Tomorrow morning on BBC Radio 4, you can hear "The Saving of Ford Hall Farm", an optimistic account of the recent happenings of threatened (and now reprieved) organic farm in Shropshire, one of the oldest in the country. The big boy they were moving in, but very very young Ben and Charlotte mobilised friends and well-wishers, organised a communal buy-out, and things are back on track for the next century. The documentary features a bit of music(quite little, I suspect) from the Boat Band (which I play with); and we are involved in this, and getting more involved, in food stuff generally.
   Any other folkies overlapping with food matters who would care to chip in with a comment? We in the band find, for example, that our recent CD "A Trip to the Lakes" does kind of so-so in HMV Workington, Carlisle and Lancaster: but our really significant outlets are the foody farms and such in Cumbria. Melmerby Bakery in the back-of-beyond between Penrith and Alston, for example, far outsells any record shop. Basically, traditional folk shares a certain amount of aesthetic with organic food: whether you think this is part of the past, or part of the future, is up to you. I honestly feel we are right up to the minute here, and we also find find plenty of interesting work in other areas of life to do with regeneraton. Folk music can speak about urban matters too.

   Anybody else got any comments to offer? Folk music, let's face it, is penetrating rather wider areas of culture than the game of "who played at Celtic Connections/Cambridge last year?" That' s why it's called folk music, isn't it?

    (PS A nice memory for me, which the older folkies among you will appreciate, is that the documentary was produced by Sara Parker. And her dad, for whom I also worked forty years ago back in the 60's, was the legendary Charles Parker, of Radio Ballads fame. What goes round comes round.)