Grower Profile: Fenland Celery

Grower Profile: Hamish Mellor, G’s Produce, Fenland Celery.
With the countryside and farming almost in his genes, Hamish Mellor is most a home when outdoors. He’s the farm manager of the historic Fenland Celery crop, a crop which has been reinvigorated recently. Whilst it will never sell as much as it’s more intensively produced main crop cousin; its heritage and indeed PGI status, combined with its more subtle flavour mean it’s perfect for some special celery recipes.
The 2-300 acre Dimmock Cote Farm in Cambridgeshire, just a mile or two South of Ely is making Fenland Celery (a Victorian Favourite), and the unique way in which it is produced fashionable once again. Hamish has been farming this area for three or four seasons now, but before

this he’s had experience in other crops. Having grown up on the West Coast of Scotland with his family farming a livestock on an upland hill farm, he’s used to the hard work that goes into an agricultural way of life. Some of his earliest memories on the family farm were of helping his father through the busy seasons of lambing and shearing, in all weathers.
After university he took to arboriculture for a while until a back problem meant that climbing trees with a chainsaw was no longer an option. Although having hung up his climbing harness doesn’t mean that he doesn’t work hard now, a 5:45am alarm clock wakes him up six days a week, and he’s often not at home until 7pm.
His lack of a Scottish accent is interesting, and after further enquiries we find out that that his family were actually from Gloucestershire originally. He certainly considers himself an outdoors person, he enjoys thinking on his feet, the challenges that the British weather and seasons throw at him and the relentless and inflexible deadlines that these create.
Hamish enjoys the low-tech approach that this special crop requites.

It’s very labour intensive and uses little to no technology. The crop is still harvested by hand and must be due to the “earthing up” process. It’s this process combined with the growing conditions on the Fens that make the crop so special. Deep furrows are dug into the rich and dark peaty soil (Fenland soil has around 15-20% organic matter, compared with as low as 3-% for some soils). This earth is then banked up around the growing crop, it firstly protects the celery from any frosts, but also “blanches” the stems, flushing out the chloroform and making for a milder flavour and that distinctively pale stem.
The old-school system also allows Hamish to realistically target zero wastage too, which is important because Fenland doesn’t produce as bigger crop from the same amount of seeds as a modern variety would. Last year however, after planting in June, the crop was a largely affected by the dreaded blight. This was mainly due to a heavier than average rainfall in August. The extra organic matter in the soil also means that the fields hold onto the water for longer and increase the risk of natural issues such as blight. This year, whilst it has been cooler, it should produce good

crop.
The polite, but busy farmer enjoy his own product in the standard ways such as on cheese boards, in salads and as an integral part of a stock, but he also likes it braised or roasted. He’s even seen it presented with either peanut butter, cream cheese or hummus in the hollow, and raisins perched on top, AKA “ants on a log”. He’s of the view that people should know where their food comes from, and in the long run would love to see Fenland Celery back as a staple at New Covent Garden, like it was at Covent Garden in the Victorian era, when it was brought down daily on the train from the Cambridgeshire Fens to the capital.