[Rosemary]

Bread Matters, Macbiehill Farmhouse, Lamancha, West Linton, Scottish Borders, EH46 7AZ

• Bread Matters is best known for its artisan breadmaking courses, held in the Macbiehill Farmhouse baking studio with its wood-fired oven.
• On their Soil Association certified five-acre smallholding in the Scottish Borders, Andrew Whitley and Veronica Burke are doing much more than turning flour into bread.
• They are engaging the creative energies of people throughout the food chain in participatory research and collective action to produce better home-grown flour and bread.
• Andrew began creating the organic agroforestry scheme in 2010 and has planted approximately 6,000 trees and bushes to date.
• A rotation of cereals, grass and vegetables thrives in the broad alleys between strips of trees, which are grown for food (nuts, berries etc.) for shelter and (coppiced) for timber for the wood-fired oven and wood-burning stoves in the farmhouse.
• Small areas of heritage varieties of wheat and oats are grown as part of research into the balance between yield and nutritional content, with the triple aims of acceptable yield, bread making quality and nutritional density.
• During 2014 the James Hutton Institute (Scotland) is conducting the first analysis of the human nutritional content of 13 heritage cereals grown at Bread Matters and on three partner farms during 2013.Their findings will inform the selection and breeding of cereal varieties in 2014 and beyond.

http://www.soilassociation.org/farmersgrowers/newsandevents/articleid/6535/farm-walk-macbiehill-farm-borders/default.aspx

[Anke]

Well it does look interesting! Maybe I can negotiate an afternoon off the farm ...