Name: Sally Lee
Role: Project co-ordinator of Rooted Community Food
How long I’ve been doing this: Six months
How I got here: Through an accumulation of factors, but mostly because I found it increasingly difficult to witness what we are allowing to happen to our beautiful planet. I had been a climate activist for a few years but wanted to see outcomes to my actions.
Growing your own food may seem passive but when a community begins to grow for each other, it is an act of protest. It’s a rejection of the system that says money dictates whether you can buy healthy food, a rejection of greedy corporations, a rejection of the individualistic society but, most importantly, it’s an act of self-love.
Growing food is good for you, reduces your stress hormones, lowers your blood pressure and gives you a sense of peace which is often hard to find.
Best thing about my work: The people who naturally gravitate to the project are the best thing about my work. They are very different, with diverse backgrounds and varying reasons for joining, but there is a wonderful sense of community.
There is no pressure, so the growers give what they can, when they can and have a very simple goal of donating food to our community. I have the best job ever – being outdoors with mud under my nails, sun on my face, growing food and surrounded by the best ‘co-workers’!
Biggest challenge currently faced: Our biggest challenge is to find a successful model that makes our project less reliant on funding without diluting our community ethos.
We have set up a Veg Hero initiative to encourage community/business stakeholders via a project sponsorship programme – with just a handful of sponsors, we could make this happen.
Interests: I am exceedingly lucky that my job encapsulates everything that I enjoy so my life looks similar inside and outside work. When not at work, I am studying; I am finishing the first year of a Health Sciences degree.
My typical day
Once I’ve walked my children to school, I would organise what I need to take with me to work. This is often tools, seeds and refreshments for breaks. On a good day, I will walk to the community allotment.
I meet the growers at the gates, never knowing what our group will look like for the day until they arrive. We have regulars who come to each session and others who drop in depending on commitments.
We have two allotment plots: the first is our food-producing plot and the second is a children’s plot we are developing to share growing skills. This gives us a variety of jobs that can be chosen by the growers such as sowing seeds, repotting seedlings, weeding, turning compost, wood chipping, harvesting and plot maintenance.
Apart from following the no-dig method, growers are free to do what they choose, there are no strict plans apart from growing our goal of one tonne of community food this year.
Sometimes we will break for coffee, sitting on the wood stumps under the apple tree. It’s an opportunity to catch up on things that we are planning. We try to hold a monthly meeting where we get together and review our progress.
We have been very busy developing the children’s plot and planning our launch open day on Sunday (23 April).
Growers will peel off around lunchtime but some may stay to finish what they are doing, enjoying the last peaceful moments the allotment has to offer. Our main sessions are Wednesdays and soon to be Tuesdays too, but there is often someone there each day as we have a team of waterers for the seedlings in the polytunnel and greenhouse.
It’s a great space to be and our hope is to be a catalyst to encourage the development of more projects like this, with the many benefits that it brings to the people and communities involved.
- To find out more about the Rooted Community Food project, visit the Facebook page here. Details of the Open Day this Sunday are here.
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