Hello,
Hens (and their eggs) arrived here almost as soon as the first men from prison. We would save up the eggs until Friday. Scrambled eggs, cooked over our tiny wood burner in the portacabin.
This simple act of eating together, chatting about stuff, the guys teasing me for liking my eggs runny, sharing food together setting us on our way…
Schumacher College kitchen began to cook soup for us, and Riverford Organics kindly donated a weekly veg box. Julie starting to cook one day/week, which opened the opportunity for other volunteers to cook for us and paved the way one of our graduates (Mikey Francis placement in 2017) to work here and run the LandWorks kitchen.
Growing food, cooking, and eating together is at the very core of LandWorks.
But around this keystone of the project satellites many other achievements and inspirations…
Our market garden has grown over the years, providing us with fresh daily produce. But also, inspiring several people to go on and gain employment at Riverford. And since leaving prison two years ago Sam stayed on at LandWorks. Developing his growing skills, producing food, working at LandWorks 3 days/week and attending a regenerative farming course locally at the Apricot centre.
For some people initially just eating here can be too much. KJ explains in his recent PeN interview, “When I first started coming here, I wouldn’t eat anything. It’s just the anxiety, I guess. For some reason … even if I felt hungry, even if I tried chewing and that, I just couldn’t swallow it.”
After a few weeks Mikey encouraged KJ to help cook and then… “It is like a sense of family in a way. Do you know what I mean? It’s just a nice way to have a lunch. Do you know what I mean? We’re just all sat together, eating, all having a chat. Yeah, and cooking the food as well with Mikey, they’re always telling us done really well.”
It can be hard to quantify the benefits from working with the soil, cooking and eating together. Numerically our reoffending rate is low, and our employment rate is high.
But the real reason is the improvement in people’s overall health and wellbeing (which is what’s it all about) and this is evidenced in over 160 trainee and graduate stories (PeN project Interviews).
The PeN project blog gives people at LandWorks an opportunity to share their stories. To talk to the community that they once hurt.
In the Criminal Justice System this is very unusual if not unique.
However, it is not unusual – in fact really very common – for an interview to contain references to food, cooking and eating together and the impact that has had.
Chris
9th May 2024