Harvest, Lammas Day and Community Gardens

 

I love harvest time and the opportunity to gather together and share a meal or swap a glut of fruit, vegetables, jams, honey or eggs with family, friends and neighbours. The 1st August each year is Lammas Day and a time to celebrate the first harvest, the grain harvest. Lammas is both a Pagan and Christian celebration and marks the half way point between the Summer Solstice and the Autumn Equinox. The word Lammas comes from the Old English Loaf Mass because loaves were blessed in Church.

As a child my family and I used to attend the annual village Harvest Festival which included donating fresh, packet or tinned produce, which were sold off at the Harvest Sale the next day. The centre piece of the harvest display was the beautiful hand baked harvest wheat sheaf loaf complete with a harvest mouse made out of dough. Every year I hoped that my pocket money would be enough to allow me to bid for the loaf and every year I was disappointed. I keep promising myself that I will make or buy a wheat sheaf loaf but haven't yet got round to that. Maybe this year I will...

Many of us love spending time in the garden and the taste of home grown fruit and vegetables is often hard to beat. As well as providing tasty produce, gardening is also great for our physical health and mental health. You don't need lots of space to grow a few crops and pots and window boxes can be just as productive if outdoor space is limited. 

Or if you would like to connect with others, make use of more space for growing and learn from those in your neighbourhood perhaps, you could consider joining your local community garden. Well planned spaces can offer a place to engage with nature and get active in the garden. If there are no community gardens in your area you may even consider setting up your own!

Care Farms and Community Gardens are often very separate types of green space but perhaps Care Farms could find a small plot of land that could be used for growing activities with clients as part of their regular sessions? I'll share more about this in a future blog.

Cookery Courses and Therapeutic Baking

My mother trained as a chef so its, perhaps, not surprising that from a very young age I grew up with a love of cooking and baking. One of the first recipes I learnt to make was Butterfly Cakes. These are beautiful little sponge cakes with a small circle cut out of the top and filled with delicious butter cream. The sponge circle is cut in two to look like wings and placed on the top. Perfection!

I still love to bake and cook and I'm always on the look out for new recipes and ideas. Earlier this year I decided to improve my skills and knowledge by signing up to Leiths School of Food and Wine. I completed the Plant Based cookery course with Italian Olive Oil Cake and Beetroot and Mushroom Wellington becoming new family favourites and I'm currently enrolled on a 10 week Bakery Course.

When I cook I often become so completely focused on the activity that I forget about other things. This is what psychologists Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Jeanne Nakamura call being in 'flow'. A feeling where you become totally immersed in what you are doing. Being in Flow can help with stress and anxiety because it enables a person to focus on the present activity.  

Research into Therapeutic Baking and Cooking is still in its infancy but a number of therapists are integrating baking or cooking into their sessions. Therapists and clients cook or bake together while working on issues such as grief, loss, anxiety and depression. It can also be used as stress relief and to boost mood, self confidence and self esteem, enhance creativity, stimulate the senses and appetite and increase social contact.

Is this possible to run therapeutic baking and cooking sessions within a care farm setting? I would suggest that will depend on the space and resources available to each individual setting. Establishments will need someone who is confident enough to run the sessions, a kitchen area with ovens or suitable outdoor cooking space, relevant kitchen equipment, ingredients, food hygiene certification and up to date health and safety and registration procedures.

In a future blog I will discuss practical ways that care farms of all sizes and resource levels can include food within their sessions.

Sharing food and the place of food within care farming

We all have food memories, both good and bad. The smell and taste of food can transport us back in time and trigger feelings and emotions as well as reminding us of places or settings. 

One of my early memories is of breakfast picnics on the beach. As a child my family would take holidays in Cornwall and my parents would drive through the night to avoid the traffic. We'd arrive at sunrise and head to Gunwalloe or Praa Sands (pronounced pray sands) and have something to eat and drink while listening to the waves and sitting on the sand. I may not remember what we ate but I remember the feelings of arrivng early and having the beach to ourselves and the sound of the waves on the shoreline. Many of my favourite memories are of meals out to quirky cafes or restaurants, searching out local or artisan produce at shops or markets and of baking and cooking for family and friends. 

Food was an important part of early green care and care farming practices and green care, as we would recognise it today, began in Medieval Europe. Restorative Monastic gardens were designed to support and care for the sick and infirm and passing pilgrims. These gardens offered a chance for people, including the monks, to spend time in nature while carrying out meaningful work such as growing fruit and vegetables and tending to the livestock. The gardens physically fed the patients and the monks, while also nurturing the body, mind and spirit.

Food continued to be intertwined with green care and caring for individuals up until the 1940's but has seen a steady decline since then. During my own care farming research in 2020/21 I noticed that the use of food within the care farming experience was sporadic. Many farmers and owners explained that they either didn't have suitable catering facilities on site or they were concerned about the possible health and safety risks of infections due to poor hand washing after contact with the animals. This put them off introducing activities that included cooking and sharing. Others said they had tried to run activities and fallen foul of local food hygiene regulations. 

In 2023, in further research I reflected on care farming and the place of food. Have we moved away from its origins? Should food growing, harvesting, cooking and sharing be part of the experience on farms today?

Over the next few blogs, I'll explore how we might use food within care farming, using food therapeutically, food and mood, food and our sense of place and the practicalities of using food.

 Beautiful handmade pizza at OxMoor Farm Buckinghamshire

Reflecting on my 2020 Churchill Fellowship, Mental Health Post Pandemic and a Rachel Carson Visiting Scholarship

It's been three years since I submitted my Churchill Fellowship Report and a lot has happened since then. I've pursued my interest in growing and social and therapeutic horticulture, I've become intrigued by forest therapy and I've deepened my knowledge of sustainability. 

I've returned to the state school system as a teacher, after five years away, and been so concerned by the levels of anxiety and mental health that children and young people are experiencing post pandemic that I have started to retrain as a psychologist. My British Psychological Society accredited MSc in the Psychology of Mental Health and Wellbeing started in June 2024 and will be finished next spring. 

My care farming research has widened to include the place of food within the care farming experience and I am working with colleagues to restart a local food partnership with the knowledge gained from my Rachel Carson Visiting Scholarship to Chatham University Pennsylvania. I'll be updating everyone on my journey, findings and next steps towards my goal of setting up a community care farm.

Keep an eye out for my regular blogs over the next few months.