With around just a fifth of an acre of land, Seasonal Salads was easily the smallest commercial venture that I visited on my travels. But that small amount of land, with the help of a polytunnel, produces the most exquisite mirco salads throughout the year.

Located just outside Stokesley in North Yorkshire, Seasonal Salads is run by Barbara Beverage on land rented from a local farmer. Here Barbara grows an amazing plethora of salad crops – flowers and leaves – from which she picks and mixes in art-like manner to produce her micro-salads.

Barbara’s planting methods are not only organic but also not far from natural seeding – particularly inside her poly tunnel – as where possible she lets her array of salad components self seed and grow with minimum interference. Picking the young tender leaves then produces the salad mixes which vary across time as different flowers and leaves come into growth. Its a foraging like operation with many of the components being native plant species to the UK countryside. The resultant visual and taste explosion is though far from being chance, but is rather the result of a very knowledgeable and discerning eye and palate – combined with an innate patience in collecting together her basic materials.

All of Barbara’s output is either sold locally through specialist food shops or is provided to local restaurants.  Reflecting Barbara’s passionate and committed approach to her quite unique business, Seasonal Salads won the title of Taste of Herriot Country Local Producer of the Year for 2015. Not bad for someone who until a few years ago earned her living programming computers!

For more information on Seasonal Salads see Seasonal Salads Facebook page

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