Twelve Months, One Specials Board: How a Full Year of Ribble Valley Sourcing Really Went
Photo: Rose and Trev Clough, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Twelve months ago we set ourselves a challenge: see how much of our specials board we could source from within a stone's throw of the pub — our own garden, a few generous neighbours, and the hedgerows and hills of the Ribble Valley. We kept notes. Some months were triumphant. Others were, frankly, a lesson in humility.
Here's how the year actually unfolded.
Spring: Lamb, Wild Garlic and Overconfidence
April started beautifully. Spring lamb from a farm up the valley went straight onto the board as a slow-roasted shoulder with mint from our own beds, and it flew out. The wild garlic came thick and fast too — the shaded banks near the river were practically glowing with it by early May, and our wild garlic soup and garlic butter for the steaks became instant regulars' favourites.
The overconfidence? We planted far too many courgettes. By July we were serving courgette three ways in a single dish and quietly leaving carrier bags of them by the staff door.
Summer: A Garden That Got Ahead of Us
June and July were all about the garden. New potatoes, broad beans, chard, and the first of the herbs. The summer berry crop was generous — we put a gooseberry fool on the dessert board that people still ask about.
The flop of the season was our attempted tomato crop. The Ribble Valley summer did what Ribble Valley summers do, and we ended up with a lot of very green tomatoes. The less said, the better. Our chef made chutney and we moved on.
Autumn: Game Season and Hedgerow Gold
This is when the year earned its keep. Local pheasant and partridge from the shoots around Pendle went on the board from October, done simply — roasted, with bread sauce and proper game chips. The hedgerows delivered sloes, elderberries and damsons in quantities we hadn't expected, and the sloe gin that's been quietly maturing behind the bar is now very much spoken for.
Our one real failure was mushrooms. We had high hopes for a foraging trip that yielded precisely enough for one starter, once.
Winter: Roots, Comfort and What We Learned
By December the board was all about the store cupboard: our own chutneys, pickled beans, frozen berries in crumbles, and root veg from the last of the garden beds. It turns out a year of hyper-local sourcing ends not with a bang but with a bowl of soup — and there's nothing wrong with that.
The verdict? Roughly a third of our specials across the year came from the garden, the hedgerows or a neighbour's field. We'll take that. Next year we're planting fewer courgettes, giving up on tomatoes entirely, and booking the mushroom foraging guide properly in advance.
Keep an eye on the specials board — every dish on it this coming year has a story that starts somewhere very close to your table.
