Tomatoes were the turning point. The first morning she showed hers to Stephen Terry, he put them on menu at the Hardwick Arms. “They were lovely, like a box of sweets,” he says. “I saw them and thought, hell, yeah.” Soon Shaun Hill was also taking her stuff for the Walnut Tree Inn, and for the first time in six months Amanda Stradling knew she’d be OK.
Things had been dark and different. Her husband had walked out of the family home they shared in the hills near Ross-on-Wye. She had a broken heart, no income and two children under 10. “This was Christmas,” she says, “but within a week I knew I would stay.” She dug up the hay meadow with the aid of her dad. He helped her get her hands on an old polytunnel, she ordered seed and she was away. The first evening in the first tunnel they sat under a salvaged chandelier and ate pizza.
Six years later, she sows six acres of land with an array of exotic organic fruit and veg that would impress L’Arpege’s Alain Passard. Here are just a few from a recent text she sends the restaurants she supplies before her Thursday delivery: borlotti beans, cucamelons, acorn squash, patty pans, peacock kale, Violetta potatoes, Alpine strawberries, gages, lemon sorrel, pineapple sage ... and the most beautiful micro salads I have ever seen.
Stradling has a background in photography and high-end floristry and it shows in her artistry. The salads are packed with colour: violas, asparagus pea flower, rocket, kale flower, radish pods, fresh coriander seed, red shiso, wood sorrel. For Terry and others she grows a forest of barba di frate, puntarelle, other chicories and endive. If you didn’t know that you were in the bucolic Herefordshire hills, overlooking the Forest of Dean, you might almost think you were in Italy. Outside the six polytunnels, though, she also grows a tonne of squash and close to a half tonne of potatoes.
She credits her mum, who died when Stradling was just 17, for her green fingers. “It’s my gym, my church, my everything,” she says. “I will never tire of going out and picking leaves and digging potatoes.” Which is lucky, as she is out in the summer picking and packing from 4am to 10pm. The next day she’ll start her 120-mile delivery drive to the region’s best restaurants before getting back to spend precious time with her kids.
Now after six years she might get some rest other than the Mother’s Day and her birthday, which she always dedicates to her flower garden. She has paid out her husband and bought a digger to replace Tallulah – the tractor a neighbour gave her on a life loan when she heard of her work. Her son has plans too for an irrigation tank that might double as a swimming pool.
Ask Stradling her favourite crop and her eyes almost mist as she talks about her 80 varieties of tomatoes. “I will always grow them, just for me,” she says. “Though I must admit they are too expensive. They take so much work, picking out the shoots and leaves, but the flavour of black tlacolula, black Russian, Cherokee chocolate … ”
Which takes us back to Stephen Terry. Over a brilliant lunch using Stradling’s beans, peppers, her squash and deep purple Violetta potatoes, I ask the Hardwick chef to sum up what it means to have a producer of her quality in rural Wales.
“The end products of my efforts as a chef are as subjective as any other creative art,” says Terry. “But what is not in question is the quality of ingredients I am fortunate to use. Amanda’s beautiful organic produce is free of compromise and full of flavour, commitment and care. She really is the real deal.” A worthy winner then of this year’s OFM Best Producer gong.
amanda@veggiesgalore.co.uk
