Hodmedod’s Olive Green Lentils

Description

Our whole olive-green lentils retain a firm bite after cooking and have a delicious peppery flavour that is often missing in lentils grown for the commodity market. Grown by a group of farmers who, with Hodmedod, pioneered the commercial production of lentils in the UK. Hodmedod was founded to bring more British-grown pulses, grains and seeds into British kitchens, from the beginning they—d always hoped to start producing lentils alongside more traditional UK crops but were repeatedly told it just wasn’t possible on a field scale. While lentils are a notoriously difficult crop to harvest; they—re low-growing and not especially vigorous, they need a warm, dry autumn to ripen for harvest and – even if all that goes well – are not very high yielding. But the historic record shows that lentils were once grown in the UK, and aside from tasting wonderful, they—re an incredibly useful low-input crop for less intensive farming systems. They —fix— their own nitrogen from the atmosphere, suffer few pests and diseases and require less water than many other crops — perfect for the lower intensity, more diverse cropping systems Hodmedod exists to promote and support. Hodmedod began working on trials in 2015, gradually scaling up production to the point where, in 2020, we have about 50 acres planted on 6 farms across the UK — from Sussex to Perthshire. The 6 farms represent a spectrum of soil, climate and farm types — all are working on various approaches to agroecological food production, changing their farms and learning how to grow new crops in new ways.