Hello! We’d like to introduce ourselves. We are Silvie and Melis and we are the 3rd and 4th Agri-Activists for this year at Caerhys farm and will be working with Gerald and Ingrid for the rest of the summer campaigning for a better food future.
We’d like to tell you about Caerhy’s annual Harvest Party that happened last weekend at the farm.
We began planning the festival a few weeks before, booking speakers, bands, food and other entertainment. Previous volunteers left some information for planning the weekend – Janny (one of last year’s agri-activists) even came back to help out! The WWOOFERS and a group of people from a local university program helped prepare the farm for the weekend. It was a big task but everybody worked together to get it done.
On the Friday night it was all about food and community.
The Cow shed was transformed into an outdoor eating space, the bar was stocked with local ales and ciders and then the community arrived. There was CSA members, local producers, business owners, families, friends and tourists. It was a full house.
Tan a Mwgis is a communal feasting experience that tours around Wales (UK), bringing people together and closer to their local food producers. They focus on age old methods of food preparation and preservation, with an openness to influences from the diverse community around them.
They brought their amazing pop-up dining experience to Caerhys. Derw from Tan a Mwg prepared some local salt marsh lamb the night before cooking it under soil infused with foraged flavors. The next day Derw and Dee (previous BBC cook of the year 2017) made the organic produce (most of it grown just meters away) into divine dishes that would be shared later that night.
It was a real celebration of local organic produce. Everybody enjoyed themselves and it was a good opportunity to bring everybody together, as food often does.
Saturday started steady. It was a wet day and the rain was blowing sideways! The day began with a series of talks from various people about a variety of topics – CSA’s, Orchards, Bugs, Heritage Seeds all very informative. During the day we had food from local farms Trehale and Torth y Tir. Fair Play Board game Café joined us with their array of games and we had music from local bands and artists. It was an absolute ball.
The harvest party at Caerhy’s is a weekend where food and people are celebrated.
The meal on Friday and the food and drink suppliers on the Saturday showed how Pembrokshire is producing top quality food. The talks showed there is an interest in learning more about traditional and new ways of farming. The many people who came together for the weekend had conversations and made new connections and no doubt many will be back next year!
