Sky from North Fife July 2010

Driving home from the studio yesterday eve, I just had to stop and record these views over the River Tay looking North from Fife. The Sky, as is the river, powerful and ever changing and if you were passing by you might seen that my jaw had dropped in wonder.

Rosanne Cash The Big Tent Falkland North Fife

Rosanne and Anne MacKie meet at The Big Tent Falkland. A moving ocassion, Anne presented a bouquet of flowers to the delight of Rosanne. They are cousins, distant yes, it's not difficult to see the resemblance of nose and facial bone structure.

Rosanne Cash.


Rosanne Cash at The Big Tent Festival Falkland. Her ancestors came from Strathmiglo, very close to Falkland so it was very much a home coming, was able to relate closely to some in the audience and to the throng generally. A very happy ocassion.

Much more to follow of The Big Tent Festival over the next few days.

Foods and Drink at The big Tent

We all eat, we all become hungry below are some of the vendors I came across over the three days of the Festival.

Stoats Porridge.Stoats began with an idea in 2004 to serve fresh porridge at music festivals. "We listened to our mates moan and groan about what they had to eat to survive at music festivals. We knew that porridge would make a healthy, filling and tasty eating option, so we decided porridge was the future (and quite a cool way to spend the summer). Bob and Tony got a shiny wee mobile porridge bar and started selling freshly made porridge right across the UK, and festival audiences loved it (and still do - look for the biggest queue at breakfast and you've found Stoats Porridge)".
More info.

Tunstalls organic bakery. Baker Justin Tunstall spends around four hours lovingly crafting one of his artisan breads before even thinking about putting it in an oven. Relying not on additives, flour improvers or pre-mixes, but rather on his skill, the resulting organic bread is snapped up for its extraordinary texture and flavour. A resolutely organic and traditional craftsman, he insists on using only windmill-powered renewable energy to power his bakery and refuses to invest in weighing or shaping machines. A variety of specialist breads including pain au levain, Italian pagnotta, and honey, sunflower and pumpkin seed are available to buy at farmers markets and specialist food shops.
Tel:- 01350 727924
Web
A very popular food stall, BBQ meats, Buffalo,beef,pork of excellent quality.
Contact.





Pillars Organic Foods.
More information.

Peelham Farm produce and foods.
Reared slowly outside and fed on home-grown barley and beans, guaranteed free of gmos, growth promoters and antibiotics.

In addition to our delicious Tamworth Hams we also produce Toulouse and Cumberland sausages, rashers, salamis and all the cuts of fresh pork. We make herb mustards to go with our pork and lamb


Contact

Laura's Chocolates. I sampled and they're trully fantastic. More information.

Great Grog. More.

Fife Diet, further information.

Fife Diet, strawberry smoothie, blended by bicycle power.

Feasts of India. A guide to the principles and delights of Indian vegetarian cooking.
The focus of Feasts of India is vegetarian food. It features traditional recipes from across India, together with family favourites. It includes quick and simple daily meals alongside more sophisticated dishes for weekend treats, feasts and parties.
Feasts of India tries to demystify the processes which are vital to lending dishes authentic flavour, giving clear, step-by-step instructions. This volumes also includes some information on the nutritional properties of all the key spices, vegetables and other produce used in the recipes. The illustrations in the book are based on the folk arts of India.



Buy Now.Feasts of India: Traditional, Regional and Family Vegetarian Recipes

Fairshares trading, Contact.

Brewsters selling, Roast chicken, Roast Duck, Roast Guinee fowl,Crepes all organically grown. Tel:- 07851 023609

Big Tent Foods here provided by The Falkland Centre for Stewardship.
One Planet Food: food and farming as if people mattered.


Arbroath Smokies
Iain R. Spink's
Original Smokies From Arbroath being cooked on site at The big Tent. Fresh Haddock at it's best.
More on Ian and smokies

Tunng at The Big Tent Falkland North Fife

Tunng play The Big Tent at Falkland North Fife.











More.

Grassroots Zimbabwe at The Big Tent

I made a special effort to get to The Big Tent to see Grassroots Zimbabwe, I'm really glad I did. They are brilliant, their cause very worthy, see for yourself.

Welcome to Grassroots Theatre Company. We are based in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, and specialise in Theatre for Development (TfD), using dance, drama and music as a process towards informing and empowering local communities in Zimbabwe and overseas.

As an independent organisation, they work with a range of partners from local businesses and action groups to large international NGOs, focusing on development issues ranging from HIV/AIDS to human rights. They work with urban and rural communities in Zimbabwe, but are also involved in an annual UK touring programme, which is hosted by The Daneford Trust, a UK international volunteering charity.











Grass Roots Zimbabwe at The Big Tent. Energy on legs to rhythmic percussion.
Learn More.
And More.

Phil Kay Hosting The main Stage at The Big Tent

Phil Kay at ease backstage.


Phil Kay Hosting The main Stage at The Big Tent.

Found at The Big Tent

Found at The Big Tent Falkland Estate North Fife 2010

Das Contras at The Big Tent

Das Contras at The Big Tent. Falkland Eco Festival, North Fife
Das Contras: 6 pieces band with a latin edge and a serious taste for jazzy funk, a far higher quality sound can be experienced on the CD below.


To Buy Now.RECON-naissance Compilation volume one - the live sessions

Baked Potatoes at The Big Tent

Sir Walter Raleigh Oven Baked Potatoes, an early start on Friday afternoon for this extremely popular food stall.
Winners of Healthy Living Award.

"Before we knew it we found ourselves run off our feet as the demand for our services grew. Before our first year was out we had achieved the healthy Living Award www.healthylivingaward.co.uk , which was presented to us by Nick Nairn. Soon we were attending some of the bigger festivals – Britain’s music festivals are changing".
To contact.

Centre for Stewardship Tent at Big Tent Festival

Feltwork landscape. This and a few examples of crafts in The Centre for Stewardship Tent.

Beautifully crafted copper Fibula's by Penny Nethercut.

Banjo by Dave McKeen in the Centre for Stewardship tent.
Visit Dave's web site.

The Big Tent Opening Falkland North Fife

Stewards gather for the opening of The Big Tent Festival in the Centre for Stewardship.


Big Tent Opening by Stewart Stevenson MSP. The biggest and best Eco festival. The Big Tent, Falkland, Fife Scotland, Celebrating Fife.


Adelaide Sosseh, Co-Chair of the largest anti-poverty campaign in the world, the keynote speaker at this year's Big Tent Festival.

Ninian Crichton Stuart (more commonly known as Ninian Stuart) is the Hereditary Keeper of Falkland Palace a former Scottish royal palace in Falkland, Fife.

Stuart lives in Falkland and is a former Stewardship Director for the Falkland Heritage Trust. He is a co-founder of Falkland Centre for Stewardship, which runs the annual Big Tent festival that takes place in July in Falkland.

Francis Melville, Provost of Fife attending the opening with Councillor Andrew Arbuckle, Sir Menzies Campbell MP Stewards and press. I was drawn to the superb gold chain of office originating from The Marquis of Bute, it was beautifully made, stone set, heavy and enamelled. I was totally won over by her charming allure.

Trio Verso at The Big Tent Falkland

The Chapel.

Trio Verso in a place apart (the chapel) at the Big Tent Festival Falkland.

Brian Johnstone at The Big Tent Falkland.


Trio Verso at The Big Tent Falkland


Trio Verso at The Big Tent Falkland (2)

Louise Major, double bass.

Richard Ingham, saxophones, bass clarinet, low whistle.

"The Book of Belongings" reads like an archaeology of the lost, its pages carefully uncovering and observing what has vanished, died or been abandoned. Visiting former theatres of war, remote landscapes of Scotland, France and Greece, pre-war classrooms and the nightmares of childhood, these poems are not afraid to gaze long and hard at what has been deliberately concealed, erased, or dismissed as worthless - the past with all its demons, its sad domestic litanies. Brian Johnstone writes with an enviable facility, often from unusual perspectives, eliding time and space, letting geography merge seamlessly into history and, in so doing, gives vanished histories a voice.
Born in Edinburgh in 1950, Brian Johnstone has lived in the Fife countryside since 1972. He worked as a primary school teacher in various Fife schools from 1975 to 1997. Since returning to writing in the late 1980s, he has been featured in the Scottish Contemporary Poets series with 'The Lizard Silence' (1996) and published two pamphlet collections - 'Robinson: A Journey' (2000) & 'Homing' (2004) - as well as appearing in numerous anthologies and other publications. In 2009 a small collection of his poems in Italian translation was published by L'Officina (Vincenza). His work has been published extensively in Scotland, elsewhere in the UK and in Europe and the USA. His poems 'evoke - a sense of spiritual immanence in their slow still spaces' (Scottish Literary Journal) and are 'full of stilled moments and nicely shaped incidents' (Scotland on Sunday). Several have been translated into Catalan, Swedish, Polish, Slovak & Lithuanian, and published in the respective countries. In 2003 he won the Poetry on the Fringe competition at the Edinburgh Festival. Previous successes include winning the Writers' Bureau (2003) and the Mallard (1998) competitions, as well as being a prize winner in the UK National Poetry Competition (2000). In 1998 he was one of the founders of StAnza: Scotland's International Poetry Festival, having previously co-founded Shore Poets in Edinburgh in 1991. He has served as a Director of StAnza since 2001 and has also taught creative writing for the University of St Andrews Department of Continuing Education and the Open College of the Arts. Brian Johnstone lives with his wife, the maker of artist's books Jean Johnstone, on the edge of the East Neuk of Fife.
To Buy Now.The Book of Belongings

Newburgh 22nd July North Fife

Newburgh 22nd July today was really tranquil, the River Tay placid and like a millpond as I drove into Newburgh, North Fife evidence of the harsh windy and heavy rainfall of the last few days was tree debris floating by. How good it is to have the sunny weather back. Tomorrow is the first day of The Big Tent Festival at Falkland an ever increasingly popular event, hopefully you will get a taste on this site.

Witches, Midwives, and Nurses

Witches, Midwives and Nurses.A History of Women Healers
Barbara Ehrenreich & Deirdre English

As another agonizing attempt is made to shift the future of health care in the United States, we are reminded of the longevity of this crisis, and how firmly entrenched this system which is failing, is.

Witches, Midwives & Nurses, first published by the Feminist Press in 1973, is an essential book about the corruption of the medical establishment and its historic roots in witch-hunts. In this new edition, Ehrenreich and English add an entirely new section delving into the current fascination with and controversies about witches, exposing our fears and fantasies. They build on their classic exposé of the demonization of women healers, and the political and economic monopolization of medicine.
RRP: £6.99
Price: £5.24
To Buy now. Witches, Midwives, and Nurses (2nd Ed.) (Contemporary Classics)