Some festivals are known for their food – al fresco feasts by big-name chefs, theatrical cooking demos over firepits to crowds half rapt, half hungover and hungry – but Glastonbury is not one of them, which is probably why this is my first visit. I envision stall after stall of dreary mung bean stews, and pack salt and Tabasco sauce alongside the loo roll, just in case.
There’s certainly still an element of the knit-your-own muesli about the place, but you have to look pretty hard to find it. There are 400 or so food stalls dotted around the festival, and vegan offerings are everywhere. Yet, with the notable exception of the Greenpeace cafe and stalwarts such as Manic Organic, now in its 33rd year, many are more fast food than whole food.
I try a compostable cup of seitan hot wings from VFC which, after a pint of cider, hits the deep-fried spot without tasting of anything in particular and a pulled jackfruit burrito from Club Mexicana which, while pleasant enough in a salady sort of a way, mostly reminds me how much I like pork. Even traders such as Nelly’s Barn Burgers, which sources its 28-day dry-aged beef from local members of the wildlife-friendly Farm Wilder scheme for more sustainable agriculture, also offer vegan patties, although they tell me the cheese and bacon burger is definitely their biggest seller.
Make it as far as the Green Fields, with their laughter yoga and spoon-whittling workshops, however, and it’s a different scene entirely. Tucked away in the woods is the Permaculture Cafe, selling homemade kefir and huge, crispy vegetable pakoras cooked over a wood fire; “the only food grown and eaten on site”, as the hand-painted sign boasts – and one of the best things I eat all weekend.
Jane Easton, who is volunteering at the Food for a Future stand, giving plant-based cookery classes to a shoeless audience lounging on cushions, tells me they really noticed veganism take off at the 2017 festival. “Some people just come to party,” she says, “and that’s fine, but when they eventually make it over here we can show them there’s another way of living.”
I mention the posters I have seen around the site – still very much a working dairy farm – decrying the environmental impact of livestock farming, and she agrees “it’s a bit of a paradox – there is an awful lot of meat at Glastonbury”. But, she says, smiling, “we’re still upbeat. That’s why we’re here.”
