Salt Beef and the Farmer’s Ordinary

As keynote seeker at the 2007 Going West Festival, Tony Simpson spoke to the festival theme Food for Thought. An award-winning social historian, food critic, writer on; food history, the working class, post-modern scones, 19th century immigration and a political journalist, Simpson’s talk reveals the story of colonial cuisine and its impact on New Zealand’s food traditions and our cultural identity.

He notes that many British farm labourers and their families who immigrated to New Zealand in the late 19th century (and who had eaten a monotonous steerage diet of ‘salt beef’ and dried potatoes at sea) had experience of famine.

They had also known full bellies at the annual harvest home feast and had witnessed, if not partaken in, the ‘farmer’s ordinary’, a hearty midday dinner traditionally served to farmers at the local Inn. This was a meal of thick soup, roast meat, large helpings of veg and potatoes, a sweet pie or pudding with lashings of cream, and followed by cheese.

They had known what it was to be hungry and they were determined not to be, if they could possibly help it in their new home, bringing with them the desire to be self-sustaining domestically through their land holding. This was true even for the urban working class on their now near-mythical ‘Kiwi quarter-acre section’, with its home vege garden, fruit trees and chook house. This was a tradition that lasted in New Zealand for a century.

In light of the shifts that Simpson highlights, and with the land limitations of the modern urban apartment dweller, perhaps it’s time to lobby local councils for public garden allotments and fruit trees in parks, so the self-sustaining dream can be realised for a new century?

For food assistance, or if you would like to donate or volunteer, contact foodbank.co.nz