Tilt

We have been in love with watching our neighbors, The Red Series, hang out on the roof of the second floor of our office in the Farm:Shop in Dalston. They are brilliant, funny, absolutely entertaining and just about reaching their due date! 1-2 eggs a chick per day multiplied by lots of days has been a gift in itself. We are now producing about 16ish or so eggs a week. We encourage you to pop on by and say, “hi” to our friends, buy some eggs or have a gander at the food growing, ready to be eaten.

As foodies and avid listeners, we are often struck by the disconnect people have between food and farm. The recent model of Seed to Plate is definitely up and coming and starting to make an impact in our communities. People are wanting to grow more food. It is cheaper, much more sustainable and gets you to DO something. If you are going to eat something from the earth (which we assume you are going to be doing anyway), why not get to know the soil, the water, the sun, the animals and the plants before ingesting? We promise that you will have a deeper appreciation for your food. This ‘new’ ecology is what is going to ultimately keep the world turning.

Jack Middleton, TILT’s own Food Guru, believes in this model – to a degree. He says, that “basically the seed-to-plate idea as I understand it is a closed food network. In recent years there has been a massive focus on field-to-fork, however this does not take into account the other processes (often with high CO2e emissions) involved in the production. Frequently seeds are bought in from outside the area and from oversees at high social, economic and environmental costs. Not only this but in terms of creating food security and resilience a field-to-fork network is still as weak as a system which imports food from overseas (The UK’s food import statistics are frightening!). But, this is not to say it isn’t a step in the right direction, just that food miles are often cited in academic and popular articles with no thought about anything else. Click here to read more.”

Last year, talking with Food From the Skye Biodiversity Queen Azul Valerie-Thome, we were struck by the passion she felt by watching children learn to grow something for the first time and seeing their eyes sparkle at each stage of the growing process. For some inner city kids, this was the first time they had ever planted something, or seen something grow.

At the Farm:Shop in Dalston, we (TILT) hope that we can be part of that intimate experience for kids and people of all ages to experience the magic of watching their food grow and develop into nourishment for their bodies. The story is a full circle and it all begins with our new chicken friends.