Four years ago, a group of us met on the windswept clifftops of Caerhys Farm in Pembrokeshire. We were there to sow a collection of rare oat seeds gifted to us by IBERS plant breeding centre, being all too aware that we had lost 75% of global crop diversity in the last 100 years (UN FAO). Having looked into what diversity we might be on the cusp of losing in Wales, oats had revealed themselves as a low hanging fruit.
Oats grow well in Wales - they don’t mind the wet, or poor soils. On the mixed farms of the past, oats were regulars in the fields. They fuelled horses, and horses worked the land. But people ate oats too. Oat crops appeared on Welsh tables as oat bread, oat cakes and laverbread (seaweed and oatmeal).
Searching in the genebank records, we found hundreds of varieties stashed away. With names like ‘Hen Gardie’, ‘Ceirch Llwyd’ and ‘Radnorshire Sprig’, these oats painted a picture of the regional diversity that used to be abundant. Why was no one growing them anymore?
In Search of Seeds
This is where our first hero enters the story. Gerald Miles has farmed on the Pembrokeshire coast since the age of 16, following the footsteps of his father and grandfather. After re-imagining his dairy business in the early 2000s, he now farms agroecologically and promotes the importance of traditional mixed methods. Gerald was on a quest; to find the Ceirch Du (black oats) previously grown by his grandfather and lost to him in a storm. It ignited our imaginations. Gerald happily became our ally and together we formed the Llafur Ni (Our Grains) network.
Cue our second hero, Iwan Evans, another older farmer who had been growing Ceirch Du on his farm for ‘as long as he could remember’. It was music that brought us to Iwan. Welsh musician Owen Sheirs was on his own quest, hunting for folk songs in the valleys and hills of the land where he grew up. He connected with Iwan through song and discovered that he was growing the precious Ceirch Du that Gerald was searching for.
The mystery seemed solved. We had found the Ceirch Du seeds and now all we needed to do was grow and share them. We had pulled black oats back from the brink, or so we thought.
Getting to the Groat of the Problem
It soon transpired that neither Gerald nor Iwan had actually eaten their black oats. While we knew they were predominantly grown for animal feed in the past, they were vital fodder for people, too. What might they taste like? What nutrients might they contain?
Ceirch Du, like many oats, have a brittle, bitter hull encasing the groat at their heart. When you buy oats from the supermarket, they have been dehulled. It's a tricky process and we were soon to discover that there are no small oat mills left in Wales. There are no small oat mills left in the UK, for that matter. The business of removing hulls, separating hulls and stabilising groats is done by large commercial operations these days, requiring minimum runs of 40 tonnes for their huge production lines.
But we didn’t have 40 tonnes. We had a few sacks of precious seed. We realised we would have to hand process them and this is where the mystery really came into view. We couldn’t find anyone who knew how the oats had been hand processed in the past. We tried speaking to the older farmers we knew, but they could only remember growing oats and then eating oats. There was a processing blind spot in their oat memories. We spoke to museums, but they had no record. We asked arable consultants, but they only knew of modern commercial techniques.
As people joined our quest, we found fragments of information. Colin Gordon – Scottish farmer and grain enthusiast - found stories of oat hulls being burnt off the sheaves on Scottish Islands. Anne Parry, miller at Felin Ganol watermill in Wales, told us of the old processes of kiln drying and milling with a ‘fixed rind’ stone that cannot wobble (and therefore knocks the hull off rather than grinding it finely). These pieces of information made us confident that low tech oat processing could be done, but still we didn’t have the equipment or know how to actually do it.
Importing an electric dehuller from abroad was an option, but holes quickly appeared in this solution. Not only would this be expensive, other people had tried these imported dehullers and discovered them to only dehull about 70% of the oats. Once dehulled, there was still no solution to separating or stabilising the exposed groats (which contain enzymes that go rancid in the air). More machines would be required. We didn’t want to build an entire oat processing factory, especially one which would be fixed to one place and hence geographically inaccessible to most in a rural community.
The Miracle of The Tiny Oat Collider
If it doesn’t exist, create it. So we turned to engineers, commissioning Adam Veitch – a crofter, baker and engineer – to create plans for an open source dehuller. Spending months looking through the archives of Am Fasgdah Highland Folk Museum, Adam surveyed old grain processing equipment, finding evidence of ‘hummellers’ which would knock the awns from grains and ‘hand querns’ which were used for rudimentary hand dehulling. Comparing these old machines to modern commercial dehullers, Adam set about building us a ‘human scale’ dehuller, which could be moved around to dehull small quantities of oats on farm.
Travelling 500 miles from north Scotland to Pembrokeshire, Adam brought with him the Tiny Oat Collider V2, his latest ‘vertical shaft impact dehuller’. It is small enough to be carried by hand and had already dehulled 20kg of Gerald’s Ceirch Du, ready for us to eat.
Bringing the Tiny Oat Collider to Wales was not just a practicality, it was another seed. By building this machine open source we wanted to encourage replication and evolution. Word was already blowing on the wind; retired Welsh engineers Martin Mavers and Allan Sheirs had seen Adam’s plans and started developing another dehuller. Suited to their own situation, the design included the drum of a washing machine. These innovations are putting ancient processes back in action.
Experiments in the Kitchen
After comparing the dehulling machines we heard from Ty Gwennol, a One Planet Development Smallholding in Carmarthenshire run by Silvie and Wyc. Working towards earning their livelihood from that land, they shared the benefits and challenges of running a small oat milk business using a naked oat (without a hull).
The kitchen end of our own oat quest was not without its complexities. Samples of the Gerald’s oats, having been run through the Tiny Oat Collider in Scotland, were posted to Wales months in advance. We then had to find chefs up for the challenge of working with a food not tasted in living memory.
Brendan Lynch is a Great British Bake Off Finalist, and a friend to The Gaia Foundation. Knowing him as a neighbour, Gaia Foundation Deputy Director Rowan was able to ask him if he wanted to do some Ceirch Du test bakes. Unphased by the oatmeal still containing small fragments of hull in it (while the dehuller design was still being refined), he winnowed the oatmeal by hand and whipped up black oat pancakes, soda bread and flapjacks. These delights were frozen, delivered to Wales and given the seal of approval on our plates.
"It was truly a pleasure to work with the black oats and create my spin on Irish soda bread - as I come from Ireland - to create a Welsh soda bread, alongside savoury Staffordshire pancakes and fruit flapjacks. The digestive system directly relates to what we’re eating, so the black oats revival really appealed to me: here was a group of people committed to the quality, nutrition and diversity of our food." - Brendan Lynch
Brendan's Black Oat Bakes:
The Taste Test
We had no idea if the Cerich Du would taste any different to other oat varieties. But we needed to find out. On the day of the oat feast, before sitting down to eat, we gathered around a picnic bench. Four plain oat biscuits sat expectantly on plates, made with Gerald’s Ceirch Du, Iwan’s Ceirch Du, Maldwyn oats (grown by our Llafur Ni group) and a commercially available white oat. Rookies to the world of taste testing, we had drawn up simple score cards, with flavour wheels to help us name the tastes we might experience.
Unsure if the oats would even taste of anything at all, we held our breath (between mouthfuls). Astonishingly, they did. Each sample tasted significantly unique. The Ceirch Du was described as ‘nutty’, ‘mushroomy’, ‘delicious’, ‘creamy’, like ‘flowers’ or ‘hay’. Laughter erupted from the farmers who had grown these oats, an outburst of amazement that they were actually being tasted.
A Lost Art
Controlled taste testing complete, it was time to really celebrate the Ceirch Du in all its complexity. We had found the perfect chef for this last piece of the puzzle. Jacqueline Morgan is a fierce advocate for local ingredients and heritage dishes. Having also been posted Ceirch Du samples in advance, she had played with different winnowing, cooking and presentation ideas. Inspired by the traditional dishes of Wales, she devised us a menu both humble and exquisite, perfectly fitting for an oat so remarkable and yet so down to earth.
"In every farmhouse kitchen you used to find a wooden chest especially for oatmeal. Oats were a staple in Welsh food and events such as the 'Shimli' were made in appreciation of them - a farmer would hold a noson lawen whilst their oats dried through the night on the kiln floor.
"Alongside these forgotten ways of working with grain, there is a lost art of Welsh heritage cooking: working with minimal, limited and seasonal produce to sustain an entire family through all seasons. Oats and grain played a specific role, giving a wealth of nutrients and energy to those that had to work on the land everyday.
"It is an absolute privilege to work with this heritage grain and project, and it couldn't have come at a more poignant time. As a country, 80% of our diet is grain based and it's imperative we start to understand where this all comes from, how it is grown and how best to cook with it; for our own health and that of the environment.
We named the menu ‘A Celebration of Oats, and a Taste of Welsh Peasant Heritage’. Jacqueline had dried Ceirch Du for eight hours in an oven, to mimic the kiln drying of old. Other oats were fermented with yeast for 24 hours to make a sour black oatmeal and barley bread. A traditional Cawl (Welsh stew) with Ceirch Du, used laverbread (seaweed) with Ceirch Du to make dumplings. In the breaks, we ate sweet Welshcakes, with Ceirch Du in, of course. And as if this wasn’t enough, our dessert was a Ceirch Du, acorn and apple tart.
Jacqueline's Taste of Welsh Peasant Heritage:
The moment of tasting was both auspicious and modest, just as it should be. Both Gerald and Iwan smiled to themselves as they ate the Ceirch Du they had been growing on their farms for more than a lifetime. We clinked glasses and tucked into a hearty and extremely rare feast.
There was a sense of relief in having eaten the oats. A feeling of having completed something, closed a gap, solved a problem. Feasting together felt like the only way to celebrate a journey involving so many and so much cooperation.
While there is a sense of equality amongst all the people who pushed these oats along in their journey to our mouths, it feels fitting to offer particular thanks to the older farmers, Gerald Miles and Iwan Evans. Without their perseverance to keep growing the Ceirch Du, their wisdom that it was important to keep these seeds alive and their generosity in sharing their knowledge with us, we would not have even taken our first steps on our Ceirch Du adventure. It is clear that what revives seed is people and the connections those people can forge with one another.
The next step in this journey is yet to be plotted. But right now we have huge cause for celebration. We have connected the dots across the entire food chain from seed to plate. We have the seeds, the farmers, the human scale machines and the recipes to bring Ceirch Du back into our fields and our hearts. Diolch yn fawr iwan (thank you very much).
UK & Ireland Seed Sovereignty Programme
The Gaia Foundation's Sovereignty Programme is working to (re)establish a resilient seed system across the UK and Ireland. We support small-scale commercial growers, community groups, home gardeners and allotmenteers with workshops, networks and resources to help restore seed diversity across these isles.
The Gaia Foundation
We are a small, international organisation accompanying partners, communities and movements around the world to revive and protect bio-cultural diversity.
Together with our partners from the Atlantic to the Arctic, Africa to the Amazon, we are reweaving the basket of life, revalorising the knowledge systems that enhance it, and restoring a respectful relationship with the Earth.
Written by Katie Hastings, Wales Coordinator for the UK & Ireland Seed Sovereignty Programme
Photographs and films by Jason Taylor and Andy Pilsbury
Credits:
Jason Taylor and Andy Pilsbury for The Gaia Foundation