ORGANIGRAMA INSTITUCIONAL

Till St Swithin’s Day be past. The apples be not fit to taste.

Notes and Queries 1870 The desire to preserve traditional crafts is not a new trend. Herbert. L. Edlin wrote Woodland Crafts in Britain17 _{in 1949 with the aim of keeping alive the} old traditional crafts of Britain. Many festivals now include demonstrations and exhibitions of the old crafts and they have become a tourist attraction in their own right.

Make tradition a tourist attraction

Many tourists visit Stratford on Avon in Warwickshire in the UK to view Shakespeare’s birthplace. Not far from his birthplace is Mary Arden’s Farm. Mary Arden was William’s mother. This has given the charity that operates the birthplace an opportunity to develop a Tudor farm, which is open from March until November and provides a wide range of tourist activities. Team members dress in Tudor clothes and the farm includes rare farm breeds, birds of prey and Tudor entertainments.

Williamsburg, Virginia and Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts have developed similar themes as a tourist attraction.

Monselice near Padua in Italy holds a Medieval fair every September. The village already had a weekly farmers’ market, but once a year it sets up a medieval fair when all the villagers dress up in medieval clothes and practise the old farming and food-preparation techniques.

Nostalgia is a big tourist draw, as tourism and culinary tour venue oper- ators try to search out the traditional values they remember from their youth. Many of the traditional agricultural skills are being lost and need to be pre- served to ensure the skills are passed on to the next generation.

Many culinary tourists are looking for traditional ways of food produc- tion. Traditional methods may be more expensive and time consuming, but particularly the older consumer is prepared to pay for the real experience. There are a number of ways we can preserve the traditions.

Promote the seasonal calendar

Farming communities live by the seasons and understand the seasons, whereas visitors from the city have less understanding of the seasons. Modern food distribution means that many urban dwellers assume straw- berries are harvested all the year round from the same field, as they are avail- able as a year-round fruit on the supermarket shelf.

Most farming communities work on a four season calendar, but this not always the case. In Australia the aborigines rely on a six season calendar.

The authors live in the Noongar Aboriginal region of Australia and the seasons are Bunuru (February–March), Djeran (April–May), Makuru (June– July), Djilba (August–September), Kambarang (October–November) and Birak (December–January). Promoting these seasons and how they affect what is grown creates further interest in food tourism and encourages tourists to return in different seasons to experience how the land and crop production has changed.

Historic harvesting and adding value techniques

Today the visitor is familiar with modern machinery travelling across the field and often controlled from a satellite. They are less familiar with a Clydesdale horse travelling across fields as the original ‘horse power’ and this can be an event in itself. Visitors are fascinated to learn how butter, cheeses, cider and other foods were prepared on the farm in days gone by. How food was pre- pared before the industrial kitchen was invented is something that will be discussed on Facebook and Twitter when a family returns home.

The Tullamore Farm Show in Ireland is one of the biggest events in the country and thousands of visitors go to see more traditional farming activities.

Traditional festivals

Many counties have traditional festivals based around food. In the UK, cheese often appears as the reason for a festival. In Randwick, Gloucestershire18 _they have the May Day Cheese when three Gloucester cheeses are decked with

garlands and paraded around the village. The cheese are then rolled around the church and distributed between villagers.

One traditional festival using Double Gloucester cheese has achieved a global audience and now attracts visitors from around the word. Cooper’s Hill18 _{just outside the village of Brockworth in Gloucestershire, has been used} to roll cheese down since the 15th century. This tradition has promoted the vil- lage and it has now become a world famous event. During the food rationing years after the war, between 1941 and 1954, a wooden cheese was used.

In our modern world, the event breaks health and safety regulations and authorities have tried to ban it. Alas, the cheese is often now a plastic cheese and Diana Smart, a local cheese-maker has been banned from selling any cheese that has been rolled down the hill due to health and safety regula- tions. As a result of the publicity, the fastest cheese chaser down the hill has been won by an American and a Japanese and there is now a separate wom- en’s event (details can be obtained on www.cheese-rolling.co.uk). Even negative publicity can be a positive when it comes to tourism exposure.

Cooking techniques

Many food preparation and cooking techniques are being lost and food tourism is a means of reviving and preserving these techniques. There are numerous examples around the world where the skill is being lost.

Tourism in New Zealand has helped preserve and develop traditional Maori cooking. The Hangi or earth oven has been used in traditional Maori cooking for hundreds of years. The technique involves digging a hole in the ground and heating volcanic stones in the pit, which will not split or splinter as they heat up. Manuka or tea tree wood is then added which helps flavour the food. The first thing after that to go into the pit is a basket of meat, which is covered with a wet cloth and then dirt. The water on the cloth turns to Fig. 5.7. Consumers in a cooking class at the Ludlow Food Festival.

steam and the heat helps cook the meat. Cooking time is around 7 hours and because of the preparation and cooking time the art has become less popular, but the food is worth the wait. Prepared Hangi meals are often part of a Maori cultural evening in New Zealand and the art has been preserved.