TUNE IN, TURN ON, EAT UP

A group of university friends are just saying no to hemp's druggy
associations, and promoting it as the latest wonder food

When you first hear about a group of university friends hanging out on
daddy's country estate and experimenting with hemp, you might think they're
following in the British tradition of the upper classes blowing their trust
funds on a life of indolence. But the younger generation on the Firle Estate
in Sussex are no respecters of tradition. Far from turning on and dropping
out, they have embarked on the task of rehabilitating a non-narcotic
relative of the marijuana plant, viewing it as a great culinary cash crop of
the future. This is not some dilettante group playing at business. They
understand hard work, and there's not an illegal high in sight.

"People are genuinely interested, until you say it is a food, and then they
rapidly lose interest," says Henry Gage of the ups and downs of promoting
the hemp oils, pasta, pesto and ice-cream that he and four friends produce
from seed on Lord Gage's estate. I have been invited down to Motherhemp's
Sussex headquarters at Firle House for an alternative lunch. Sarah Yearsley
has picked me up from the station.

It is a beautiful sunny day. We drive in front of the house past the
overgrown lake and I'm led straight into the kitchen. Gradually the other
Motherhempers drift in to help. Lunch preparation is, apparently, a
concerted effort.

Sarah bustles around talking and making an autumn smoothie. Tania Lowry
quietly gets on with the bulk of the meal -she has already made some hummus
and hemp butter in a beautiful shade of green. Of them all she is the real
cook, formerly a chef at a well-known London restaurant, Clarke's.

Jake Yearsley, Sarah's brother, quietly ambles in and gets on with building
an artichoke and orange salad. Lord Gage appears. This is not his project
but he is not going to be left out. His initial scepticism has given way to
enthusiasm and pride.

Henry Gage watches benignly from the sidelines. He started Motherhemp in
1998 with Will Stevens after leaving Bristol University. They were looking
for an ecological business. Will had discovered the versatility and
potential of hemp, Henry conveniently had access to the odd thousand-acre
estate, and they were off.

At first they adopted a scatter-gun approach, producing textiles, paper and
moisturisers as well as food. Then the Yearsleys joined them and the focus
shifted on to food. Both abandoned stressful careers in London -Jake in the
music business, Sarah as a travel documentary producer -because they felt
that it was detrimental to their health. They have Crohn's Disease - an
irritable digestive condition -which makes healthy diet of paramount
importance. Jake says, "I would never go back to London, even if they paid
me millions of pounds."

Will Stevens, who has taken this one step further and now lives in France
with his wife and children, is now a "virtual" presence through the wonders
of e-mail.

Meanwhile the noise is deafening as Sarah whizzes up hemp seed with water
(one part hemp to three parts water) in the blender to make hemp milk.

Raspberries, blueberries and a scoop of their vanilla-flavoured Hemp Ice are
blitzed together. We all drink it, even Lord Gage -mainly because of the
ice, to which he is particularly partial.

Jake has put himself outside Tania or Sarah's cooking jurisdiction, and is
doing his own thing. While peeling the orange and chopping the artichoke, he
explains, "Hemp is a complete vegetable protein and is excellent for
building up muscle."

Then it is time for the pasta -hemp and spelt fusilli. It only takes three
minutes to cook. The table is laid. Jake leaps up to make the hemp dressing.
Sarah examines the salad, and there is a discreet brother and sister
altercation.

"Do you think that's enough?"

"It'll have to be, there isn't any more."

Sarah takes matters into her own hands and assembles a green salad. Having
seen them all at close quarters I suspect the kitchen dynamic plays back
into the office: Miss Busy, Mr Independent, Mr Observant, Miss Quietly
Capable.

Everyone sits down to wholemeal -not hemp -bread, hummus and hemp butter.

Served with the pasta is both green and red pesto. The salad is dressed with
Jake's dressing. Hemp oil is cold-pressed from the seed; the pasta flour
comes from the residue, or "cake". Nothing is cooked in hemp oil because it
degenerates at quite low temperatures into harmful trans-fats.

I preferred the green pesto to the red, but then I am a bit of purist. The
hummus was nice and smooth. The pasta was gluten-free and extremely good -
brown, wholesome, and not at all stodgy and bloating in the way that
wholemeal pasta can be. But you certainly have to like hemp -the nutty,
seedy taste pervades everything.

After the main course Lord Gage waited expectantly for the ice-cream.

However, ice-cream was off. They had all naively assumed that the five tubs
that had been left in the fridge would be enough. However, they had reckoned
without Lord Gage. Only one tub remained -which had serious Lord-like
inroads in it -and that had gone into the fruit smoothie. Henry stepped into
the breach and rustled up a chocolate drink -hemp milk mixed with cocoa.

The meal might have been a bit too green and brown, too open-toed sandals
for some. But it was certainly incredibly healthy. Hemp oil is a complete
protein, firmly associated with the current health buzz words: EFA -
essential fatty acids, omega 3 and omega 6 -in the perfect balance; GLAs,
Gamma-Linolenic Acid. All are essential for a good metabolism and rarely
found together in one seed. Hemp is cholesterol-free and has been shown to
improve skin disorders such as eczema and psoriasis; inflammatory conditions
such as arthritis and Crohn's Disease, and cardiovascular problems.

Although the finola variety of hemp they harvest looks identical to
cannabis, you could smoke a whole field of it with no effect (apart from
probably feeling rather sick) as it contains no THC, the mind-altering
chemical present in cannabis. Even so, it has to be grown under Home Office
licence, and Motherhemp is the only company in the UK allowed to grow it
commercially for seed, which they then sell to approved farmers. Henry had
to be approved as an upright citizen, undergoing rigorous police checks,
before he was given the go-ahead.

"I was 23 when I started and immediately had the Home Office and the local
bobby on to me," he says. "The hemp has to be grown in a field hidden from
the road and away from public footpaths, in case anyone decides to harvest
it and sell it as something else.

"Even so," he adds, "I have found plants carefully removed from a field."

Hemp grows extremely well in Britain, it is GM-free and does not require
pesticides or herbicides. For the first four years, Henry grew 30 acres
yielding approximately 20 tonnes of seed. This year they will grow up to
2,000 acres, though not at Firle as it tends to grow better in the north
than the south of the UK.

The Motherhempers are all passionate about hemp as an ethical, organic,
environmental, sustainable, healthy food, although Henry's enthusiasm is
moderated in a very English way. He wants hemp to enter the agricultural
mainstream as soya and linseed have done, and in the present dire
agricultural climate feels that farmers should have a chance to diversify
with a viable, valuable, sustainable crop.

Just before I leave, Henry confides self-effacingly, "I feel very lucky
because I wouldn't have had the imagination to come up with an idea like
this. But I feel very privileged to be part of it."

Motherhemp: 01323 811909; www.motherhemp.com

Seeds of inspiration

Hemp-seed Tahini

1 cup hulled hemp seeds

1 tbsp hemp oil

1 tbsp water (optional)

Toast the seeds and finely grind them in a blender. Combine them with the
oil and mix to a smooth paste. The mixture may require some water to keep it
moist. Add the resulting tahini to home-made hemp-seed hummus.

Hemp-seed Hummus

3/4 of the hemp seed tahini above

1 can (425g) of cooked chickpeas

1 tbsp hemp oil

1/2 cup lemon juice

3-4 cloves of crushed garlic

1 tsp soy sauce

Freshly ground pepper

A pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

Puree the chickpeas in a blender, add the other ingredients, and blend until
the texture is smooth and creamy.

Hemp Pesto

1/2 cup toasted hulled hemp seeds

2/3 cup sliced almonds

1 bunch of basil

3 tbsp hemp oil

3 tbsp olive oil

2 cups grated parmesan cheese

Crush seeds, almonds, basil, hemp and olive oil to a paste with a pestle and
mortar. Mix in the cheese. Serve with pasta.

John E. Dvorak, Hempologist The Boston Hemp Co-op's Online Hemp History
Library and Museum http://www.hempology.org