Pat Crawford is a freelance journalist and Press Officer for Hadlow College. Her many years' experience have led Pat to specialise in the ‘farming' and equestrian sectors and all rural matters, including conservation.
During her professional career Pat has been a television researcher, written for a wide range of national and regional media, ‘ghost' written for a number of well-known personalities, written speeches, penned several booklets on a range of topics and acted as consultant for books.
Pat is passionate about the issues of ‘food security', ‘seasonality' and the need to promote British-grown and produced food.
She can be contacted on 01622 817319 or 07771 635684 www.hadlow.ac.uk
Our landscape - the scenery of which we are so proud - doesn't just ‘happen'. Very little of it is entirely ‘natural'- in fact, most is ‘managed' by our farmers and growers and is something that began with the developing skills of our ancestors thousands of years ago.
Not so very long ago farmers were being paid subsidies to grub up hedges.
Insomnia comes in various forms: difficulty getting to sleep...or staying asleep...failing to get sufficient, good quality sleep. It is not having the odd ‘bad night' - it is a regular occurrence and some sufferers describe themselves as ‘almost driven to beating my head against the wall'.
The new year is here and with it an opportunity to learn something new, why not make it your resolution to stock up on some interesting books about herbs, herbal remedies and medicinal horticulture!
Who would have thought that bottling, freezing and drying would be back on the kitchen agenda? But these were commonplace skills - before wide selections of frozen goods were available.
Calendula - more commonly known as Marigold - enjoys a long history of healing for both the mind and the body.
Native to Ancient Egypt, the Greeks drank an infusion of Marigold to relieve sleeplessness - and what today we call ‘stress'! Regarded as a symbol of good luck, it is believed to have first been brought to Britain by the Romans and was one of the earliest plants to be cultivated.
BASIL (Ocimum basilicum), an annual, is a fragrant and flavourful plant that has become our most popular culinary herb and one that is much appreciated by celebrity television chefs.
Coriander (Coriandrum sativum), an annual herb in the Apiaceae family - to which carrots also belong - has been used for culinary and medicinal purposes for hundreds of years.
Without a heated greenhouse - or a similar resource - it is generally assumed that it simply isn't possible to grow very much kitchen produce during the winter months. All that might begin to change if a lot of ‘five a day' - and herb enthusiasts - take the advice of Suttons.
It is sometimes assumed that everything in the kitchen garden has to be sown or planted in the spring. In fact, any number of vegetables and herbs can be started much later - and it is infinitely better to grow a succession of produce anyway because this avoids a glut.
Until relatively modern times - about four-five hundred years ago - the vast majority of plants were grown for food, medicinal or welfare-related purposes.
It's logical that what goes around must, in time, come around. This is certainly so in the case of ‘natural remedies', ‘botanical medicine', ‘medical herbalism', ‘herbal medicine', ‘herbology' and ‘medicinal horticulture'.
‘Going green' is extending into new and unusual situations. In pursuance of ‘urban agriculture', people living in cities and towns have been encouraged to give serious consideration to installing a kitchen garden on balconies, flat roofs and other suitable high spaces. This initiative should be seen in light with statisticians' predictions suggesting that cities are more likely than rural areas to suffer the effects of any future food shortages. Now ‘greening up' is extending rapidly into country towns and villages - but not necessarily in order to produce food!
‘Grow your own'... ‘five-a-day'.... ‘urban agriculture'...'grower group'... ‘allotment clubs'.... ‘plot-to-plate'.... ‘food security'. Just some of the words and phrases that increasingly feature in the media every day and which, as a result, have evolved to become a meaningful part of our vocabularies.
I knew absolutely nothing about cranial osteopathy before I had a bad accident. Caused by a young man's failure to comply with basic health and safety regulations, the outcome was a gigantic bruise on my forehead and two huge knees - one of which I subsequently discovered was broken.
