MY-HOLE-AND-CORNERCraig Sams founded Whole Earth Foods in 1967 with his brother Gregory, and went on to revolutionise the chocolate industry with his wife Josephine Fairley, in 1991, with Green & Blacks organic chocolate. Their Maya Gold chocolate was the first UK product to carry the FairTrade mark in 1994. He is also founder of Carbon Gold, which is on a mission to mitigate climate change using biochar to restore the planet’s degraded soils. Sams was interviewed for Issue One of Hole & Corner and we are honoured to welcome him back to celebrate issue 20.A ‘hole-and-corner’ is an old English term meaning a secret place: somewhere you go to escape the world, to be inspired and to contemplate and create. Where is your ‘hole-and-corner’?

I have a shed in our little woodland near Hastings. It has facilities to make a cup of tea and a few blankets and chairs. It’s in a grassy open space in chestnut, oak and birch woodland.
-
Can you explain why it is so special to you?

My parents are buried there; it is where we developed the kilns for making biochar for my Carbon Gold enterprise; there have been some legendary parties there; it’s an eight-minute drive or a one hour walk from my urban house, so I can go any time I like. There’s a sweat lodge and a stream with watercress.
-
Is it important to you to have somewhere to escape from the hustle and bustle of life?

Essential. I have a spacious garden at home, but it’s surrounded by other habitations and gardens. It’s the silence in the woods, the odd rabbit that creeps past, the birds, a buzzard circling overhead, and just the smell of woodland soil and the exudates of mature trees that have such a positive therapeutic effect. I am a shinrin-yoku fan and love forest bathing with my eyes and my ears and my nose and my toes.
-
What elements do you think make a perfect ‘hole-and-corner’?

It has to have something of you about it. If you are frequently in the same place, your microbiome and the place’s microbiome create an atmosphere that contains them both. When you get there you ‘plug in’ at a microbial level. If I stay in a hotel I wave my clothes in the air for a minute to colonise the air – then sleep better because the air is familiar.

Is it private to you or do you let other people visit?

We share. The sweat lodge gets used by one group; there were some 50ish women celebrating the transition from mother to crone for a couple of days; a Forest School group will start using it in 2021. There is a muddy public footpath through it but I have created a new, all weather, path that is replacing the old path and is more wiggly and further from the shed, for more privacy.
-
What’s the best advice you’ve ever been given?

Never be afraid to charge the price that
your product is worth.