COASTAL
An East Yorkshire couple has literally taken the plunge with a seawater-to-salt artisan business
Google ‘salt idioms’, and you’ll find dozens, ranging from the familiar (‘salt of the earth’; ‘take it with a grain of…’) to the less so – anyone out there ‘salting the books’? (We don’t really want to know.)
Its place in our global lexicon shows what an everyday essential the white stuff is – and people increasingly want even their essentials to be ethical and, dare we say it, artisan.
New company the Yorkshire Salt Maiden is a real family affair, run by mum and dad Aniela and James Wood, with help from their three young daughters and sea dog Bella, a friendly black Labrador with a penchant for sticking her tongue in the ear of visiting Yorkshire Life writers.
The couple met in Fiji where they were both volunteering for an environmental charity – marine business consultant James persuaded Portsmouth-born Aniela, an IT project manager, to move with him to Scarborough, where he’d trained on the highly regarded Hull University marine biology course.
But in 2021, a move back to his family’s home in Dringhoe, near Driffield, led them serendipitously to ethically sourced salt.
‘We started with low-impact principles, wanting a business with low food miles, minimal energy input and ethical packaging,’ says Aniela. ‘And, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy my IT job, but you do end up sitting looking at a computer all day – having something else more physical to do is really satisfying.
‘Also, if you’re going to bring three young girls to live somewhere as remote as this, you need to find them some way of earning a bit of pocket money,’ chips in James. ‘There aren’t many paper rounds around here!’
Aniela remembers the day a couple of years back when the family were on the beach, and one of her daughters asked what seemed at the time like an insignificant question: ‘Why is the sea salty?’
‘Do you remember those diagrams you used to have at school, that showed the sea, and the heat of the sun, and the rain? We were having that conversation,’ she says. ‘And that’s where it all started.’ The process is fairly straightforward, but very time-consuming – Aniela describes it as a real labour of love.
It starts with seawater harvested at nearby Fraisthorpe beach, where the water quality is good – and they always double-check it on the Environment Agency website before they head out to collect. James takes on the initial heavy lifting, donning armpit-skimming waders to head out into Bridlington Bay to fill, usually, six five-gallon canisters before heaving them up the cliffs.
Once back home the canisters are lef
