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Essays, food, craft, places and conversations from every issue so far, and a few written only for the web.

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  • A tide line on a grey pebble beach with dark wet kelp, a bleached piece of frayed rope, small shells and a smooth pale piece of driftwood

    Essays

    What the tide leaves

    Twice a day the sea writes a line along the beach and then rubs it out. An essay on walking the strandline, and on the things we only notice once they're washed up.

    Words by Sam Ashby · 2 min read

  • Inside a small old smokehouse, rows of split fish hanging from wooden rods in soft blue smoke, with soot-black brick walls and a shaft of daylight

    Conversations

    Forty winters at the smokehouse

    Ida Brann has smoked fish in the same brick shed at Saltcote since 1986. She talked to us about oak, patience, and why she still won't use a thermometer.

    Words by Ruth Calder · 2 min read

  • An old dented pewter salt cellar with a tiny horn spoon on a folded off-white linen cloth, coarse grey sea salt inside

    Craft

    A short history of the salt cellar

    For centuries the dish that held the salt told everyone at the table exactly where they stood. Then it shrank, got a lid and disappeared into the shaker. A small object, and a long story.

    Words by Owen Hale · 3 min read

  • Glass jars of vegetables pickling in cloudy brine on a worn wooden table, with sprigs of dill, black peppercorns and a small bowl of coarse grey salt

    Food

    Brine, slowly

    Everything a pickle needs is salt, water and time. Our food editor on the jars that line her kitchen from September to spring, with a recipe for the simplest one.

    Words by Marta Quell · 3 min read

  • Shallow rectangular salt pans on a grey tidal flat at low tide, a wooden rake leaning on a low clay wall and small heaps of white salt drying

    Places

    The salt pans at Morrow Ness

    For three generations the Marsh family has raked sea salt by hand from a strip of tidal flat that most maps leave blank. Ada Marsh shows us how slow a summer can be.

    Words by Elin Varga · 3 min read

  • Close-up of an old wooden floor loom with undyed cream wool warp threads and a worn wooden shuttle resting on half-woven cloth

    Craft

    The last loom in Wrenford

    The mill on the river once ran forty looms. Now there is one, and the weaver who works it has a waiting list two years long.

    Words by Owen Hale · 2 min read

  • An earth-covered charcoal clamp gently smoking in a beech woodland clearing at dawn, with stacks of cut logs and a weathered canvas tent

    Places

    A week with the charcoal burners

    Deep in the beech woods above Ollerby, a small crew still makes charcoal the old way, in an earth clamp that has to be watched day and night. We stayed for a burn.

    Words by Elin Varga · 2 min read

  • A handmade grey stoneware bowl repaired with a thin seam of gold lacquer along an old crack, on a dark wooden workbench with a fine brush beside it

    Essays

    On mending a cracked bowl

    The bowl had been my grandmother's, and the crack had been there as long as I could remember. An essay about repair, gold, and learning not to hide the break.

    Words by Marta Quell · 2 min read

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