matters for our future.’[1] Ond os yw hanes bwyd Cymru yn cynnwys mwy na chennin a chig oen a’r bwydydd eraill y byddwn ni’n meddwl amdanynt fel bwydydd traddodiadol Cymreig, ac efallai rhai bwydydd annisgwyl, beth yw’r bwydydd hynny?

Dyma gyflwyno felly rhai o’r cynhwysion a seigiau hynny ag iddynt hanes yng Nghymru – neu mewn rhyw ran o Gymru – ond sy’n bur anghofiedig erbyn heddiw. Byddai nifer ohonynt yn cael eu gweld gan lawer ohonom bellach fel bwydydd tramor, anghyfarwydd. Nid bwydydd cyffredin, bob dydd oedd y rhain i gyd, ond nid eithriadau dibwys chwaith:

Caws dafad

Hwn, a chaws geifr, oedd y caws arferol ym mharthau mynyddig Cymru o’r oesoedd cynharaf hyd y 19eg ganrif. Mae Thomas Pennant yn rhoi i ni ddisgrifiad cofiadwy o’r arfer o wneud y cawsiau hyn yn yr hafotai:

‘This mountainous tract scarcely yields any corn. Its produce is cattle and sheep, which, during summer, keep very high in the mountains, followed by their owners, with their families, who reside in that season in Hafodtai or summer dairy houses as the farmers do in the Swiss Alps do in their ‘sennes’….During summer, the men pass their time either in harvest work or in tending their hers; the women in milking or making butter and cheese. For their own uses, they milk both ewes and goats, and make cheese of the milk for their own consumption.’

Roedd yr arfer hefyd yn bodoli mewn rhannau o Forgannwg – y mynydd-dir yn bennaf, mae’n debyg:

“A kind of cheese is made in some parts of the country of all sheeps milk, or a mixture of sheep and cows’ milk, exceedingly rich and highly flavoured.; and when of a proper age, little if at all inferior to the boasted Parmesan.” (John Evans, 1804)

Un o’r pethau mwyaf diddorol am yr arfer hwn o fwyta caws gafr neu gaws dafad yng Nghymru yw’r cysylltiad rhyngddo a’r hoffter hanesyddol o gaws pobi: mae cawsiau gafr neu ddafad yn gallu bod yn addas iawn i’w pobi (meddyliwch am halloumi). Roedd y Cymry mor hoff o’u caws pobi nes i hynny fynd yn ystrydeb cyffredin iawn am y Cymry. Pam felly bu farw’r arfer? Mewn gair, ffasiwn. Ond mwy ar hyn yn Welsh Food Stories pan ddaw o’r wasg….

Wystrys

Bwyd rhad i’r tlodion ac un cyffredin mewn sawl parth arfordirol am ganrifoedd. Mor gynnar ag 1603 roedd y rhain cael eu hallforio o aber y Cleddau yn Sir Benfro – i lefydd amrywiol gan gynnwys i Fryste, Caerwrangon a threfi gorllewin Lloegr. Caent eu gwerthu yn nhrefi marchnad Cymru hefyd: mae disgrifiad o farchnad Caerfyrddin ym 1652 gan ŵr o’r enw John Taylor yn nodi bod modd prynu cant o wystrys am geiniog, sef pris 12 wy neu chwe gellygen. Yn ôl gwr arall ganrif yn ddiweddarach, roedd rhai o wystrys Dinbych-y-Pysgod yn cyrraedd rhyw 7 fodfedd ar eu traws – credai eu bod felly gyda’r mwyaf yn y byd. Noda teithiwr i Gymru yn 1807 bod Dinbych-y-Pysgod yn  llawn o ‘Mountains of shells, the aggregate of many a century, occur in several parts of the town, forming a nuisance that would amply pay for removing’ Roedd bae Abertawe a’r Fenai hefyd yn fannau hel wystrys gyda physgodfeydd sylweddol yn eu dydd (o hyn daw enw’r pentref ‘Oystermouth’ ger y Mwmbwls) yn rhoi bywoliaeth am ran o’r flwyddyn i hyd at 500 o ddynion.

Roedd arfer ar draws Cymru o’u bwyta’n ffres ond roedd hefyd traddodiad o’u piclo i’w cadw a’u gwerthu – mae Lewis Morris (un o Forrisiaid enwog Môn) yn nodi bod wystrys Penmon ‘yn fawr a thew, ac yn enwog i’w piclo’. A’u blas? Doedd dim amheuaeth ym meddwl George Owen:

“Were it not that the Walfleete and Gravesend oysters are better frinded in court then this poore country oyster of Milford is, no question but he would, and well mighte, challenge to have the cheefe prayse before them both: and I presume if the poet Horace had tasted of this Milford oyster, he would not have preferred the oyster of Circæi before this”

Bara rhyg

Tueddu i feddwl am fara rhyg fel rhywbeth yn perthyn i ddiwylliannau dwyrain Ewrop y byddwn ni erbyn heddiw. Ond yn ei ddydd, ystyrid bara rhyg fel cynnyrch cyfarwydd, Cymreig. Mewn rhai ardaloedd, yn enwedig y parthau mewndirol, mynyddig â phridd sâl lle’r oedd tyfu gwenith yn wastraff amser, ar ryg a cheirch y byddai’r mwyafrif yn bodoli am eu cynhaliaeth. Roedd hyn hefyd yn wir mewn rhannau o Loegr, ond goroesodd yr arfer lawer hirach yng Nghymru – efallai yn rhannol oherwydd brogarwch nodedig y bobl. Mae tystiolaeth am y brogarwch hwn mewn cerddi hyd yn oed:

“Bara rhyg yw’r ymborth amla

Ymenyn caws sy’n aml ynddi”

Disgrifiad yw hwn o nodweddion traddodiadol Sir Faesyfed (yr oeraf a’r uchaf ond odid o siroedd Cymru) mewn cerdd gan David Thomas, 13 Sir Cymru (1750). Mae hefyd yn son am ‘rygau dibrin’ Sir Aberteifi ac yn nodi bod rhyg hefyd yn gysylltiedig â Sir Drefaldwyn. Fel mae’r gerdd yn nodi, bwyta bara rhyg fel y byddem yn ei ddisgwyl roedd pobl – gyda chaws a menyn (er bod hyn cyn i Iarll Sandwich ddyfeisio’r ‘brechdan’ modern). Ffasiwn – a’r gallu i brynu bara gwyn rhad pan ddechreuwyd mewnforio gwenith o dramor – roddodd y farwol i fara rhyg yma mae’n debyg, er i fara ceirch oroesi am hirach. Mae olion o’r arfer o dyfu rhyg wedi goroesi yn bennaf oll yn ein enwau lle: ceir sawl ‘Bryn Rhyg’ yng Nghymru, ac mae yna ‘Cae Rhyg’ ger Nefyn ym Mhen Llŷn.

Asbaragws

Mae cofnodion o dyfu asbaragws yng Nghymru yn dyddio yn ôl ganrifoedd. Mae gair Cymraeg amdano wrth gwrs – esbarag, a chofnod yng ngeiriadur Wiliam Salesbury amdano. Mae’n bur debygol bod rhai o’r uchelwyr yn ei dyfu a’i fwyta yn ystod cyfnod Salesbury yn y 16fed ganrif, ond erbyn diwedd y 18fed ganrif, roedd y llys hwn yn weddol gyfarwydd. Ar y 24 o Ebrill 1788 dyma ddisgrifiad gan un o Foneddigesau Llangollen o’u cinio y diwrnod hwnnw:  “Dinner, Roast Mutton, boiled pork, peas pudding and the first asparagus we cut this year.” Yn fwy arwyddocaol, mae arolwg amaethyddol Gwallter Mechain o 1815 yn cynnwys disgrifiadau o gynnyrch gerddi marchnad Llandaf, a oedd yn cyflenwi llysiau i farchnadoedd ar draws De Cymru – ac ymhlith y llysiau hyn oedd asbaragws. Ac mae’n amlwg bod rhywrai rai blynyddoedd yn ddiweddarach yn hoff o esbarag yng Ngogledd Ceredigion hefyd: rhwng 1842 ac 1844 mae cofnodion ystâd Nanteos ger Aberystwyth yn dangos y gwerthwyd yn lleol ‘surpluses…. of seakale, broccoli, leeks, carrots, cucumbers, asparagus, rhubarb, lettuce, gooseberries, peas, cauliflower, potatoes, strawberries, cherries, beans, cabbage, artichokes, raspberries, blackcurrants, melons, apples, pears, damsons and onions.’

Ac mae’r hyn sy’n wir am asbaragws yn wir am lwyth o lysiau eraill – berwr dŵr (ynys Môn a Bro Morgannwg), carw’r môr (sef samphire), bonau bresych (Pwll ger Llanelli – adnabuwyd pobl y pentre fel gwyr y bonau am eu hoffter ohonynt), moron gwynion (ynys Môn ond heb os ar draws y wlad – ffasiwn diweddarach ddaeth o’r Iseldiroedd oherwydd y teulu brenhinol yno oedd moron oren). A thomatos Cymreig! Erbyn yr 1890au roedd dwy dunnell yn cael eu tyfu yn wythnosol yn Llysonnen, dyffryn Teifi – a’u gwerthu a’u defnyddio’n lleol. Lle mwy amrywiol nag y bydd rhai yn tueddu meddwl oedd Cymru anghydffurfiol yr 18fed a’r 19eg ganrif – ac roedd hynny’n wir o ran arferion bwyta lawn cymaint ag unrhywbeth arall.

Ac mae hyn oll heb sôn am y ffrwythau… dwi wedi gwneud hynny eisoes yn Afalau Cymru

Cocos a wya

Yn ola enghraifft bach o ‘street food’ Cymreig ar ffurf rhigwm:

‘Cocos a wya, bara ceirch tena

Merched y penrhyn yn ysgwyd u tina’

Dyma ffrio cocos a wyau gyda’i gilydd, ac efallai tipyn o facwn hefyd. Ychwanegu pupur a halen yn ôl y galw. Yna bwyta’r cyfan rhwng tafelli o fara ceirch. Gwerthid ar y stryd/ yn y farchnad ar arfordir Eifionydd. Pwy honnai fod bwyd hanesyddol Cymru yn ddiflas?

[1] Eironi mawr hwn wrth gwrs yw nad oedd cig oen yn hanesyddol yn rhan bwysig o ddiet y Cymry, a hyd y gwela i does dim tystiolaeth chwaith iddo chwarae rol diwylliannol pwysig chwaith. Ond mater arall yw hwnnw y bydda i’n cyffwrdd ag e yn fy llyfr, Welsh Food Stories.

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Beth yw gwerth hanes bwyd Cymru? Pwysigrwydd ein treftadaeth i’n dyfodol

Dyma ail-weithio a chyhoeddi rhan o’m cyflwyniad yng nghynhadledd Gwir Fwyd a Ffermio Cymru 2020:

Dyw tirlun bwyd Cymru heddiw ddim byd tebyg i’r hyn ydoedd ar ddechrau’r 20fed ganrif. Dychmygwch y peth: gwlad o ffermydd cymysg yn bwydo ar y cyfan eu hardaloedd lleol,gyda diwylliant cryf o gynhyrchu cwrw bach a seidr, tyfu ffrwythau a llysiau, halltu moch a menyn gartre at ddefnydd y cartref, a hynny yn y parthau trefol yn ogystal â’r ardaloedd gwledig. Roedd diwydiant pysgota pwysig ar hyd y glannau, a bwydydd gwyllt eraill â thraddodiadau amrywiol yn perthyn iddynt yn rhan o’r ddeiat a’r ffordd o fyw – fel mae un o olygfeydd amlycaf Te yn y Grug, nofel enwog o’r cyfnod, yn porteadu: plant yn hel llus er mwyn gwneud teisen dymhorol.

Mae’n werth manylu’n ddyfnach ar rai o nodweddion ein hamaeth a’n diwylliant bwyd yn y cyfnod hwn, sydd ar gyrion cof byw o hyd, er mwyn gwerthfawrogi mor wahanol ydoedd i’r presennol:

  • Ffermio cymysg oedd yn nodweddu’r wlad, lle roedd tyfu grawn (gwenith ond hefyd ceirch a barlys) yn digwydd ochr yn ochr â magu anifeiliaid yn y parthau mynyddig a’r iseldiroedd fel ei gilydd.[1] Yn lle hynny, mae gyda ni ungnydiaeth (monocultures) bellach mewn rhannau helaeth o’r wlad.
  • Roedd perllannau yn rhan gyfarwydd o’r tirlun ac o’r economi wledig. Yna, bu gostyngiad o c.98% yn ein perllannau yng Nghymru dros yr 20fed ganrif.[2] Yn sgil hynny gwelsom ddiflaniad llwyr seidr o’n tirlun ac o’n bywydau – diod bwysig ar draws dros chwarter tir Cymru a oedd yn rhan o’r cyflog hyd yn oed i rai. Ac yn sgil hynny colli cyfle i ddatblygu cynnyrch traddodiadol i’w allforio.
  • Moch: roedd moch yn ganolog i ddeiat y mwyafrif o drigolion yn y wlad a’r ddinas fel ei gilydd ac roedden nhw i’w gweld ymhob man. Roedd hyn yn wir i’r fath raddau fel eu bod yn cael eu hystyried fel rhywbeth nodweddiadol o Gymreig, a theithwyr o Loegr hyd yn oed yn nodi cymaint o foch oedd yn y wlad. Daeth tro ar fyd: go brin fod pobl yn meddwl am foch fel rhywbeth nodweddiadol o Gymreig yn ein dydd ni.
  • Pysgod, ac mewn gwirionedd, bwydydd gwyllt o bob math. Roedd y rhain yn darparu bwyd am ddim i nifer ac yn sgil hynny yn cyfrannu amrywiaeth bwysig (a ffynhonnell protein a fitaminau cyfoethog) i’r ddeiat : cocos, llus, llysiau’r cloddiau, sewin a physgod yr afonydd ayyb.

Ond y tu hwnt i fanylion y bwydydd a chynnyrch y ffermydd, roedd natur y system fwyd yn wahanol i’r presennol mewn ffyrdd arwyddocaol hefyd. Yn gyntaf, roedd yr holl fwydydd a gynhyrchid yn y wlad yn gwbl organig (ymhell cyn i’r term hwnnw fynd i ddefnydd cyffredin) – ac felly gallwn gasglu o’r ffaith hwnnw yn unig eu bod yn ansoddol wahanol i’r bwydydd wedi eu prosesu a gawn yn ein harchfarchnadoedd heddiw. Y tu hwnt i hyn, oes oedd hon pan gyflogai amaeth rhyw 10% o’r boblogaeth mor ddiweddar â 1910, a hynny eisoes yn ganran lawer is na bron pobl gwlad arall yn Ewrop o ganlyniad i’r diwydiannu cynnar a ddigwyddodd yng Nghymru. Ond roedd gan ganran sylweddol uwch o’r boblogaeth law mewn cynhyrchu a chasglu eu bwyd eu hun – boed hynny trwy fochyn yn y cefn, tyfu llysiau a ffrwythau yn yr ardd, pysgota, herwhela, bragu adre a mwy – a hynny mewn gwrthgyferbyniad llwyr â norm ein dydd ni.

Gwlad wahanol yw’r gorffennol felly, ond gan ei bod hi’n wlad sy’n rhannu cymaint o briodoleddau ein gwlad ni – nid lleiaf ei thirwedd a’i natur, ei hinsawdd a rhannau ystyrlon o’i diwylliant -, fe ddylai ei nodweddion fod o ddiddordeb i ni, a hynny yn enwedig wrth drafod bwyd ac amaeth. Dwi am i ni weld a deall felly bod y presennol ddim yn anochel; nid er mwyn ein galw i fynd yn ôl ond er mwyn mabwysiadu safbwynt mwy goddrychol yn wyneb y sefyllfa sydd ohoni, safbwynt sydd yn deall y gorffennol (yn ei holl amrywiaeth) ar ei delerau ei hun. Mewn geiriau eraill, nid y sefyllfa bresennol nac eiddo yr un oes arall yw’r model ar gyfer sut ddylai amaeth Cymru edrych. Ffrwyth blaenoriaethau, gwerthoedd a dewisiadau economaidd ac athronyddol yw hynny.

Dyna gymharu’r presennol felly gydag un cyfnod penodol o’n hanes bwyd. Ond y tu hwnt i’r enghraifft penodol hwn, oes pwysigrwydd a pherthnasedd ehangach yn perthyn i hanes bwyd ac amaeth sydd yn ei wneud yn faes pwysig i ni ei hystyried? Mae sawl rheswm da i feddwl hynny.

Yn gyntaf, mae’r gorffennol yn adnodd i ni. Yn wahanol i’r ffordd y byddwn ni’n tueddu synian amdano, ac efallai ei ddychmygu er hwylustod i ni ein hunain, nid un cyfnod mo’r gorffennol. Mae hyn yn werth pwysleisio: roedd y gorffennol yn llawn newid ac amrywiaeth, a doedd y newid hwnnw ddim i gyd yn llifo i un cyfeiriad (sef honiad y safbwynt ideolegol mai hanes cynnydd yw hanes i gyd). Gan fod y gorffennol yn llawn newid felly, a gan fod y presennol yn gynnyrch penderfyniadau dynol mewn nifer o ffyrdd (e.e. penderfyniadau unigol miliynau o ffermwyr a dinasyddion yn effeithio ar y gadwyn fwyd, penderfyniadau polisi llywodraethau o bob lliw, y naratifau cynhwysol y bydd ein diwylliant yn eu derbyn a’u lledaenu),  gallwn dynnu ar y gorffennol yn ei gyfanrwydd i’n helpu i feddwl am ein presennol a’n dyfodol a gweld posibiliadau annisgwyl. Er enghraifft, mewn oes lle mae pryderon am AI yn dinistrio swyddi a lle mae iechyd meddwl yn bla, a fyddai’n werth ceisio meddwl ar lefel polisi am ffyrdd i annog llawer mwy o bobl i weithio mewn amaeth eto? Mae manteision amlwg i hyn fel syniad o safbwynt darparu gwaith da i bobl mewn amgylchedd, sef yr awyr agored, y gwyddom bellach ei bod yn llesol i’r psyche dynol. Perthnasedd y gorffennol i’r drafodaeth yw ei bod yn dangos yn glir bod modd cyflogi cyfran llawer uwch o’r boblogaeth yn y sector bwyd ac amaeth, a’i bod yn awgrymu i ni rai o oblygiadau llai amlwg tynnu liferi polisi yn y cyfeiriad hwnnw: ail-boblogi ardaloedd gwledig, perthynas ddyrys tirfeddiannwyr a gweithwyr y tir, prisiau bwyd uwch o bosib – ond llai o angen i ddibynnu ar chwynladdwyr, plaladdwyr a ffwngladdwyr trwy ffermio mwy arddwys. Amaeth fel ateb i her AI felly?     Mae ystyriaeth ofalus o’r gorffennol yn ein galluogi i gloriannu’r syniad, a’i arfarnu mewn ffordd lai unllygeidiog nac ystyriaethau caeedig y gyfundrefn amaethyddol-economaidd bresennol.

Yn yr un modd, mae’r gorffennol yn darparu safbwynt amgen i ni, wedi ei seilio mewn ffaith ac nid theori, i gwestiynu’r presennol. Er enghraifft, ydy deiat trwch y boblogaeth yn iachach – yn well -heddiw nac yn 1910, o ddychwelyd at y flwyddyn benodol honno yn ein hanes fel enghraifft mympwyol? Ar y naill law, mae syniad cyffredinol â dogn da o wirionedd yn perthyn iddo bod deiat y werin cyn yr ail ryfel byd yn ddiflas, undonog ac annigonol mewn sawl ffordd. Ond dylid oedi cyn derbyn y rhagfarn yn ddigwestiwn. Mae tystiolaeth ddigamsyniol erbyn hyn bod yr hyn a elwir ‘y diet gorllewinol’ yn arwain at glefydau difrifol o sawl math (gan gynnwys clefyd y galon, clefyd y siwgr, gordewdra, cancr, dementia) [3], tra bod llawer o’r clefydau oedd yn plagio cyfrannau tlotaf ein cymdeithas ym 1910 unai’n heintus neu’n gysylltiedig gyda diwydiant neu ddiffyg hylendid – nid diet.

Y clefyd mwyaf amlwg a gysylltid gyda diet diffygiol yn yr oes dan sylw oedd sgyrfi – ac mae’r dystiolaeth o Gymru o’r cyfnod yn awgrymu bod cyfraddau sgyrfi yn isel yn y boblogaeth gyffredinol. Yn fwy na hyn, mae tystiolaeth gynyddol wedi dod i’r fei dros y blynyddoedd diweddar o bwysigrwydd y coluddyn a’i meicrobiota o facteria ar gyfer iechyd. Bydd diet o fwyd heb ei brosesu gyda chyfran uchel o gynhwysion tymhorol wedi eu cynhyrchu o fewn cyfundrefn organig yn cyfrannu’n gryf i feicrobiota iach – a hynny’n gysylltiedig â iechyd y galon, y croen, y stumog a lefelau egni uwch. Ac er bod y ddadl o blaid manteision bwyd organig ar lefel maethynnau penodol yn wan (e.e. bod lefelau uwch o fitaminau neu fineralau penodol i’w cael o fewn moron organig i’w cymharu â moron anorganig), mae’r ddadl ar sail blas a ffresni yn gryfach. Beth sydd agosach at ein dealltwriaeth gyfredol o blataid o fwyd iach: diet cyffredin llafurwr Cymreig ym 1910 (yn cynnwys te cartref, wyau organig, cawl â llysiau’r gaeaf, maidd a bara ceirch), neu fwyd y sawl sy’n dibynnu ar fariau siocled, prydau parod a chig rhad ein archfarchnadoedd heddiw? Mae’r cwestiwn yn un agored, o leiaf.

Yn drydydd, mae’r gorffennol yn lliwio canfyddiad pobl o’r hyn sy’n ‘normal’ neu’n ‘dda’. Os ydyn ni’n credu mai cadw defaid, er enghraifft, fu swmp a sylwedd amaeth ein hardal ni ar hyd yr oesoedd, fe fydd hynny yn ein harwain i gysylltu’r arfer hwnnw gyda’n hunaniaeth leol. Mae hynny’n naturiol: yn gymwys neu’n gam, tynnwn ar y gorffennol i ddilysu arferion y presennol. Dyna arwain felly at ebychiadau fel hyn: ‘Allwch chi ddim ‘neud hynny yma – gwlad da godro yw hon, nid perllannau!’ Ond byddai edrych ar fapiau 1880 yn dangos i bod perllannau niferus yn y cylch ym 1880, ac archwiliad o’r llyfrau hanes yn dangos mai dim ond ers yr 1950au y diflannodd cyfran helaeth ohonynt o’r dirwedd. Dyna ddilysu wedyn ymgais i arallgyfeirio trwy ehangu cwmpas canfyddiad pobl o’r hyn sy’n normal yn eu bro a’u cymdogaeth.

Yn sgil hynny mae hefyd pedwaredd agwedd i’w hystyried, sef gwerth y gorffennol yn yr ymgais i fachnata a dweud stori ein bwyd gerbron y sawl fydd yn prynu’r bwyd hwnnw. Gwireb digon defnyddiol yw nad yw pobl, at ei gilydd, yn rhy hoff o newid. Tueddu i hoffi traddodiad a’r hyn sy’n rhoi i ni deimlad o ddiogelwch y byddwn ni, ac mae hynny yn enwedig o wir ym maes bwyd. Felly yn sgil hyn, un peth yw dweud ‘dwi am gynhyrchu caws dafad ar fy fferm ym Meirionydd’ a marchnata’r cynnyrch newydd cyffrous hwn. Ond peth arall wrth gwrs yw dweud, ‘dwi am ddechrau cynhyrchu eto un o fwydydd mwyaf traddodiadol y rhan hon o’r byd, caws dafad,’ a’i farchnata yn erbyn y cefnlun hwnnw (ac oes, mae hanes hir i gaws dafad yn ucheldir Cymru).

Yn olaf ac efallai bwysicaf yng ngoleuni argyfwng yr hinsawdd a’r newidiadau posib a ddaw yn sgil hynny i’n ffordd o fyw, mae ein hanes yn cynnig gwersi pwysig i ni am botensial ein tir a’r rhwystrau bioffisegol sydd arnom yn y cilcyn hwn o’r ddaear: os yw pobl wedi cynhyrchu rhyw bethau yma yn llwyddiannus yn y gorffennol, mae hynny’n dangos ei bod hi’n bosib gwneud, ac mewn ffordd sero-carbon hefyd. Doedd ein cyndeidiau ddim yn ffyliaid: os oedden nhw’n tyfu grawn ar draws Cymru, a hynny yn bennaf ar ffurf rhyg mewn rhai ardaloedd, ceirch mewn ardaloedd eraill a gwenith mewn rhannau eraill eto, gallwn dybio bod yna resymau da y tu ôl i hynny. Mae grawnfwydydd yn enghraifft da o hyn: doethineb confensiynol ein dydd yw bod amodau Cymru yn ei gwneud yn wlad anaddas iawn i dyfu grawn. Ond o graffu ar y ffeithiau, gwelir mai anaddas i dyfu grawn modern, mewn ffyrdd confensiynol, modern (sy’n syndod o newydd) yw amodau Cymru. Gwelais â’m llygad fy hun gae o wenith traddodiadol, chwe throedfedd o uchder yn tyfu yn nyffryn Aeron yn haf 2019. Roedd y gwenith wedi ei wthio i’r llawr gan stormydd Awst fwy nag un waith, ond wedi cynhyrchu cnwd da: byddai gwenith modern ddim wedi ffynnu o dan yr un amgylchiadau. Mutatis mutandis, mae’r un yn wir i wahanol raddau ar draws y sin fwyd. Ac o aros gyda’r grawnfwydydd, sut mae prosesu a gwneud blawd defnyddiol? Un opsiwn yw melinau dwr, sydd nid yn unig yn sero carbon, ond yn medru gwneud eu gwaith tawel, toreithiog heb ddefnyddio un Kwh o drydan, ond yn hytrach yn addasiad destlus i dirwedd fryniog ein gwlad.

Cyn cloi, dwi am gynnig rhai enghreifftiau penodol yng ngolau hyn oll o bethau o’n hanes bwyd a allai fod o fudd mawr eu hail-ystyried – fel ysbrydoliaeth:

  • Garddio trefol/ dinesig. Mae hanes o gynhyrchu bwyd yn ein trefi ers canrifoedd, ac yn enwedig o 1700 i’r rhyfel byd cyntaf, roedd o bwys. Gweler erthygl yma sy’n ymhelaethu.
  • Bara lawr. Ceir pwt am y bwydan annisgwyl ond cyfoethog yma.
  • Allforio menyn a chig eidion o ansawdd. Mae ffermdai cerrig niferus Eryri o oes y Tuduriaid yn tystio i’r cyfoeth wnaeth nifer mewn rhannau o Gymru trwy allforio gwartheg i farchnad fawr Llundain. Dyna sôn am y porthmyn wrth gwrs – ond nid rhyw draddodiad hyfryd diniwed oedd hyn, ond busnes – ffordd o wneud arian. Roedd ansawdd y gwartheg, ac ansawdd y cig yn sail i’r farchnad drawsffiniol a phroffidiol hon, oedd o bwys mawr i economi wledig Cymru am ganrifoedd. Gweler canol y darn hwn.
  • Diodydd – yn ogystal â chwrw, seidr, medd roedd diodydd eraill a oroesodd nes i de eu disodli: meddyglyn a diodgriafol yn ddau. Bydd erthyglau am y rhain ar y wefan yn y dyfodol.

I gloi felly, dyw ein ddoe ddim fel ein heddiw. Dyn ni wedi gweld mewn sawl ffordd bod bwyd ac amaeth hanesyddol Cymru yn amrywiol ei natur. O’r bwydydd a gynhyrchid, i’r canran o’r boblogaeth oedd yn cymryd rhan, i’r ffaith sylfaenol bod cymaint o fwyd yn cael ei gynhyrchu adre ar gyfer defnydd cartref. Mae’r gorffennol yn ein helpu i newid persbectif; i weld mai sefyllfa dros dro yw’r drefn bresennol ym mhob oes, a bod ein stori bwyd ni yn medru bod yn ehangach na dim ond stori’r hyn roedd y farchnad yn galw amdano dros y degawdau diwethaf.

Bwysicaf oll yn fy nhyb i, mae’r gorffennol yn cynnig posibiliadau amrywiol i ni – amcan o bosibiliadau ein gwlad – mewn byd heriol. Wrth sôn am yr argyfwng hinsawdd, son ydyn ni mewn gwirionedd am restr o heriau amrywiol ond cysylltiedig y gwyddom ni amdanyn nhw. Fe all bwyd ac amaeth fod yn rhan bwysig o’r ymateb i’r heriau hynny, mewn cymaint o ffyrdd: trwy gynnig sylfaen i fywoliaeth, i ffyniant ardaloedd gwledig a threfol fel ei gilydd ac fel conglfaen bywyd cyfforddus, iach. Wrth i’r hinsawdd newid, mae lle i gredu y bydd modd cynhyrchu mwy yng Nghymru nag erioed o’r blaen: rhaid i ni ddechrau meddwl nawr am hynny, fel ein bod ni’n gwneud dewisiadau da am resymau da – a gall ymgeisio i ddeall y gorffennol yn ofalus dalu ar ei ganfed wrth i ni geisio gwneud hynny.

Os hoffech glywed rhagor…

Mae gen i lyfr newydd ar y gwell: ‘Welsh Food Stories’, cyhoeddi ddiwedd 2021 neu ddechrau 2022 gyda Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru. Gallwch dderbyn diweddariadau achlysurol iawn trwy roi eich ebost i’r blwch isod:

[1] Gweler enghraifft da ym mhrosiect Dyfi

[2] Amcangyfrif personol, yn sgil ffigyrau o’r arolygon amaethyddol o ddiwedd y 19eg ganrif, 1958 ac 1992 a drafodir yn Graves, C., Apples of Wales (Llanrwst: Gwasg Carreg Gwalch, 2018)

[3] Gw. gweithiau a ddyfynir yn e.e. Pollan, M., In Defence of Food (London: Penguin, 2008) ac Aujla, R., The Doctor’s Kitchen (London: HarperCollins, 2009)

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A Small Farm Future: a Welsh perspective

A Small Farm Future by Chris Smaje is subtitled ‘making the case for a society built around local economies, self-provisioning agricultural diversity and a shared earth’. Smaje’s surprising core argument in this ambitious and timely work is that some kind of ‘small farm future’ in the above vein is both necessary and in fact, inevitable. Necessary, in the sense that in light of the compounding crises that now beset western civilisation, a society of this kind offers our best chance of a humane, liberal society that both reflects the democratic values held dear by most in the West, and respects the ecological limits set on human civilization by the planet on which we live. This is a desirable small farm future.

But a small farm future of some sort is, says Smaje, inevitable in the sense that as a result of the crises facing our civilisation a significant proportion of the world’s population will likely end up in a situation where they are dependent on cultivating small parcels of land for their economic basis – and, he intimates, this is likely to be the case for the majority of the world’s population regardless of the trajectorywe take. This is far from a groundless assertion, describing as it does what is already the reality for 1.2 billion people globally[1], and as Smaje notes, without the inflated symbolic economy drawing people to the slums and peripheries of the early 20th century’s megacities, the security offered by the land will once more increase in weight in their decision–making. This phenomenon is already in evidence in economies rejected by the arbiters of the current system, such as Greece and now Lebanon: a dystopian small farm future.

Wales is not, of course, currently in that economic place. It therefore stands in a position where it could opt to set a course for the former, desirable small farm future.[2] Most of Smaje’s energy in the book goes into outlining the choices and trade-offs that societies across the western world will need to negotiate in order to avoid the latter future and land instead somewhere in the realms of the former, desirable one. And as a small political-cultural unit currently on the periphery of the global capitalist system (or rather, the western inner ring thereof), Wales is in some-ways well-placed to make choices that would lead to that desirable option. A number of phenomena in the Welsh cultural and political landscape also augur well for this, on paper: a government that has, in its rhetoric at least, long been supportive of ambitious action towards creating a sustainable society (cf. the future generations act, the early adoption of planning policies allowing for low-impact dwellings and livelihoods and other legislation in a similar vein); the small size of farm holdings in the country and the high percentage of owners, rather than tenants (in contrast to Scotland or England); the fact that the current economic settlement doesn’t work well for Wales, at least when in comparison with most neighbouring societies (so that government and civil society hasn’t much to lose in opting to chart an unorthodox course).

There are however significant obstacles to the realisation of anything approximating Smaje’s vision in Wales. Many of these arise from the Welsh situation: perhaps the most important of these is the destruction over recent decades of the lingering vestiges of peasant culture in this country, as in other parts of north-western Europe. Add to this is the lack of a strong civic sphere: the peculiar fact that national conversation take places within different bubbles (British/ Welsh-regional/ Welsh-language) with poor interfaces between these conversations. Much energy therefore necessarily goes into the creation and maintenance of those parts of civic society which many other comparable societies take for granted; and when you’re forced to argue about the terms of your own existence as a cultural unit, there is little bandwidth left for serious debate about issues which seem tangential.

One of these obstacles, however, illuminates tensions which will be of relevance to the discussion about desirable small farm futures well beyond the bounds of our small country. The attractiveness of the small-farm future option arguably applies in the western world most readily to people in marginalized rural areas, who already have emotional investment in the flourishing of the countryside and of farming in particular, and who can see with their own eyes the bankruptcy of the current settlement. The kind of society sketched by Smaje is likely to be intrinsically attractive to many in these contexts, and to be viewed as a solution to many currently intractable and emotionally draining problems for these communities (rural depopulation, lack of jobs, thinning of society).

Cwmyrarian was once a prosperous mixed farm, known for miles around. It provided work for a large family and several farmhands into the mid 20th century but now lies in ruins with its lands split between other holdings.

But in a Welsh context, and undoubtedly many others, solutions touted for rural Wales’ problems (which are at their most acute in the Welsh-speaking parts that cover a good half of the country by area and represent an internal colony of an internal colony in the words of Seimon Brooks) are often bedevilled by a perception that they are foisted upon those communities from the outside. In other words, the kinds of well-meaning institutions and organisations that are the main vehicles for rebuilding the foundations for a positive small-farm future in rural Wales tend to draw their energy and support from outside the communities which they would depend upon and ostensibly benefit. Particular organisations are not the point here: culture and ownership are. From a Welsh perspective this cuts to the core of the greatest weakness in Smaje’s erudite tome: a reluctance, perhaps understandable given his project, to engage with cultural specificities – and thus to acknowledge the real-world implications of these specificities on the likelihood of a positive small-farm future of the type he outlines arising in many contexts.

In other words, there will only be a desirable small-farm future if the effort to create one comes from within the communities themselves: otherwise, all that happens is the creation of a new fault-line between the advocates of such a settlement and everyone else. This potential disengagement is a serious issue, which pertains to ownership – in the emotional sense. In a section touching on these issues in section 4 Smaje states that, ‘as communities develop new commons through self-provisioning from the local ecological base, everybody’s voice counts, not just that of local elites…’[3] But it is far from clear in real-world scenarios where efforts to make this happen are underway that everybody’s voice does count – not because of exclusion so much as the fact that not everybody (or everybody that ought to matter) is in the room. They won’t be in the room if they aren’t invited; but they also won’t come if they don’t feel any potential ownership.

This is about more than simply making the case for a small farm future within wider western culture (vital though that is). Local ownership only happens through the means of local culture – there isn’t an alternative for the kind of bottom-up shift that Smaje is advocating (top-down is different, of course). And so that local culture needs to be the prism through which an argument for a small-farm future is filtered. In other words, the very rationale for why a small-farm future could be a desirable future needs to differ in meaningful ways from context to context. Where this doesn’t happen, only the “likely candidates” will take this forward – which risks alienating those very communities who most need a future of this kind, and who will also be most needed to make it happen in many western contexts. To avoid this, the argument in favour of a local small farm future should therefore look substantially different in the US rust belt, and Welsh-speaking rural Wales and wealthy Bavaria (where much of the same applies, mutatis mutandis). This is a point which Smaje almost acknowledges and often touches on, but which may transpire in practice to be key to the balance between the dystopian and the desirable small farm futures he outlines.

Despite this weakness in his argument, A Small Farm Future is a watershed work – intellectually brilliant and strongly argued. Several of the heuristics Smaje employs are illuminating (the concept of stocks and flows, the centrality of trade-offs for his analysis or the term ‘symbolic economy’ used above); and his bold marriage of sociology, political economy and philosophy with food history and agricultural analysis is riveting. We have here the ambitious groundwork, global in scale, for exactly the case for a small farm future that Smaje set out to write. It now remains for those of us who share his vision to do the hard work of applying that to our own varied contexts.

Carwyn Graves, Caerfyrddin. Mis Hydref 2020.

This piece first appeared on the Welsh Food manifesto website – well worth going to take a look at what they’re doing to work towards these kinds of futures.

[1] p.91

[2] This term is also repeated, slightly ad nauseam, in the book.

[3] p.260