A Taste of Scilly

A TA S T E OF S C I L LY Stories of food, produce and people from and on the edge of the sea.

ST. MARY’S | TRESCO | ST. MARTIN’S | ST. AGNES | BRYHER

This publication is a collaborative effort between the Islands’ Partnership, its member community and a useful set of individuals with their own narratives and expertise.

WORDS Clare Hargreaves

PHOTOS Adj Brown

ILLUSTRATION Owen Davey - Folio Art

PRODUCTION Amanda Bond

DESIGN Jan Thompson

A TA S T E O F S C I L LY Explore Scilly through the eyes of our food and drink producers from across our tiny archipelago; their passions laden with enterprising initiatives, fed from land and sea.

PRINT Deltor

WITH SUPPORT AND FUNDING FROM

This publication is part of the Mini Taste Festival and is supported by the Welcome Back Fund; the event has received funding from the England European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) to help stimulate economic development by investing in projects which support businesses and local community regeneration.

For more information visit www.gov.uk/european-growth-funding 1

Island Fish The Bryher family who have been fishing for crab and lobster for generations LOCATION Island Fish, Bryher 49.9556° N, 6.3517° W

FIND OUT MORE www.islandfish.co.uk

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he world is your lobster - at least, if you’re a Pender. The Pender family have been fishing for lobster and crabs off tiny Bryher for as long as anyone can trace, and still today three generations of Penders venture out in search of the tasty crustaceans. The oldest is Mike Pender, now 78; the youngest, his grandson Shamus, who is 22 but has been hauling pots since he was was 10. Between them is Mike’s son Mark, who has fished since he could walk, and in 2015 decided to join forces with his sister Amanda to make fishing work as a business. They christened it Island Fish.

The season casts off in April, when the spring equinox storms have abated and there’s less risk of a ground sea, which can damage precious lobster pots. It’s also when visitors start arriving. Sunrise baggers may spot Mark’s blue and white boat, burgundy mizzen at its stern, chugging up the channel past Hangman’s Island and towards Bishop Rock Lighthouse. Its soft putter putter is often the only sound breaking the early morning silence.

By then, Shamus will already be out in his wooden vessel Ma Vie. “Shamus likes the peace of the early morning, and seeing the sun rise out at sea,” says mother Amanda. Mike’s day starts a little later; after decades of dawn starts, he now sets out at a leisurely 8.30am.

Each of the three drop up to 250 baited pots in a morning, retrieving them again 48 hours later.

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The fishermen may all be chaps, but two of their boats are named after female family members. Mike’s, which he built 43 years ago, is called Emerald Dawn, after his mother’s favourite colour and Amanda’s middle name (with its early riser connotations). Mark’s is Dorothy Ethel, the names of his two grannies.

“Women are the unsung heroes,” he says.

“They’re the ones who do the really hard work - the processing.”

Swing by Island Fish, Amanda and Mark’s fish shop-deli-cafe, at 5.30am and you see what Mark means. Amanda is already in the kitchen, busy checking the day’s orders, cooking the lobsters and picking the crabs that have been cooked the night before. At six, she’s joined by helpers Flo and Joe, and the trio continue their painstaking work until early afternoon. With shell and dead man’s fingers (crab lungs) everywhere, it’s not a job for the faint hearted. “I can manage six or seven hours a day of picking, but only provided it’s mixed with other jobs,” says Amanda.

“The smell permeates your clothes, so I dash home at around 8am to grab a quick shower before we open.”

Pristine fresh, the porcelain-white crabmeat flies off the deli counter at Island Fish, and what isn’t sold there is snapped up by the islands’ restaurants and merchants on the mainland. Others enjoy it in Amanda’s famous crab sandwiches and dressed crab, or in mother Sue’s Crab Quiche (see recipe page 9).

“When people buy whole cooked Ø

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crabs and take them home, they appreciate how much hard work is involved in picking out the meat,” says Amanda. “Usually the next time they buy the picked meat!” It’s pocket-friendly too.

Because there’s no middleman, she can sell it at less than half the price it would sell for on mainland Cornwall.

It’s a similar story with lobster, which at £22 a kilo, is not cheap, but still considerably cheaper than on the mainland. A whole lobster is a lot simpler to deal with than a whole crab, and well worth buying so that you get the delicious juices too, says Amanda.

“If visitors aren’t familiar with them we show them how to cut a cooked lobster in half. We give them skills they can take home, that’s what we’re here for.”

But if cooking shellfish sounds too hard work, you can pop by Island Fish on a Monday evening and pick up half a Pender-caught lobster with potato wedges and homemade coleslaw for just over a tenner. On Thursdays, Mike’s wife Sue cooks up a monster paella on the decking outside the cafe.

Or if you prefer a sociable, sit-down affair, you can book a shellfish supper at Hell Bay Hotel’s Crab Shack, overlooking Bryher’s storm-bashed rocks, on a Tuesday, Wednesday or Friday. Or for something gastronomic, treat yourself to dinner in the hotel itself.

Amanda and Mark have come a long way since 2015. “When we started, we

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sold our shellfish from the front porch of my house. Mark and I had both given up well-paid jobs and used up our savings to set up the business, so it was a real leap of faith. I remember Mark and I stayed up all night picking crab before we opened on 1st May.” Happily, there was strong demand and business was brisk, so by April 2018 they were able, with the help of grant funding, to open a purpose-built shop-cum-cafe right beside the quay.

Local artist Alex Bagnall was commissioned to daub the walls with vibrant paintings of fish, and tables were installed on the verandah outside so that it could become a destination.

“We’re incredibly lucky to have a fantastic raw product, thanks to our unpolluted waters,” says Amanda.

“And being local, wild and plentiful, it’s highly sustainable. Stocks are healthy, helped by strict regulations over the size of permitted catch and the fact that there are relatively few fishing vessels in our waters so they’re not overexploited. In winter, when the fishermen rest, so do the fish. It’s vital we leave stocks in good shape for future generations.”

In July Amanda will be celebrating a big birthday. Her celebration plans? “A picnic off St. Martin’s with cold lobster and a salad made from mum’s homegrown potatoes.” Of course. When the world’s your lobster, what else would you feast on? ¯

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SUE’S BRYHER CRAB QUICHE Sue’s crab quiche is a heavenly alternative to your average everyday quiche, brought to you straight from the Island Fish kitchen on Bryher.

METHOD 1. Grease your quiche dish – (6 inch quiche dish).

2. Rub together the lard, margarine, flour and salt until well mixed. Add enough water to make a dough.

3. Place on floured board and roll out, line your quiche dish.

4. Slice the spring onions and place in the quiche case. Add the crab meat. Mix together both types of milk and eggs, add nutmeg for seasoning. Pour your mixture into the quiche case and sprinkle with cheese. Season with salt and pepper.

INGREDIENTS • 1½oz margarine • 1½oz lard • Pinch of salt • 6oz plain flour • Water to mix • 4 spring onions • 100g white crab meat • 3 eggs • 1/4 pint evaporated milk • 1/4 pint milk • Cheese to garnish • Nutmeg • Salt & butter

5. Cook in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius for approximately 30/40 minutes.

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S t M a r t i n’s V i n e y a r d A couple from landlocked Nottinghamshire find themselves growing vines beside the sea LOCATION St Martin’s Vineyard, Higher Town, St. Martin’s 49.9602° N, 6.2793° W

FIND OUT MORE www.stmartinsvineyard.co.uk

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t happened by delicious accident.

In July 2018 Holly Robbins and James Faulconbridge made a day trip to St. Martin’s during their first ever visit to Scilly. Wine fans both, they dropped in to see the island’s tiny vineyard, run for the previous 22 years by Graham Thomas and his St. Martin’s-born wife Val on land that had previously been a narcissus farm. As they entered the winery after a self-guided tour, Val casually asked if they knew anyone who might be interested in taking over the business.

“We bought a bottle of their Orion and sat on the beach at Great Bay,” says Holly. “We were from landlocked Nottinghamshire and although we made fruit wines and had an allotment at home, we knew nothing about grapes.

But we couldn’t get the vineyard out of our heads. I emailed Val to ask if she was serious.”

The couple returned in September, and again the following year. “We were desperately trying to talk ourselves out of it,” says Holly. “There was no house, and Val warned us that some years a harvest could be completely wiped out by freak storms or salt-saturated south-westerlies. But the idea wouldn’t go away.”

By February 2020 the deed was done, the couple stepped off the boat onto Higher Town Quay with their possessions and two cats, and their new life began. They slept in a yurt, having gained permission to build a house and two shepherd’s huts as hol-

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iday lets at a later date (now open).

Behind them they’d left friends, family and stable jobs. Holly, who had a psychology degree and a training in hypnotherapy, had done 12 years in the international division of John Deere tractors. James had been working as an ecology consultant.

James’ background as an ecologist rather than a farmer meant his approach to managing a vineyard wasn’t your usual. He wanted to run the 5-acre plot in a regenerative way. So herbicides, fertilisers and fungicides were out - including copper and sulphur which are permitted for use even by organically certified farmers. Instead, the pair believed that by nurturing the soils in which they grew, the vines would build up the strength to fight off diseases. “People told us vines couldn’t be grown without chemical fungicides, but we decided to try it anyway,” smiles Holly.

“We see our vineyard not as an agricultural crop that needs to be controlled, but as an ecosystem,” says James. “For us, it’s about trusting natural processes to support the vines. If you start using sprays you can sometimes solve one problem but end up creating more. So we interfere as little as possible, avoid disturbing the soil, and let nature find its own balance.”

Tour the vineyard’s nine tiny fields, all protected from the winds by high hedges of pittosporum, and you see what James means. Colourful clover and mustard sown between the rows

of vines act as green manures, aimed at improving the soils. Rainwater is harvested to provide irrigation and areas of grass are left to grow wild as a habitat for wildlife. For fertiliser, the pair use homemade compost or seaweed, harvested from the beach.

Flowers, birds, butterflies and insects have flourished. Visitors regularly spot romantically named lady’s tresses orchids and hairy birdsfoot trefoil.

Songbirds are thriving too - although they aren’t quite so welcome at harvest time when they show a keen appetite for the grapes, meaning that James and Holly have to net them.

But it’s worth the hard work, says Holly. “Guests always comment on the birdsong and the hum of insects. It’s a very different experience from the sterile ordered rows of vines you find on many commercial vineyards.”

The grapes are different too. Varieties - 11 in total - were chosen for their resistence to diseases such as mildew, and for their different ripening times in case one grape variety is hit by bad weather. So in the Winery Field, look out for German Siegerrebe grapes, which produce an aromatic wine similar to a Gewurztraminer. The top field, with its dreamy views out to the Eastern Isles, is home to red Rondo and to Orion, the vineyard’s most widely planted grape and good as a single-variety wine. Dark-skinned Regent dominates the largest field, fondly known as The Prison, a name dating back to the days when the site was a flower farm

and harvesting the unusually big field seemed a daunting task to its weary pickers. Holly admits that when she’s pruning her way through its 281 vines, she starts to understand how they felt.

Learning how to grow the vines and blend the wines has been a fast learning curve but the couple are lucky enough to be able to draw on Val’s advice when needed. Once the wines are ready for drinking, tastings are offered outside the winery, that’s based in a stunning granite building that was once a cattle byre. The atmosphere, like Holly and James, is friendly and approachable.

“We try not to intimidate people with wine language,” Holly smiles.

Holly and James are not restricting themselves to producing wine though.

They’re also harvesting the vineyard’s apple trees, many of them native Scilly Pearls, to press into a beautifully sweet apple juice which is sold on the honesty stall at the gate. Last year the vineyard managed 2,500 half-litre bottles and in years to come the amount is set to increase as this winter the pair have planted a fruit orchard, along with 100 non-fruiting native trees, on their steep higher fields that are unsuitable for vines. James and Holly make beer too. And in autumn harvest their wild blackberries to make a lovely liqueur using base spirit from SC Dogs up the road (see page 54). “It’s the perfect tipple for those evenings when it’s blowing a hoolie,” smiles Holly.

It might just be time to drink a toast to the accidental winemakers. Cheers! ¯

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Troy town Far m How ice cream and milk saved a tiny St. Agnes farm after its flower business lost its bloom LOCATION Troytown Farm, St. Agnes 49.8915° N, 6.3537° W

FIND OUT MORE www.troytown.co.uk

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hen the British Isles utter their final glorious gasp, a suitable ritual is needed to mark this momentous event. Mine is devouring an ice cream that’s vast, ludicrously creamy and delicately perfumed with rose geranium. And as I lick - slowly to make it last - I imbibe the view: a huge Atlantic sea scribbled with the jagged teeth of the Western Rocks and behind, a crimson sun that’s slowly sinking behind the horizon.

I’m at Troytown Farm at the tip of the one-mile-long island of St. Agnes, England’s last hurrah before it tumbles into the ocean for good. Next stop west Newfoundland. Troytown is literally the end of the road.

Wandering through the boulder-studded fields above the farm, I meet the providers of the rich milk that’s the base of my ice cream: 11 cows, a mix of Jersey and Guernsey (for creaminess) and Jersey-Friesian crosses (for quantity). Sam Hicks, whose family runs the farm, introduces them: Gem, Daisy, Snowdrop. Unlike industrial milkers which are often exhausted by the age of three, Troytown’s keep going until around 12, so are very much part of the family. Sam or his father Tim milk them two by two in the tiny parlour, then carry the milk in stainless steel pails a few steps down the track to the dairy where it’s churned into ice cream. In winter, milking reduces to once a day, then drops off altogether before the cows calve in early summer.

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As I descend to the sandy beaches below, passing rogue Soleil d’Or narcissi whose yellow heads nod in the breeze, I see the place where much of the ice cream is destined: a campsite strung along the turf above the shore.

From Easter until September, it’s buzzing with families who come here for a taste of the wild.

Troytown is the perfect circular business, with farm feeding campsite and campsite feeding farm and family. But it’s not just about economics, says Sam. “Families holidaying here love seeing where their milk and ice cream comes from - our cows - and we give them an experience they never forget.”

But if you fancy joining the happy campers, you’ll need to get in quick.

From January onwards, the phone is red hot with people booking pitches.

“People often reserve a year ahead, so it can be hard to get in,” says Sam. “We hate turning people away, but we don’t have water or power supplies to grow any bigger.”

Getting to this point has been quite a journey. The Hicks family has lived on St. Agnes for as long as anyone can remember. Tim Hicks was raised at Westward Farm in the heart of the island, then left to join the Navy. When, in 1982, the lease of Duchy-owned Troytown Farm became available, Tim, now married with two toddlers (one of them Sam), snapped it up. With it came a no-frills campsite, there since the sixties. Ø

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Like most other farms on St. Agnes, Tim grew narcissi and early potatoes in the island’s handkerchief-sized fields, sheltered from the winds by towering hedges of pittosporum. Like other farms too, he kept two house cows, Eve and Ivy, to keep the family in milk.

There was no mains electricity to power a milking parlour, so he took a stool to the cows in the field and milked them by hand.

With time, islanders found keeping a cow hard work so started asking Tim for milk. He increased his herd to three, and with the arrival of electricity in 1985, started milking them by machine in a makeshift parlour, the same one he uses today.

In 2003, the family’s fortunes changed. The market for flowers was wilting, picking them was punishing work, and it was hard to find time to lift the bulbs in the summer when the campsite was busy. Tim and Sue decided to focus on their dairy, supplying not only the locals through a daily milk round (as they still do) but now exporting to neighbouring islands too.

Working from the farmhouse kitchen, Sue also made clotted cream and butter, the latter (made out of the cream) beaten into pats with wooden Scotch hands then imprinted with moulds inherited from Tim’s mother. When I visit, Sue demonstrates the printing of sunshine-coloured butter with the image of a cow to make the perfect ‘cow pat.’ Temperature is key, she says. “If it’s

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too cold, the butter cracks, but if it’s too warm, it’s just a sticky mess.”

Making clotted cream is an equally tricky art, it seems. Raw cream is gently ‘cooked’ until a crust has formed, then left in the fridge for a day or two to set. But how hard it sets depends on the breed of cow and time of year. “The Friesians’ milk is watery compared to the Jerseys’,” says Sue. “And in winter, the milk is much thinner than in summer when the grass is lush.”

As their children left the island to study and work, Tim and Sue continued to juggle cows, campsite and two holiday lets, and a few potatoes. Then, in 2006, came a bombshell: Sam, and his new wife Laura, announced they wanted to return to the island to live.

“St. Agnes was an itch that just wouldn’t go away,” smiles Sam. But how would the farm support the couple and their young family? “We knew we had to add value to our dairy products, so it was either ice cream or cheese,” says Sam. The Hicks plumped for ice cream and converted the old flower tying shed into a state-of-the art micro-dairy. Troytown now has over 40 flavours, with vanilla the bestseller.

The most local is its rose geranium, flavoured with essential oil produced from plants grown at Tim’s old family home, Westward Farm. Equally delicious is the salted caramel, using seasalt from St. Martin’s. I might just have to try that one too. Little wonder they say Troytown Farm's happiness. ¯

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Scillonian Honey One woman’s mission to save Scilly’s near-native honey bee LOCATION Tresco 49.9537° N, 6.3519° W

FIND OUT MORE www.tresco.co.uk

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ry this,” says my companion, handing me a fairy-sized spoonful of velvety, slightly jelly-like, golden honey. “You taste the world.” I drop it slowly into my mouth. It’s spicy, complex yet soothing. Then a hint of eucalpytus gently strokes my palate.

I’m with bee buff Jilly Halliday, whom I’ve already secretly nicknamed Queen Bee. And the ‘world’ she’s referring to is Tresco Abbey Garden, in which we’re standing, which explodes with sub-tropical plants from over 80 countries. Even in late winter, it’s a riot of colour, with flaming torches of jagged-leaved aloes, pretty protea rosettes and tiny pink manuka blossoms. Acacia longifolia is flowering too, its furry yellow lambstail blooms trembling in the breeze, and nearby I spot silky silver trunks of eucalpytus.

“A bee won’t find forage like this anywhere else in the world,” says Jilly, formerly a florist for The Savoy Group, as we weave through the exotic foliage.

“I call the honey ‘bonkers honey’.”

With a honey as special as this, it’s little surprise its price tag is pretty special too - around £15 for an eight-ounce jar. “People say ‘How could you pay that for a tiny jar of honey?’,” says Jilly.

“But this is liquid gold.”

Another reason for the honey’s price tag is its scarcity. There are just five hives in Tresco Abbey Garden, nestled among olive trees beside the vegetable plots. They’re managed by head gardener Andrew Lawson who also helped Jilly establish two of her own hives; the bees from those help pollinate native apple trees that this spring will become a community orchard.

But it’s the hive just outside the Abbey Garden, that for me has the dreamiest setting - a clearing known as Rowesfield that’s sheltered by a string of

“

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rustling Monterey pines. The hive has an unusual casing - a whisky barrel and is owned by Andrew Walder from St. Martin’s who uses its honey to flavour his Honey Spiced Rum (see page 54). But it’s not just here for its precious har-vest. Researchers are training cameras on it to observe the bees’ behaviour, and the islands’ schoolchildren come here to learn about bees and other pollinators.

In all, Tresco has eleven hives, eleven being the ‘magic’ number that Jilly believes a Scillonian island can sustain; fewer and you risk inbreeding, more and the bees risk depriving other pollinators of forage. “Honey is a wonderful thing,” she says. “But we mustn’t produce it at the expense of other insects which also feed on the nectar and use the pollen to fertilise a wide range of plants. It’s about balance.”

To achieve that balance, in 2021 Jilly established The Scillonian Honey Bee Project. Another aim was to save Scilly’s native dark honey bee. “Our honey bees are relatively pure and resilient,” she says. “They’ve adapted to Scilly’s particular weather conditions. For example, they have darker and longer fur, which keeps them warmer and allows them to collect nectar in cooler weather. I even saw bees flying during February’s storms!”

The best way to save Scilly’s native honey bees is to avoid importing bees, says Jilly. Thanks to their isolation, Scilly’s bee colonies are lucky enough to be free of the varroa mite, a claim that can only made by two other islands in Britain, the Isle of Man and Scotland’s Colonsay. To ensure Scilly’s bees stay that way, she’s calling on the Government (with Duchy backing) to make imports from anywhere other than these two varroa-free islands made illegal. Ø

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Another of the project’s goals is to enable beekeepers on the different islands to talk to each other and share experiences. “Each beekeeper’s local conditions are different, so their honey is too,” says Jilly.

At Hillside Farm on rugged Bryher, Ruth Eggins’ honey bees forage on a fabulous mix of grassland flowers, gorse, brambles and heather, all of which flavour her honey. She is careful to remove only the honey that’s not needed by her bees over winter, so it’s a sparse resource that she sells to Issy Tibbs at Veronica Farm to make honey fudge (see page 60). Above all, Ruth appreciates the important role that her bees and other insects play in pollinating the farm’s chemical-free vegetable and fruit crops, including apples, strawberries and hot chillies, which are turned into jams and sauces (see page 40) On St. Martin’s, pittosporum is the dominant flavour of the honey produced by beekeeper Ben Gillett. The pittosporum protects the bees (and islanders’ crops) from winds and, as it flowers early, provides great spring forage. It, along with brambles and daisies, produces a fresh, zingy golden honey whose fans include chef Rick Stein who featured Scilly’s beekeepers in a recent BBC Two TV series. In fact, he liked it so much he made Ben’s precious honey the star ingredient of a luxurious sponge pudding (see recipe page 27).

Ben bought his first bees from Mike Hicks, at Westward Farm on St. Agnes (see page 36), who has had hives for decades. His bees are vital to help pol-

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linate his apple trees whose fruits he turns into juice and cider. He uses their caramel-hued honey to flavour his gins too. But some years, there is none; in fact, this year is the first year for three years that Mike has had any to sell. At Salakee Farm on St. Mary’s (see page 48), Kylie and Dave Mumford adopt a similar stance, seeing bees as an integral part of the workforce in their organic market garden, and honey a bonus rather than an expectation.

It’s not just the Scillonian honey bee that Jilly is desperate to preserve though. Equally important are other pollinators such as solitary bees, hoverflies, wasps, moths and butterflies.

Scilly also has its own native bumble bee - a ginger-furred sub-species of the Moss Carder bee - but sadly it’s not been sighted since 2012. This summer the Bee Project will join forces with Exeter University to conduct a major insect survey to get a comprehensive picture of what’s on the archipelago.

But saving Scilly’s pollinators is not just the responsibility of beekeepers, says Jilly. “As islanders we can all try to avoid using pesticides, which can kill bees, and leave verges and garden areas uncut so that wildflowers, which bees and other insects feed on, can flourish,” she says. “Visitors can help by buying organically grown produce, or donating to the Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust or to our Crowdfunder campaign.”

When it comes to buying honey, Jilly says love it and eat it, but not too much. I might not taste another spoonful for a while, so I feel hugely lucky to have tried it. ¯

RICK STEIN’S STEAMED SPONGE PUDDING WITH HONEY BUTTERSCOTCH SAUCE As featured on BBC 2 Rick Stein’s Cornwall, this steamed pudding was made using Ben Gillett’s beautiful flavoured amber coloured honey with nectar from the flower’s pittosporum, agapanthus, brambles & daisies.

1. Generously grease a 1 litre/1¾ pint pudding basin with butter. Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat in the honey, then beat in the eggs, one at a time, adding a spoonful of flour with the last egg. Fold in the remaining flour. Cover the basin with a piece of greased foil, pleated in the centre, and tie in place with string.

2. Place in a steamer basket over a pan of boiling water, cover with the lid, and steam for 2 hours, topping up the pan with boiling water if needed.

3. To make the butterscotch sauce, place the butter, sugar and honey in a pan over a low heat, stirring until all the ingredients have melted and combined. Stir in the cream and keep warm.

4. To serve, remove the foil from the pudding basin

INGREDIENTS • 175g/6oz butter, softened, plus extra for greasing • 175g/6oz light muscovado sugar • 1 tbsp honey • 3 large free-range eggs • 175g/6oz self-raising flour • Cornish ice cream to serve

FOR THE BUTTERSCOTCH SAUCE • 50g /1¾oz butter • 100g/3½oz light muscovado sugar • 150g/5½oz honey, plus extra to serve • 150ml/¼ pint double cream

and carefully run a knife around the edge of the basin to loosen the pudding. Cover with an inverted plate and turn out. Cut into wedges and serve with the honey butterscotch sauce, Cornish ice cream and more honey if you like.

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Scilly Spirit Island couple draw inspiration from Scilly’s famous Bishop Rock Lighthouse to create their award-winning spirits LOCATION Scilly Spirit, Old Town, St. Mary’s 49.9137° N, 6.3016° W

FIND OUT MORE www.scillyspirit.com

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f you had to choose a single emblem of Scilly, I suspect it would be Bishop Rock Lighthouse. Its tapered 49-metre cylindrical tower, visible from across the archipelago, stands proud, solitary and mysterious amid the heaving swell of the Atlantic.

Bishop is stamped on every Scillonian’s psyche.

So it’s no wonder the iconic beacon inspired Arthur and Hilary Miller when they set up their Scilly Spirit Distillery in Old Town on St. Mary’s in 2019. Seeking to encapsulate the ‘Scilly spirit’ (pun intended) in every way they could, they tracked down bottles that captured the Bishop’s elegant form.

Their fronts were emblazoned with a silhouette of the treacherous Western Rocks, from whose razor-sharp teeth the famous Lighthouse aims to protect passing ships.

A vessel called the Royal Oake that foundered on those rocks in 1665, nearly 200 years before the Lighthouse was dreamed of, also inspired the recipe for their Island Gins. When Arthur and Hilary unearthed the ship’s log they discovered its cargo included peppercorns from Java in Indonesia. After testing myriad types of black and pink peppercorns to use as a botanical, they settled on a pink one with just the right fruity peppery notes.

Even the number of botanicals in their Island Gins links into another ingredient of Scilly’s history - the pilot gigs that guided trade ships through the archipelago’s rocky jaws-in-waiting (and happily, had rescued the crew of the Royal Oake.) Since the boats tra-

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ditionally had a crew of six oarsmen, plus a cox, the Millers use six botanicals. Juniper, without which gin would not qualify as gin, represents the cox.

Orange peel is another botanical that’s always included, but for family, rather than historical, reasons. “My grandma made marmalade and sold it across St. Mary’s until she was over a hundred, she was a real inspiration” says Hilary.

“So dried orange peel is an important aroma for me.”

The couple have also applied their maritime wit to their higher ABV (alcohol by volume) gin labelling. Gin that’s 57% or more is usually termed Navy Strength, but the Millers adopt the term Atlantic Strength for the stronger of their two core gins, and appropriately, flavour it with wild Atlantic fennel, gathered on the coastpath near Old Town. “In the 1600s to test that a gin was indeed navy strength, sailors poured it over gunpowder,” says Arthur, who conducts tours of the distillery in the tourist season. “If it ignited, it had passed the test!”

But it’s the colours of the glass bottles, echoing the incredible hues of Scilly’s sea, that really sets the distillery apart - vibrant aqua green for the classic Island Gin and azur blue for the Atlantic strength. “We saw a photograph in a Lonely Planet guide showing the sea between Samson and St. Mary’s, so with the photographer’s permission, we based our colours on that,” says Hilary. “It took several attempts to get the correct turquoise, and each time we had to wait 12 weeks for the new bottle to arrive, which

was torture. Finally when we thought we’d got it right, we tested our colours by holding the bottles over the sea.

They were spot on. No Pantone colour match cards needed here!”

Hilary is no newcomer to Scilly’s turquoise waters, having bathed in them throughout childhood holidays.

Her family, the Pritchards, have lived on St. Mary’s for decades, and in the sixties her father worked as General Manager at the Star Castle Hotel. He subsequently ran a hotel on the mainland, then returned to St. Mary’s. In 2016 Hilary, who had also had a career in hospitality, and Arthur, who had marketed big-brand spirits for 25 years, moved back to join him.

Given their backgrounds, setting up a distillery seemed an obvious choice, especially after European grant funding became available. The pair bought two stills, Daisy and Bishop, imported their first tank of neutral grain spirit and started production. Once the gin is distilled and has been left to settle for at least six weeks, it’s cut with local water (provided by the surrounding sea) to reach the desired alcohol level. “So people get a little bit of Scilly in every sip” smiles Hilary.

Then came the idea of Gin School the perfect solution to how to fill a rainy day on Scilly. Students choose from a library of 60 botanicals to invent a recipe for their own personal gin, then craft it in a mini-still. “Local gorse flower is hugely popular,” says Hilary.

“People often ask us to continue making their personal gin, so they can gift it to friends and family.”

Look at the 70-odd gin bottles lined up along the wall of the distillery and it’s clear Arthur appreciates the importance of good packaging. “Our excuse for buying them was to look at their bottle shapes and labels,” he smiles.

“We haven’t drunk them all though there’s still gin left in some.”

The couple’s painstaking research paid dividends. Just two weeks after opening, their Island Gin bottle won the Best Design and Packaging category in the spirits category of the Drinks Business Awards. The bottle’s contents soon won accolades too, including the prestigious “Master” award in the Global Gin Masters Awards - one of only 14 to win the award, out of 320 gins tasted.

The packaging may be slick, but it’s not at the expense of Scilly’s fragile environment. Tamper seals, ingeniously shaped like pilot gig oars, are made of paper rather than plastic, for instance, and bottles are posted in plastic-free cardboard boxes. Managing resources responsibly guides the way the gin is made too. Distilleries normally guzzle huge amounts of water in the cooling process, but Scilly Spirit’s is simply recycled. Used botanicals are fed to the pigs at Salakee Farm (see page 48), and deliveries are made in a battery-operated van.

Once you’ve tasted Island Gins, you may never look at Bishop Rock the same way again. But hopefully the journey to the drinks cabinet to fetch your Bishop-shaped bottle will be a little less hazardous than a trip to the lighthouse itself. ¯

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T he Island Baker y A St. Martin’s baker deals with the challenges of living on an island and feeding up to 600 customers a day LOCATION The Island Bakery, Higher Town, St. Martin's 49.9611° N, 6.2843° W

FIND OUT MORE www.theislandbakery-stmartins.com

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eing a successful baker on a Scillonian island demands a wellstocked storecupboard of skills.

Not only do you have to know your flours and kneading techniques, but you need to be an expert on weather, tides and stock control too. And a cool head comes in pretty handy as well.

So says Wolverhampton-born Barney McLachlan, who this year celebrates ten years at the helm of The Island Bakery in Higher Town on St. Martin’s.

When he starts work at 4.30am, he has to guess how many bread loaves, pizzas and pasties to make - and that depends on the weather and when and where the inter-island launches are arriving. “If it looks like poor weather, I know people won’t be making day trips here. On the other hand we may get more customers from St. Martin’s, who are looking for something to do on a wet day. I have to make a judgement on numbers within minutes of getting in.”

On fine summer days, if a boat arrives full, Barney may receive up to a hundred customers at once. The Island Bakery is not only a welcome source of sustenance, but with its tables in the peaceful agapanthus-decked courtyard in front, an obligatory stop off on any island tour too. “Sometimes I then get the nod that an extra boat is being laid on to bring the passengers who didn’t fit on the first one, so then the pressure’s on to bake more produce.”

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Doing that is not easy though, as the bakery’s kitchen is tiny, and as soon as Barney finishes making his breads, other team members arrive to start on cakes and pasties. “There’s not really space to make two products at once, so we have to hot-stove it.”

Boat timetables dictate what will sell too. If a boat is landing at Higher Town Quay at around eleven, customers will be after coffee and cake. But if it goes to Lower Town Quay and passengers have to walk up across the island, they’ll arrive at lunchtime wanting pasties or filled rolls. “Either way, customers tend to arrive all at once, which takes some getting used to - and a cool head,” Barney smiles. During the pandemic families entered one at a time, a system Barney now plans to keep. “It worked well and took away a lot of the stress.” Some days he can get as many as 600 customers.

Freshly baked bread, a rare commodity on Scilly, is Barney’s big thing and something he mastered while working as night baker for over a decade before taking the plunge and setting up The Island Bakery. The bestseller is his granary, made with Northampton-produced Heygates flour, which he also sells in a half size as a Camper’s Loaf.

The latter was created after Ben and Caroline Gillett, who run the campsite, told Barney that a lot of bread was being wasted, so he came up with a diddy-sized loaf which proved a hit.

Gourmet customers make a beeline for the guest breads, which run for a week at a time. Favourites include the pillow-soft Seasalt focaccia, made with salt produced on the island by Andrew Walder, and the cheese, sage and onion plait, using home-grown sage.

Both make a perfect lunch on one of St. Martin’s spectacular sandy beaches - that’s if you’ve not already stocked up with crab and lobster rolls, bulging with pristine-fresh shellfish from St. Martin’s or Bryher (see page 2) topped with feathery sprigs of home-grown fennel.

Even making bread, though, isn’t as straighforward as you’d think. Barney always has half an eye on his stocks of flour, all of which has to be imported from the mainland via St. Mary’s on two different freight boats. It’s a lengthy journey, and of course if the weather turns bad, boats can be delayed or cancelled. “I have to work out what stocks I already have, what I’ve ordered and when it’s likely to arrive, and what I’m going to run out of,” smiles Barney. “It’s quite a juggling act. If I get it wrong, there could be no bread. That’s happened only once, and luckily it was a quiet day and the customers were happy to take pasties instead.”Other bakeries might make life easier for themselves by freezing their produce, just in case. But Barney likes to bake everything “bang on fresh.” That’s particularly important in the case of his

famous pasties, made to a recipe from a 1945 Women’s Institute cookery book, that a local fisherman brought in 20 years ago. Barney’s made a few tweaks, like using vegetable margarine rather than lard and freshly ground pepper instead of pre-ground white, but the key ingredients such as Cornish beef skirt and swede remain. The pasties are now the bakery’s bestseller, usually sold out by early afternoon, but in the rare event that any are left over they appear at the family’s supper table and are quickly demolished by Barney’s two children.

Equally tempting in the savoury department are his sausage rolls, homity pies, and bacon frazzles.

There’s plenty for the sweet-toothed too, including a fudgy moist chocolate cola cake that few customers can resist.

“Shortly after I started, I had a 14-yearold schoolkid called Dan doing work experience here. He had a recipe for chocolate and cola cake that he wanted to try out, so we made it, and it’s been our most popular cake ever since.

Much of the hands-on baking is now taken care of by able islanders whom Barney has trained up, allowing him to stand back and make sure the bakery is heading in the right direction.

“I’m always checking what works,” he says. “I want us to do what we’re doing really well.” he says. Looking at the queues snaking across the courtyard, he’s succeeding. ¯

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We s t w a r d F a r m G i n A family-run small batch gin distillery uses botanicals and the island’s common gorse flowers to influence flavours LOCATION Westward Farm, St. Agnes 49.8919° N, 6.3535° W

FIND OUT MORE www.westwardfarm.co.uk

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hen life hands you gorse flowers, make gin. So runs the motto infusing the Wild Wingletang gin crafted by Aiden Hicks at Westward Farm on St. Agnes.

Venture onto the rugged heathlands of Wingletang Down, where the Hicks family graze their Red Ruby beef cattle, and you’ll see gorse bushes wearing their cheery yellow overcoats virtually all year round. They’re so omnipresent, in fact, that they gave Wingletang its name - from ‘whin’ meaning gorse, and ‘tang’, which means kelp, equally abundant.

The area backs on to Westward Farm, so when Aiden was a child, Wingletang was his playground. He and his brothers scrambled over its vast granite boulders (some once forming Bronze Age tombs), played in the heather, and fished for mackerel off its coastal rocks. After a big sea they were sometimes lucky enough to find ceramic beads which had been deposited by a shipwrecked Venetian ship in the 17th century and subsequently gave their name to Beady Pool.

The idea of using Wingletang’s gorse blooms to make gin was born after another flower, the narcissus, lost its appeal. “Like everyone on St. Agnes, we grew narcissi,” says Aiden. “But we had no control over their price and quite often we were working at a loss.

Also, I’m six foot six, so I had to bend a long way down to pick them! We knew we need to diversify and find a product we could have total control over.”

It was a long and laborious search.

Aiden’s mother Christine had always loved aromatherapy, so looked into finding a way to distill the scent of

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the narcissi. That didn’t prove feasible, so the family started growing plants for essential oils to infuse into soaps and shower gels which they branded Twenty Eight - the number of miles between Scilly and the Cornish mainland.

Gradually bushes of rose geranium, lavender, chamomile and rosemary replaced the ordered rows of flowers, and by 2015, the Hicks had tied their last bunch of narcissi.

Then suddenly Aiden was struck by illness, which stripped him of his previous energy. He wracked his brain to think of something he could do in the future that wouldn’t need a high level of physical fitness. The gin idea was born. “Gin was very popular, we already had a good knowledge of botanicals and distilling, and no-one else was making gin on Scilly, so it seemed like a no-brainer,” he says. “It was a leap into the dark, but I decided to go for it.”

Aiden kept the business deliberately small, with just two 25-litre stills, each making 28 - Westward’s magic number - bottles at time. “We must be one of the smallest commercial distilleries in the country,” he smiles. “But at the height of the season, we have to work our stills hard to keep up with demand, and run them twice a day, seven days a week.”

Many of the ingredients that the farm already grew for its soaps, such as rose geranium and chamomile, could be used for gin too. Combined with a few exotic botanicals and pure island water, they produced a 28-mile gin, its name echoing Christine’s beauty products. The 28-mile gin recipe changes constantly depending on what plants are available, but this year the Hicks

hope to make a honey and orange blend to celebrate their precious honey (see page 22).

Aiden and his father Mike also started foraging for ingredients, such as gorse flowers to use in their Wild Wingletang Gin. First they distill the flowers into a single botanical spirit, then they combine that with their classic dry Scilly Gin, made from a range of botanicals including juniper, and homegrown coriander seed and angelica. It’s a similar process for their bestselling Rose Geranium Gin, distilled from the farm’s homegrown rose geranium that also flavours the ice creams at Troytown Farm (see page 16), run by Mike’s bother Tim. As the family developed their range of gins, they called on fellow islanders, including ex-chef and food writer Piers Lewin, to lend their palates and give honest opinions on the levels of flavourings. Unsurprisingly, they weren’t short of willing volunteers. After months of tasting and blending, Aiden dropped off his first batch at the island’s tiny shop and looked forward to a well earned rest. But later that day he got a call saying all the bottles had sold.

Businesses on the mainland started placing orders, raving about the gin’s smoothness and distinctive flavours.

The gin was here to stay.

Today, gin is Westward’s main income, and in addition to producing gins to sell online and in Scillonian shops, the farm is teaming up with local businesses to create custom-made gins. For Tanglewood Kitchen on St. Mary’s, for instance, it’s making a spicy pink gin which gets its rosy hue from the addition of a dash of Ango-

stura bitters - originally added by Royal Navy sailors in the 1800s to prevent sea sickness.

Westward is also working with Tresco Abbey Garden to produce a flavoursome gin from coleonema, or confetti bush, which flourishes in the sub-tropical gardens. “In South Africa, where the plant originates, it’s used as a herb, so we were pretty sure it would work well,” says Aiden. “The result was outstanding, with notes of pine, citrus and spice.”

Given the importance of fresh botanicals, distilling follows the seasons.

So in spring the Hicks will be harvesting Wingletang’s gorse flowers when at their flavoursome best. They’re gathered in the morning, once the dew has burned off. “We go out as a family and pick around two and a half kilograms of blossoms, enough for 300 bottles.

We then steep them in alcohol straight away, while they’re really fresh” says Aiden. “The picking takes a couple of hours. We then spend about 24 hours removing gorse prickles from our fingers!”

But it’s worth the hardship, he says.

“When the flowers are in the sun, they give off a wonderful coconut scent, as any visitor to St. Agnes will know. This dissipates when the flowers are distilled. Instead, you get a deep, green nutty flavour, perhaps not surprising when you remember that gorse belongs to the pea family.”

How to drink it? Pour your chilled Wild Wingletang over some ice and add a plain quality tonic and a twist of lemon, says Aiden. Carry your glass to a grassy spot beside Wingletang’s iconic Devil’s Punch Bowl Logan Stone and lift it to your lips. Savour Scilly in a sip. ¯

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Scilly Chilli How the world’s hottest chilli saved Bryher’s Hillside Farm LOCATION Hillside Farm, Bryher 49.9524° N, 6.3574° W

FIND OUT MORE www.scillychilli.co.uk

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ass the wooden hut opposite Hillside Farm at the rocky storm-lashed extremity of Bryher and you may spot farmer Ruth Eggins in full PPE, including goggles, industrial facemask and double gloves.

Approach a bit closer and your nose and throat will start to tingle. You could be forgiven for imagining that the farm is the victim of a rogue Covid outbreak or freak chemical attack.

In fact, Ruth is handling the world’s hottest chilli, a strange brain-shaped fruit called Carolina Reaper. Even its crumpled form and beaked witchlike ‘nose’ look grimly sinister. This red devil was developed in Carolina, USA, by the aptly named Ed Currie, and in 2013 declared the hottest chilli pepper in the world by Guinness World Records.

At Hillside, Ruth chops and boils it up to produce the farm’s newest product, a head-blowing sauce called Bryher Fire.

Try it if you dare.

For Ruth, donning full PPE is an unexpected throwback to the days when she worked as a nurse on the mainland, before moving to the 40-acre Duchy-tenanted farm on Bryher with her farmer husband Graham and three children in 2015.

Over the following years Hillside flourished as a traditional small mixed farm, combining the keeping of egg-laying hens and hardy Red Devon cattle on its heather-clad coastal heathlands with the cultivation of vegetables and strawberries that were sold

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on an honesty stall outside the handsome white farmhouse. Guiding the Eggins on their journey was a desire to support biodiversity and minimise their carbon footprint.

Then in 2020 the pandemic hit, and their business hit the rocks.

“We were totally dependent on our holiday lets and our honesty stall. So when Covid hit, our income collapsed,” says Ruth. “We realised we had to find another source of income by coming up with a product that was sustainable, that could be posted to the mainland, and could potentially be scaled up. Resilience was key.”

Ruth and Graham experimented with a number of products. First, airdried beef, or biltong, from the meat of their Red Devons. It was delicious, but the meat was not available all year.

Next, crisps made from their abundant kale, but their bitter taste ruled them out. Then, when the farm had excess chillies at the end of the season, a farm volunteer suggested drying and selling them. Ruth borrowed a dehydrator from a neighbour, gave it a try and the dried chillies proved an instant hit both on the honesty stall and with customers on the mainland. Being light, they were easy to post. “People loved them and asked if we’d be producing them again the following year, so we knew we’d found our saviour crop,” says Ruth. “Scilly Chilli had been born.”

In 2021 the pair planted an array of joyously colourful varieties of Ø

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differing strengths. There were mild Mexican Jalapenos which Ruth used in a sweet chilli jam and a dipping sauce, and mid-hot Cayennes from South America (named after the Cayenne River in French Guiana) which were the hero ingredient of her Piri Piri sauce.

She dried Cayennes and Ring of Fire and ground them into a powder that gave a kick to chocolate and locally made fudge. At the super-hot end of the scale were Seven Pot Katy, the fruity but worryingly named Fatalii, and the fearsomely ferocious Carolina Reaper, all reserved for the Bryher Fire sauce, whose tiny bottle is labelled with the company’s ingenious logo (created by a neighbour in exchange for veg), a Mexican day-of-the-dead skull.

One of the Eggins’ most exciting finds was the tiny, sunshine-coloured Aji Limon, from Peru. “As its name suggests, it tastes of lemon,” says Ruth.

“People who can’t normally eat citrus can get their citrus hit with this.” She turned it into Lemon Chilli Jam, which sold out almost immediately. “Last year we only planted ten plants, as an experiment, so this year we’re planting 90!”

As the couple experimented with their fiery fruits, they tried them out on any islanders who were willing.

“We call them the CHOB club - chilly heads of Bryher!” laughs Graham. “The dried jalapeno proved a real hit in chilli con carne made with the mince of our home-reared beef (see recipe page 47),

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and people loved our sweet chilli dipping sauce with crabcakes made from Island Fish crab (see page 2).”

The chillies fit in well around the other crops grown at Hillside. The farm is justly famous for its sweet teardrop-shaped strawberries, and just as those and the spring vegetables run out of steam, the chillies ripen. (The Eggins buy the chilli plants in as seedlings in April, from a specialist nursery in Truro). Unlike the strawberries, which are grown outside, the chillies are cultivated in polytunnels which reach the searing temperatures they love. Pollination is aided by companion plants such as calendula.

Chillies also tick many boxes in terms of sustainability. No articificial inputs or pesticides are used; instead, soils are fertilised with manure from the farm’s animals and Graham makes a feed from seaweed off the beach and discarded crab and lobster shells. If young seedlings are attacked by aphids, biological controls see them off. And packaging is glass, tin or brown envelopes, rather than plastic.

Another big plus is that as well as being delicious and sustainable, the chillies can be frozen then processed into sauces and jams, and sold online, during the quiet winter months when the farm has little other income. The Reaper and its companions may be grim-faced, but they’ve proved to be knights in scorching red armour. ¯

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CHILLI CON CARNE Ruth & Graham’s Scilly Chilli inspired chilli con carne using their own grass-fed beef.

METHOD 1. Fry off some of our own 100% grass fed beef mince in a pan on a hight heat until well coloured and slightly caramelised. Remove from pan and place on some kitchen roll.

2. On a gentle heat add the onion to the pan which has just been used for cooking the beef, add some mixed beans of choice, chop and add some dried jalapeño chillies and a teaspoon of Scilly Chilli powder (increase or reduce depending on taste) for 10 minutes.

INGREDIENTS • Top quality British beef mince 500g • 1 finely chopped medium onion • 1 400g tin of mixed beans • Dried jalapeño chillies • 1 tsp Scilly Chilli powder • 1 pint beef stock • 1 tbsp tomato puree • Salt and pepper to season

3. Add the beef and mix, add 1 pint of beef stock and 1 tablespoon of tomato puree, add salt and pepper to season and simmer for at least 1 hour (the longer the better) stirring occasionally to ensure it does not dry out.

4. Serve with British Naked Oats as an alternative to rice.

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Salakee Far m St. Mary’s Farmers Kylie & Dave Mumford are helping Scilly move towards being self-sufficient in food LOCATION Salakee Farm, St. Mary’s 49.9163° N, 6.2926° W

FIND OUT MORE www.salakeefarm.co.uk

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hat’s for supper at Salakee tonight? Duck legs with duckfat roasties and wilted chard?

A Dexter beef brisket slow-cooked with garden carrots? Or perhaps a simple frittata of sunshine-yellow eggs and just-picked spinach? Join Kylie and Dave Mumford and their two toddlers in their cosy kitchen at Salakee Farm on St. Mary’s, the chances are that no ingredient will have travelled more than a few fields.

“Most of our suppers are Salakee suppers,” says Kylie. “Being as self-sufficient as possible seems to make sense when you live on a slab of granite in the Atlantic that’s 28 miles from the mainland.”

Salakee’s Duchy-owned farmhouse has been home to Dave’s family for three generations and is where Dave himself was born. Its 37 acres have an idyllic situation, bordering Porth Hellick bay on the island’s southeast coast, whose vast strangely-shaped granite rocks look like a Salvador Dali painting. One rock supposedly resembling a loaded camel flanks a memorial to the unfortunate Sir Cloudesley Shovel, Admiral of the Fleet, whose body was washed up here after his ship HMS Association, came to grief nearby in 1707, drowning him and all 800 men aboard. To reach Salakee you follow footpath that’s fringed with ancient twisting elms and in spring, narcissi that have escaped from the neighbouring flower fields.

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On the farm itself, beds packed with neat rows of chard and lettuces sit alongside sheds that resound to the cheeps of fluffy duckling chicks and pastures that are grazed by Primrose and Nancy, Salakee’s two house cows who provide the family with creamy milk and yoghurt.

As the cows have calves, they’re are milked just once a day to ensure their offspring have plenty too.

The cows are a reminder of Salakee’s past when it was a dairy farm with a herd of British Friesians. Narcissi and early potatoes were grown too. But when Dave was 12, the cows were sold, and the farm gradually wound down.

After studying at agricultural college, Dave decided to take Salakee over. He was joined by his new partner Kylie, who had come over to Scilly to help on the inter-island boats for a season and never managed to leave.

The couple cast around for a standout product and after meeting a duck breeder at a Cornish food festival, settled on duck, an island first. “We knew we wanted to produce healthy food for our local community in a nature-friendly way,” says Kylie. “Ducks were ideal, as the breed we chose flourished outdoors, and obligingly also fertilised our hay fields with their nitrogen-rich poo.

We buy them in as one-day-old chicks.”

The duck proved a hit, snapped up

by St. Mary’s restaurants including the Star Castle, Tanglewood Kitchen and On the Quay. Mainland chefs got

salivating too, including James Martin who featured it on BBC1’s Saturday Kitchen. “One chef asked if he could buy fifty, but we had to politely tell him we don’t sell off-island. Our ducks are for our local community,” says Kylie.

Rare-breed hens, seasonal turkeys and a herd of hardy Dexter cattle followed. The Dexters were chosen for their ability to survive just on pasture all year which means they don’t need carbon-guzzling imported feed. They are moved daily to keep soil structure intact, allow the grass to recover and create habitats for wildlife such as birds and butterflies. “This grazing system increases biodiversity while also building up the amount of carbon that’s kept in the soil, something that’s vital to combat climate change,” says Dave.

Right from the start Kylie grew her own veg “because I couldn’t find any organic produce to buy”. But three years ago, realising how much “free” fertiliser they had in the form of animal manure, the pair decided to establish a market garden producing vegetables to sell. They use “no-dig” techniques to preserve the structure of the soil. “Being a mixed farm with livestock we don’t need to import expensive artificial fertilisers or pesticides from the mainland,” says Kylie.

“Instead, we use our animal manures and locally harvested seaweed to create healthy soils. Healthy soils create healthy food and healthy people. We

want to leave good soils for our children and grandchildren too.”

The stars of the veg beds are salad leaves, from frilly salanova to lacey mustard leaves, baby kale and chard.

Equally popular are Salakee’s colourful beetroots (including an eye-catching candy-striped Chioggia), rainbow chard, purple carrots, and bright pink radishes that three-year-old Artie eats like lolipops. “We like growing colourful things,” says Kylie. “It sells well and it makes us feel good too.”

There are even fruits for dessert too. Rhubarb and raspberries abound in summer, and soon islanders will be able to enjoy apples, medlars, plums and mulberries from 500 trees the pair have just planted with the help of the Woodland Trust.

Juggling the different parts of the farm while caring for two toddlers can be challenging. But Kylie and Dave believe growing fresh, seasonal, chemical-free food for the island is vital.

“Rocketing fuel prices mean the cost of importing food from the mainland is soaring, both financially and environmentally. That makes us vulnerable,” says Dave. “I believe the island should and could be growing far more of its own food, and doing that in a nature-friendly way. We are blessed with plenty of fertile land, and farmers with generations of know-how, so it seems crazy not to be feeding ourselves.

Building up our resilience is key.” ¯

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SC Dogs St. Martin’s farmer experiments with growing sugarcane to produce a field-to-bottle rum LOCATION SC Dogs, Carron Farm, St. Martin’s 49.9596° N, 6.2864° W

FIND OUT MORE www.scdogs.co.uk

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troll alongside the fields at Carron Farm on St. Martin’s this spring and you may spot the first tender grassy shoots of a crop that at first glance looks like wheat. Actually, the plants are a lot more exotic - sugarcane. It’s cultivated by islander-farmer Andrew Walder, who has already been spicing up Scillonian dinner tables with his seasalt. The cane is for his latest venture, a distillery called SC Dogs, the name - a blend of ‘sea dog’ and SC, Scilly’s fishing boat prefix - a nod to Andrew’s seafaring past. His dream: to use the cane as the base for Britain’s first field-to-bottle rum.

“We’re already quite unusual in making rum from scratch using just sugar cane molasses,” says Andrew.

“If we can now go one step further by creating rum from our own sugarcane, that’ll be hugely exciting. We don’t get frosts here, so Scilly’s the perfect place in the UK to try growing it.”

While he waits for his trial crop to mature, Andrew has plenty to keep him busy among the shiny steel stills and storage tanks in his micro-distillery, inside what used to be the farm’s flower packing sheds. Making his rum is a precision art: first he blends Caribbean sugarcane molasses with pure island water, and adds yeast. The ‘wash’ is left to ferment, then distilled in a pot still.

From the resulting 50% ABV spirit, Andrew crafts his other rums. They include a colourless ‘white’ rum that’s

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proofed down to 40% alcohol; and a 42% golden rum, created by adding a bit of molasses. Later this year, he’ll also be bottling a barrel-aged rum, made by maturing white rum in an American oak cask for two years.

“The rum reacts with the oak, and draws out its unique flavours and colours,” says Andrew. “It promises to be pretty special.”

Perhaps most exciting, though, is Andrew’s honey-spiced rum using honey from Tresco (see page 22). “The honey’s flavours are complex and utterly unique, thanks to the incredible range of exotic plants that the bees forage on in Tresco Abbey Garden,” he says. To ensure a reliable supply of the precious honey, Andrew has his own beehive which he houses inside a former whisky barrel located just outside the garden. To make the rum, he steeps botanicals in his base spirit, strains it then sweetens it with a smidge of demarara sugar. Finally he mixes in the honey. “You need very little. It’s powerful stuff.”

So how did it all begin? After gaining a degree in photography, Andrew joined the Merchant Navy, then got a job on the British Antarctic Survey ship, the RRS Shackleton. “We spent the British winter in Antarctica but in summer (Antarctic winter) the ship was contracted to inspect oil and gas rigs in the North Sea,” recalls Andrew.

“One day in Aberdeen the ship Ø

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broke down, and we were sitting waiting for parts to arrive from Japan. The boss suggested a visit to the tiny Edradour whisky distillery in Pitlochry so off we all went off in a minibus. It was an inspiration. I loved the way distilling combined art and science. Something clicked, the idea was seeded!”

The long process of research began, as Andrew looked into buying equipment, obtaining arcane official licences (eight in total) and funding, and developing recipes. To find out which rums people liked, on his 40th birthday he invited islanders to a ten-rum tasting at the Seven Stones Inn - an evening he will never forget. “The majority preferred the spiced rums,” says Andrew.

“But even the non-rum drinkers were surprised at the variety of rums out there, so it was quite an eye opener.”

He then devoted equal painstaking attention and artistry to the design and labelling of the bottles. Each rum is dedicated to one of Scilly’s own historical sea dogs, whose portraits (painted by local artists) are printed on the inside of the label and peer ghostlike through the liquor. “I hope my face will be on one of the rums one day,” he laughs. “You have to be dead to qualify though, so hopefully it won’t be just yet.”

By October 2019 Andrew had distilled his first rum - his white rum - and prepared for a boozy launch in April 2020. Then, in March, the pandemic hit, so plans for a launch party

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and face-to-face sales and tours were scrapped. Andrew quickly set up an online shop, and used his base spirit to produce a heavenly smelling sanitiser.

The quiet, visitor-free days of 2020 and 2021 were far from idle. In October 2020 he launched his golden and spiced rums, to enthusiastic acclaim.

“People loved their rounded finish, with a tang of the sea,” says Andrew.

He then extended his range of spirits by developing first a vodka, made by stripping alcohol out of white rum and proofing it down to 40%; then a whisky from his home-grown barley (ready in around three years); and finally, a limited edition cider brandy, the result of a collaboration with apple growers on St. Mary’s and St. Agnes, which will be released later this year.

So far, the distillery is ticking a lot of boxes. “It’s reinvigorated the farm and allowed us to diversify away from flowers, which were no longer viable due to the transport costs,” says Andrew. “I have control of all parts of the process, while spreading my risk by producing a range of different spirits. It’s also exciting collaborating with other Scillonian businesses and using their ingredients.

Best of all, I can enjoy my wife and three children, rather than just seeing them for three or four weeks at a time on breaks from being at sea.”

Whether those tiny green shoots grow into sugarcane that Andrew can turn into rum, only time will tell. ¯

RUMITO The Rumito is a St. Martin’s take on the traditional Cuban Mojito using SC Dogs Rum. INGREDIENTS • 50ml SC Dogs White Rum • 4 wedges of fresh lime • 1 tsp brown sugar • Handful of fresh mint leaves - torn in half • A splash of tonic water

METHOD 1. Place the lime & brown sugar in glass.

2. Tear mint leaves into glass.

3. Muddle to get all the juice from the limes & mint.

4. Fill the glass with crushed ice.

5. Pour on the rum, add a splash of tonic water.

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Ve r o n i c a F a r m F u d g e Fudge made from local ingredients keeps life sweet for the Taylor family on Bryher LOCATION Veronica Farm, Bryher 49.9507° N, 6.3554° W

FIND OUT MORE www.veronicafarmfudge.co.uk

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W

hen a flower loses its power, what do you do? The answer from 11-year-old Issy Taylor at Veronica Farm on Bryher was quite simple: ‘Make fudge.’ The flower in question was narcissus, whose market had suddenly wilted in face of competition from European growers, so Issy’s parents Kris and Geoff, who had grown flowers on the island for 15 years, were casting around for a replacement.

That was 30 years ago, Issy is now married, and happily the fudge continues to sweeten life on Bryher, contributing to its reputation as one of Scilly’s foodiest islands. Step off the Firethorn launch at Church Quay and comforting aromas from Issy’s fudge kitchen - based in the family’s former flower sheds - entice you along Bryher’s sandy coastal track to the handsome granite buildings of Veronica Farm. The duckegg-blue fudge stand outside it is often the first port of call for arriving visitors.

But let’s return to the beginning. Naturally 11-year-old Issy’s fudge-making happened mainly at weekends and school holidays and was a modest affair. “There was no business plan or spreadsheets,” smiles Kris. But for Issy, it had a serious function: to fund dance classes on St. Mary’s, which she was desperate to attend but her parents couldn’t afford. By now Kris was keeping things together by working at Hell Bay Hotel (and subsequently training as a podiatrist) and Geoff was working for Bryher Boats.

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For recipe, Issy followed a handwritten one that had been passed down from her great grandmother and was so dog-eared it was barely legible.

Standing at the family Aga, she stirred boiling vats of sugar, butter and cream, using her nose and eyes to judge when the mixture had reached a critical thickness before pouring it into trays.

The fudge was left to cool overnight before being packaged into plastic bags which were placed on a chair outside.

“A big motivation was a love of fudge.

I’ve always been a sugar addict,” confesses Issy. And when Jude Law bought one of her bags, she could scarcely contain her excitement.

By the time Issy departed for college and university, the family realised fudge was not a passing phase but there to stay. “Fudge had become part of the family,” says Kris, who at that point took over the business and shaped it into what it is today. While still using traditional cooking methods, she created slick branding and packaging that enabled the fudge to be sold online.

Passing visitors looked out for the smiling face of aproned Kris in her fudge kitchen, and started to suggest flavours, some promising, like rosemary, others less so, like garlic. Often they returned late afternoon to buy fudge as pudding for the evening’s supper.

Central to Kris’ ethos was sourcing the ingredients as locally as she could. Creamy cow’s milk, cream and butter came from Troytown Farm on St. Agnes (see page 16). When a delivery arrived she’d freeze part of it so she

could continue making fudge in the winter months when boats were scarce and Troytown’s cows less productive.

For flavourings she again turned to her neighbouring islands. One of the first was seasalt produced on St. Martin’s by Andrew Walder (see page 54), whom Issy had been at school with. “Getting the right amount of salt and the perfect size of crystals was quite a skill. People love to crunch on the crystals as they eat the Scillonian Seasalt Fudge,” she says.

With a ten-year career in journalism under her belt, Issy resumed her post at the family stove. Now mother of two girls, she needed a job that could fit around the school day, and fudge was the perfect fit. As they return from the school boat, the girls pop in to check for leftovers and offer their services as willing tasters. The youngest, Emmie, just turned six, seems keen to follow in her mother’s footsteps. “She loves helping with every stage of the process, from chopping the butter to mixing - and of course quality control,” smiles Issy.

There have been celebrity visitors too, such as Camilla, who accompanied HRH The Prince of Wales, on a royal visit in 2021. “She came into the fudge kitchen to give me a hand making some salt fudge,” says Issy. “After that, everyone wanted to buy from the ‘royal’ batch!”

Issy continued Veronica’s tradition of sourcing Scillonian ingredients for flavours. They include gin from Westward Farm on St. Agnes, made by

Aidan Hicks, another school pal. And as Andrew Walder, on St. Martin’s, expanded his repertoire to include rum, Veronica Farm’s popular rum and raisin assumed a more local flavour. The dried fruits are steeped in rum for up to three months and are so delicious that Issy admits to occasionally sprinkling them on her breakfast porridge.

For her two most recent flavourings - honey and chilli - she needed to look no further than her nextdoor farm, Hillside. The honey is scarce, so Issy knows she’s lucky that Ruth Eggins sells her entire harvest to her. “It’s liquid gold, intense so you don’t need much. This is the fudge that people smell when they arrive by boat.”

Chilli fudge, using chillies grown at Hillside (see page 40) is also proving popular. “I was sceptical at first, but the gentle chilli aftertaste is lovely,” says Issy.

When the pandemic hit in 2020, and visitors stayed at home, the family feared the worst. In fact, regulars rallied and supported them by ordering huge quantites fudge online, says Issy.

“At one point we reached Christmas levels. It was amazing.”

The future of Veronica Farm’s Fudge looks as sweet as the scent of its narcissi once was. But if you’re thinking of asking Issy for the recipe, don’t bother. Not even her husband Gareth knows it. “I think he thought that on our wedding day I’d tell him the secret recipe,” smiles Issy. “I told him he’ll have to wait at least until our silver wedding anniversary.” ¯

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Eateries ST. MARY’S Bell Rock Hotel 01720 422575 bellrockhotel.co.uk Bondy’s Café 07502 592424  @BondysCafe Carn Vean Café 01720 423458  @carnveancafe Dibble & Grub 01720 423719 dibbleandgrub.co.uk Hugh Street Café 01720 422734 hughstreetcafe.co.uk Juliet’s Garden Restaurant 01720 422228 julietsgardenrestaurant.co.uk Longstone Lodge & Café 01720 422410 longstonecafe.co.uk Ned & Fin’s 07717 795741  @NED-FINs Old Town Café 01720 422045  @Old-Town-Cafe Old Town Inn 01720 422301  @oldtowninn1 On the Quay 01720 423525  onthequayios

Pilot’s Gig 01720 422430  @Pilots-Gig

The Mermaid Inn 01720 422701 mermaidscilly.co.uk

Olivia’s Kitchen 01720 423168  @OliviasKitchenBryher

Pom Thai Takeaway 07554 063868  @pomthaitakeaway

The Tanglewood Kitchen Company 01720 422454 tanglewoodkitchen.co.uk

The Crab Shack 01720 422 947 hellbay.co.uk

Scillonian Club 01720 422720

The Hall 01720 419436 thehall.restaurant

ST. MARTIN’S

Scilly Fish 07876 340032  @ScillyFish Star Castle Hotel 01720 422317 star-castle.co.uk The Airport Café  @The-Airport-Café-Isles-of-Scilly The Atlantic Inn 01720 422417 atlanticinnscilly.co.uk The Bakery Shop Kitchen 07387 613759  @thebakeryshopkitchen The Beach 01720 419438 scillybeach.com The Clubhouse Bistro & Bar 01720 422692  @Isles-of-Scilly-Clubhouse-Bistro The Galley 01720 422602  @thegalleyios The Look Out  @lookoutscilly

Tregarthen’s 01720 422540 tregarthens.com/dine

Adam’s Fish and Chips 01720 423082 adamsfishandchips.co.uk

TRESCO

Karma St. Martin’s 01720 422368 karmagroup.com

The Flying Boat Café & Deli 01720 424068 tresco.co.uk/eating

Little Arthur Café & Bistro 01720 422779 littlearthur.co.uk

The Garden Café & Visitor Centre 01720 424108 tresco.co.uk/eating

Polreath Tea Room 01720 422046 polreath.com

The New Inn 01720 423006 tresco.co.uk/eating

The Island Bakery 01720 422111 theislandbakery-stmartins.com

The Ruin Beach Café 01720 424849 tresco.co.uk/eating

The Seven Stones Inn 01720 423777 sevenstonesinn.com

BRYHER

ST. AGNES

Fraggle Rock 01720 422222  @fragglebryher

Coastguards Café 01720 423747  @Coastguards-Café

Hell Bay Hotel 01720 422947 hellbay.co.uk

The Turks Head 01720 422434  @TurksHeadStAgnes

Island Fish 01720 423880 islandfish.co.uk

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“Shamus likes the peace of the early morning, and seeing the sun rise out at sea” Amanda of Island Fish, Bryher

“We were from landlocked Nottinghamshire… we knew nothing about grapes” Holly of St Martin’s Vineyard, St. Martin’s

“St. Agnes was an itch that just wouldn’t go away” Sam of Troytown Farm, St. Agnes

“A bee won’t find forgage like this anywhere else in the world… I call the honey ‘bonkers honey’” Jilly of the Scillonian Bee Project, Tresco

“We want to leave good soils for our children and grandchildren too” Kylie of Salakee Farm, St. Mary’s

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE ISLANDS www.visitislesofscilly.com