May Queen | Eat the Earth

Yesterday was lovely. It was one of those days when you feel whole, you feel content, you feel that life is good.

Mr Rigg and I spent the afternoon helping out the stall for our local Low Carbon group at the town’s May Queen Festival. We are both involved in the group, me leading on local food. We spoke to lots of people from our community, handed out information and lots of the ‘really local food’ maps I have produced.

Then we headed up to Abbey Leys to get some eggs and bacon (I’m planning on making a Quiche Lorraine this week). The sun was shining, the sky a dazzling blue. The hedgerows are green and alive with twittering birds. The hens and ducks at Abbey Leys were all down by the pond and sheltering in the shade of the trees.

Outside the farm shop was a bucket of locally grown Sweet Williams, a bunch of which now adorns our living room in an earthenware pot salvaged from the carboot. Inside, Mr Rigg filled up two boxes with freshly laid eggs. I found some outdoor reared Gloucester old spot streaky bacon in the chiller.

We also filled up a bag with the first Cheshire new potatoes, still with earth clinging to them. And then I saw them – a tub of locally grown peas. I adore peas. Peas plucked straight from the plant, popped out of their crisp pods and into my mouth. Nothing is perhaps more delicious.

These were the first local peas I have seen, so we got a full bag. By the time we got home I’d eaten about a quarter of the bag already. Needless to say, they didn’t make it past sundown.

From all this delicious local produce and some from our garden we ate a scrumptious, simple dinner – will post this separately. This is how all days should be. Should make you feel.