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Two weeks ago I had and email from Ed, a BigBarn fan, volunteering to help us. As this is season for Agricultural shows I thought a day handing out leaflets at the East of England Show dressed as Apple Man would be a good test of his commitment. If you would like to find out how he got on he has written about his day below.
Every boy has dreamed of being a superhero at one point or another. OK, so weve had some more practical career-orientated thoughts fireman, soldier, fighter pilot and the like but being a superhero was preferable to those. Knocking around in a fire engine sounded fun, but being able to start fires with laser beams from our eyes was better. And whats the point of a fighter-plane when all you need is a red cape and some fetching red underpants?

But eventually dreams faded, reason prevailed and most of us settled down to life as a photocopier salesman, a call-centre supervisor, a customer relationship manager or something else that didnt involve capes or underpants. And that was that.

Not for me! Because just as I was activating my last-ditch cunning plan to become a superhero, which involved making sure I was strangely absent whenever something amazing happened in the world, and then waiting for my girlfriend to discover the uncanny coincidence, I had a call from Carrot Man. My help was needed, and it was needed in the form of Apple Man!

Well, as you can imagine, I didnt need a second invitation. So I hopped on a train (I know, I know, but I didnt have my cape at that point) and headed for the East of England show in Peterborough. There I met Anthony Davison, MD of Big Barn and listed in the Superhero Yellow Pages as Carrot Man (no miracle to big or too small).

Carrot Man has been crusading to save the world from the destruction of the local food supply chain for some time now. And if youre thinking that the destruction of the local food supply chain isnt as serious as one of Lex Luthers evil schemes, think again! Our countryside, our health and our economy are seriously all threatened by it. Those innocent-looking potatoes from Poland you see in the supermarket are aiming their metaphorical giant evil laser thingamajig at our country right now! Scary stuff.

So, the first thing was to get changed from normal people into superheroes. Now, I was expecting this to be done by entering a telephone box or by spinning round really fast, but it seems it actually takes place a the back of a VW Golf in a car park. Never mind all that, we quickly armed ourselves with hundreds of marvellous Big Barn leaflets and headed off to save the world without further ado (apart from my apple being a bit wobbly).

What we needed to save the world was people to read our leaflets, hear our call for action and then come and get themselves registered on Big Barn (you can do that now, here). It seemed to be working. Most people didnt take very much persuading at all that the cause of local food was important and the right thing to fight for. I think they were really pleased to see us there, which made me feel extremely important and superhero-like.

But the people I felt most like saving were the children, which was really rather dashing and benevolent of me. I was shocked to hear them say that their school dinners are still all yucky and horrid. How could this be, when there was so much delicious food being produced just round the corner from their school? Strawberry Man and I (Carrot Man was having a spot of bother with his carrot in the stiff breeze) promised these poor children that if their teachers got in touch with us, we would come round to their school, armed with lots of yummy local food to show them how well they could be eating. Then wed show the people that run their school how they could keep getting this yummy local food for no more than they were currently paying. Imagine that!

As the day went on and people kept responding so kindly to our incredible swash-buckling attempts to save them, I felt my powers growing and realised just how much difference I could make. Enthused, I popped behind the British Potato Council stand and tried to have a quick fly. It turns out this is a bit more tricky than it looks, although I wasnt wearing my underpants outside my trousers, so that probably didnt help.

Eventually I had to get changed back into my normal clothes, but I kept my Big Barn Fine Food Crusader t-shirt on to retain a few of my powers and I went to bed that night with a warm, cosy feeling inside. I was a superhero after all. If you want to be a superhero and have a day like mine, why not send Big Barn an email
and find out how?

OK it has been far too long since I had time to write one of these. We have been very busy here at BigBarn over the last few months. As well as the site itself we are working to get local food into some of the schools in Bedfordshire. For the same price as the frozen mince (if you can even call it meat) we have been able to supply real minced beef from some of our local producers and if this trial goes well then we will be offering it to more schools in the near future. Jamie Oliver has obviously raised the profile of this in recent weeks but there is so much more that can be done to increase the standard of what our children are fed 5 days a week.To read more click here.

There is so much local food around at this time of year. Our veg boxes delivered today are positively heaving with goodies. The strawberries look (and taste) fantastic and the asparagus over the last few weeks has been amazing. I was eating fresh asparagus in Sussex a couple of weekends ago cooked over an open fire and only cut the previous day and it was the best I have had (thanks Martin).

The outdoor asparagus cooking brings me on to what I am up to next week, I wont be buying local as Im away from the office for a week. Best of all is that I will be spending the week on a bushcraft course in Sweden. I hope to be cooking a lot more things outdoors including fresh fish caught in the lake and anything else we can come by. I will let you know how it went when I get back home and especially what local delicacies we have sampled.

Some schools are paying a high price for foreign low grade mince when there is higher quality mince, at a better price, from local farmers.

After my 3 minutes of fame on Radio 4’s Food Programme I received an email from a school caterer asking if I could help her source locally produced beef mince at a good price. As the school was local and knowing a few beef farmers I phoned around and persuaded them to quote a just better than break even price.

I thought they would probably be happy to do this as I knew that most were experiencing more local consumer demand for steaks and joints, than fore quarter meat, normally minced . I quoted the caterer the discounted price as well as to make a Bedfordshire sausage for the kids to taste. I also offered to visit the school for a cook up to test the weight loss in cooking the foreign frozen free flow mince she was using compared to fresh, local, lean mince.
 
On our visit one of the beef farmers and I met the team of dinner ladies and helped cook the frozen free flow and local mince. The frozen mince released a very nasty ‘offal’ smell and melted down to a mixture if fat and grainy brown mince. The local mince had to be stirred a great deal more but gave off a delicious meaty smell which two people walking past popped in to ask what was cooking.

At the end of the cooking process the 2.5kg of frozen mince was sieved ( as usual apparently ) and .7kg of fat drained off. The local mince smelt so good and produced so little fat that there was no weight loss at all. This weight loss meant that comparing prices of cooked product the local mince was actually cheaper at the farmers usual wholesale price, a lot more than I originally quoted. And the sausages. I took trays round the dinning room to get kids to taste them, they were so popular that one boy asked if he would have to sign a petition to get them and a girl who said she hated sausages asked for more!

So where now? We could either hand the contract to the nearest farmer able to fulfil the order or find more schools to buy from us and form a co-operative of local farmers to share production, a delivery van and extra staff. The former will work, but may leave the farmer open to other farmers undercutting the price to win the contract. I prefer the latter option and are now in the process of working out the critical mass of business to afford the van and staff. By getting the farmers to team up we will have a bigger production base and be able to offer a wider range of produce to other customers such as caterers, pubs, hotels and restaurants.

The school caterer is very positive about the co-operative idea and is already looking for other schools to join the scheme. She is hoping that the better quality ingredients will allow her to improve the school meals and increase the number of kids taking meals from the current 32%, especially now she has Carrot Man’s help.

As our mission at BigBarn is; ‘to help build local food supply chains’ we will help and manage the process of putting together the farmer co-op, promote the new school meals and produce case studies. If you know of a co-operative already doing this in your area, would like advice on setting one up or know a school a similar school to the one we are dealing with please email me via our contact us page.

Last year I was invited to a dinner to meet three labour MPs. As the sweet trolley was going round the table the chief MP asked us all to come up with a comment for him to take back to Tony Blair. When my turn came I said that he should tell Tony that he ought to realise that the average man on the street had lost trust in him and ‘the system’. This has been caused by many things including; alleged government lies about Iraq, immigration, huge profits by big business, global warming, de-forestation and of course supermarkets and the food industry.

Why should we trust ‘the system’? I was taught at school in 1976 that CFCs from aerosols were destroying the ozone layer yet it took 15 years before they were banned. I heard last week that the Brazilian rain-forest is being cut down at a faster rate now than at at any other time. How many times over the last ten years have we been told how bad this is for the planet. And global warming, don’t get me started! To see more click here

I am sure the recent ‘non’, French vote and ‘nee’ by the Dutch for the EU constitution, proves this lack of trust in the ’system’. We are constantly hearing about MEP fat-cat allowances and ridiculous beaurocracy and wonder whether those in power really have our interests at heart.

The world has become selfish and to a certain extent what right do we have to stop Brazil chopping down it’s forests when we chopped all ours down in the middle ages.

So who do we trust? Local, of course. Local suppliers and farmers who sell direct, we know we can trust them as they all have their reputations at stake and know they must keep their customers happy to prosper.

I can’t help thinking that local is where it all starts. Once people start trading locally greater communication will occur and more people will become aware of community issues. Once people start taking an interest in what is past their own back door who knows how far they will go. A recent study proved that those people in a community that took an active roll in local community projects were happier than those that did not and the more those people gave the happier they were.

This is why BigBarn is designed to take you to your local map, we now want to provide a wider range of information relevant to your community. We are developing interactive technology so that every community can have it’s own update-able version of BigBarn using mapping and icons to show local resources. If you would like to talk to us about setting one up for your community please

I am sure we can make a difference and must start with our local community. If you would like to be kept up to date on what we are doing as well as news from your local are please register with us here and we will send you our post code specific newsletter every month.