Great event idea

Eat a Tree:

A Successful Public Event from the Shotover Ancient Trees Project

Eat a Tree was a highly successful public event held on Sunday 3^rd December at Oxford’s Shotover Country Park, conceived and organised by Shotover Wildlife (SW), a local environment organisation, as part of the Shotover Ancient Trees Project.

This report summarises the event, and is intended to encourage other local groups and ancient tree supporters to develop their own imaginative, successful public events.

The idea…
The Shotover Ancient Trees Project aims to record the most significant old trees around Shotover SSSI, and to reach out imaginatively to local communities and build a strong ‘supporter base’ for these remarkable natural assets.

Eat a Tree was billed as a “public walk, talk and nibble” through Shotover’s woodlands, exploring the surprisingly frequent role that trees play in our everyday diets. Participants would be taken on a gentle meander through Shotover’s woodlands, stopping regularly to savour such delights as crab apple jelly, birch-sap wine, hazelnut chocolate and oak-smoked cheese, against the magnificent backdrop of some fantastic old trees. We guessed that as people enjoy tastes such as oak-aged wine and maple syrup, they might also enjoy meeting the trees from which they originate. We also anticipated that it could be a fun, sensual event that would help people appreciate trees from a slightly different angle.

The idea proved irresistible to many local people, and to the local press. Despite poor weather prospects the event enjoyed a massive turnout of 70 people, many of them ‘new faces’ who were encouraged to attend by a very enthusiastic article in the food pages of a previous week’s Oxford Times.

The trees and the nibbles…
Because we felt that enjoying delicacies alongside fantastic old trees of the relevant species was the whole point of the event, we decided to feature only those delicacies that were associated with species found on Shotover.

We decided against restricting ourselves only to those food items that were in season and readily available from the trees because A.) some of the most interesting and enjoyable delicacies, such as oak-smoked cheese and birch-sap wine, would be excluded due to their processed nature, B.) we wanted to emphasise that this aspect of woodland heritage remained live and mainstream in the supermarket-era, and was not just ‘byegone tradition’.

The trees we visited and the foods we presented are now outlined.

CRAB APPLE
We are lucky to have a fantastic old specimen of this species, which we’ve called “Dick’s Crab”, after Dick Greenaway, the woodland archaeologist who alerted us to that particular specimen. So we stopped there to savour some Crab apple jelly and Applewood smoked cheese.

The crab apple jelly was home-made by SW volunteers, using fruit actually collected from Dick’s Crab, creating a direct link between the food and the tree we stood next to. The applewood-smoked cheese was obtained from a cheese shop in Oxford; similar products should be available in specialist outlets elsewhere.

ELDER
There are umpteen different uses for Elder, so a stop amongst specimens of this species was almost compulsory. We served out Elderflower cordial, but also mentioned some of the other culinary and medicinal values of the species.

HAZEL
We hid a cache of goodies in a bivouac that had been erected amongst a grove of ancient hazels. The children racing ahead at the front of the group quickly found the treasure trove, which included Hazelnuts (shelled but otherwise unprocessed); Wholenut chocolate, containing hazelnuts; Hazelnut butter.

SWEET CHESTNUT
We stopped by a grand old sweet chestnut (near to the Sugar Maple, Birch and Beech specimens that follow) and served out pre-prepared roasted chestnuts.

BIRCH
SW team members can brew some staggeringly good bottles of Birch-sap wine, so we supplied samples of this amber nectar to our adult participants. The wine was created using sap from some of Shotover’s birch trees.

SUGAR MAPLE
A small section of Shotover was once planted out as an informal arboretum by Oxford University. As a result, Shotover can boast a specimen of North America’s Sugar Maple, which meant that we could get away with presenting a bottle of Maple Syrup, although we purchased it from a supermarket…

BEECH
Although not common on Shotover, a particularly nice Beech overlooks the informal arboretum section. At this point we sampled Goodwood cheese (smoked using a mix of beech and oak chippings) and Smoked mackerel paté. The cheese was obtained from a specialist cheese shop. The mackerel paté was home-made using Beech-smoked mackerel (available at Co-op).

OAK
By the boughs of one of our magnificent 400-year old pollard oaks we had our final stop to enjoy Oak-smoked cheese and Oak-aged wine.

AND FINALLY…
While at the oak stop we also unveiled two novelty items, which raised some laughs, cheers and were a bit of fun. The first was a packet of Twigletswhich we said came from the marmite tree (which grows in Tescos…) and the seconds was an “edible display of deadwood habitats” lovingly created by SW volunteers out of chocolate logs, elaborately iced ‘bark’, jelly slugs and snails, etc. Sadly for lovers of chocolate-based artwork, the whole creation was demolished with immense speed by a very appreciative audience.

Notes on practical matters….
Successful public events don’t happen by chance. There are lots of potential ‘risk factors’, and a lot of room for failure, so failing to plan really is planning to fail.

Logistics and mass catering
Serving food and drink outdoors is not the easiest of things, at least not when the ‘clientele’ are moving from point to point, in the middle of a wood. After planning a route that allowed us to visit interesting specimens of the species we wanted to feature, we had to plan on how to run the catering side of things.

We eventually settled on a small number of ‘stations’ at key points along the trail to which an SW member would move in advance of the group in order to set up a trestle table and lay out the goods. We had stations by our fine old crab apple tree; in amongst our ancient hazel grove; in a clearing between our finest Beech, Sweet Chestnut and Sugar Maple specimens; and a final station at one of our ancient oaks. Having just four well-positioned stations minimised setting-up and packing-up and reduced the potential for chaos.

We were unsure of how many people would turn up in advance, so estimating quanties was a little tricky: We expected about 60 participants but were prepared for a small amount of leeway. On the day 70 people showed up, which worked out fine but had another twenty or so attended, things would have been stretched.

Hygiene, Alcohol and Allergens
Serving food and drink to the public brings a duty of care. Things are made more difficult when things are outside, but if you decide to run an event involving food, consider how to make it as hygienic as possible. Another issue to consider is allergy, and how to handle and store the foods to ensure susceptible persons aren’t exposed.

When we applied for permits to run the event from our local council’s countryside service (who manage Shotover) we mentioned that the event would involve food and a very small amount of alcohol (in the actual event, sheer weight of numbers meant nobody got more than a mere taste of any alcoholic beverage). The countryside service raised no objections, but local authorities elsewhere may take a different view. Even where authorities make no objections to any event involving alcohol, there are clear duties of care and responsibility. We anticipated that many of our participants would bring children and, keen to ensure that they did not feel left out, we offered them “Jungle Juice” (apple juice). Obviously, alcohol (even in minuscule quantities) cannot be sold without a license.

General event planning
As with any of our events, we considered the route we were to take beforehand, then walked the route ourselves the day before, to check that we were avoiding any serious hazards, remove fallen branches blocking the paths, etc. On the evening before the event Shotover was subject to gales, so we walked the route again to double-check that no new blockages had occurred as a result, and to ensure that we weren’t going to lead the participants under any precarious-looking tree limbs, etc.

Because of uncertainties of weather we planned out how to respond to varying weather conditions: we erected makeshift rainshelters at certain points, and prepared a ‘Plan B’ that would have centred around these shelters had there been a downpour.

Publicity
We took all the usual promotional steps we took for any of our events: posters well in advance at the location and elsewhere, a mention in our newsletter and on our website, etc. We were fortunate to have had established an acquaintance with one of the food writers for The Oxford Times, and a fortnight prior to our event she published a glowing article about our plans in her weekly food page. That article reached a new audience of people who would not normally read the countryside pages (where we have previously been promoted), so many of the participants who attended and subsequently fell in love with our trees were people who had hitherto been unaware of our project- a good result!

Notes prepared by Andrew Heaver

-Project leader, Shotover Ancient Trees Project

Shotover Wildlife (SW) is a voluntary organisation that researches and communicates the importance of Oxford’s Shotover Hill for wildlife. The Shotover Ancient Trees Project was established to encourage public involvement in the search for trees on and around Shotover that hold particular significance for wildlife and-or local heritage. The project has been Lottery-funded, through the Big Lottery Fund’s Awards for All scheme. More information is available at www.shotover-wildlife.org.uk