It has been a while since I wrote to you in my Janet’s Jottings. However, I have been writing. During the long, wet winter, I spent quite some time cosy and warm in a room of my own, looking out at the bleak and bare landscape of my Japanese garden against a backdrop of inclement weather which hardly ceased for months.

It is a contemplative space. A room like this is a treasure. When I was a young woman in my twenties, I yearned for a room like this where I could have my cabinet of curiosities, a selection of my favourite pieces on the wall and two comfy armchairs to sit and muse with a friend over coffee or tea, with a little smackerel of something. The dream of the joy to have freedom of time and space just to dwell on the world. I created this space during the Covid days. It was my lockdown project.

What I have been writing about though is someone else’s dream. Made – or Dr Made, as he is known – first contacted me a couple of years into the LittlePod journey. I was beginning to understand the urgency of the Vanilla Queen’s words to me. ‘We could lose vanilla within a generation if we don’t act now,’ she had cried.

Her call was so commanding that I put my hand up to say that I would try to educate the British people about REAL vanilla and its value. I would spread her 1% message – that a one percent incursion into the artificial market would double the need for vanilla worldwide and encourage the farmers on the Equatorial Belt to keep cultivating this important crop for the benefit of people and planet. 97% of vanillin used in the West is synthetic so 1% sounded doable to me and the uninitiated.

It wasn’t long before I realised how difficult it was going to be. Even top chefs did not know at that time that vanilla comes from an orchid and that it is on the IUCN list of endangered species. Most people do not understand that the word vanillin on a bottle does not mean that what is inside is real. It is confusing. Vanillin is just one compound of vanilla and it can be processed synthetically. Most ice creams do not contain REAL vanilla, but vanillin that can come from different sources, one the by-product of a petrochemical that is used in the wood pulp industry. When vanilla prices go up, all ice cream prices go up. But not all are made using REAL vanilla.

One day, I received an email from Dr Made, who was living in Oxford, that was to increase my awareness, curiosity and resolve to tell the story of this little flower.

Ten months ago I was invited by a friend, Judi Burnett, to give a talk to her luncheon club in Mid-Devon. I found myself facing a room full of farmers. It was an ideal opportunity to tell the story of Dr Made and how he had wanted to revitalise his father’s vanilla farm in Bali where he grew up.

I told my audience that my meeting with Dr Made led to a specific project for his father’s farm – a pioneering polyculture system to show how barren land could be cultivated to create and mimic the natural rainforest. Planting the forest with vanilla would show vanilla’s value to biodiversity and aid forest regeneration. It was to be a long and dedicated project. Dr Made had to use his persuasive talents to encourage the farmers to have a go. He was convinced that the project would be worthwhile and that LittlePod would record the journey and be a loyal and faithful partner.

As I was leaving the venue after my well-received talk, I was approached by a man called Simon Perks. He gave me his card and said that he was a director of a publishing company called Unicorn. He had listened to my story and felt that it deserved a wider audience.

I was a little daunted by the prospect of taking time out of running LittlePod to pen our journey of 15 years, but I wanted an opportunity to showcase the success of this project and LittlePod’s involvement, so I followed through with his suggestion and contacted Unicorn’s commissioning editor. Thanks to the wet and windy winter that followed, the story will be available across the world from June! It is called Real Vanilla: Nature’s Unsung Hero – The Rather Large Story of LittlePod.

The whole tale is told in the space of a single day, intwined with interviews and reminisces. The opening scene takes place in the LittlePod forest orchard, which is resplendent with vanilla. I am seeing the results of the farmers’ toil for the first time in our 14-year project. Along the way the reader is introduced to significant people who have important voices and stories of their own to share.

In this book I reflect on my past and record the early influences that chimed with Dr Made, which makes this a forever story and one which I hope you will wish to read. I try to answer the three questions I am constantly asked when attending trade shows, dinners and events. They are: Vanilla – what is it? How do I use it? And the most enigmatic question of all, How and why did you get into the vanilla business?

I hope you will consider purchasing this book for your coffee table to share with visitors and friends. Harriet Beesley/Ferguson is the designer. I am thrilled to say that over the last 15 years, despite her own career rise, Harriet has always been our principal designer. It has been wonderful to watch her develop her own career and remind us of the young intern who helped me to launch LittlePod.

Harriet has designed the book with a magazine feel so the reader can dip in and out of the stories. I hope you find it informative, descriptive and uplifting. As LittlePodders yourselves I hope you will be proud of your role in this success story. After all, without the hearers and hearteners of the LittlePod journey, and most importantly, the purchasers of our REAL vanilla, there would not be a successful story to tell!

Sending vanilla hugs and thanks to you all,

Janet x