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He says the response has been fantastic,


with the farm having ignited the creativity of team members, including one chef who returned and made elderflower vinegar, elder- flower Champagne and dried elderflowers for use in salads. Weeden adds: “It’s been smiles, all smiles.


It’s people who have done work but don’t feel that it was work. Even when they haven’t per- sonally visited, to see somebody else so pas- sionate and inspired by three hours on this plot of land picks everyone up.” As well as inspiring creativity Weeden and


Tréguer hope that spending time on the farm, helping to develop the site and growing and harvesting produce will give teams a greater understanding of what goes into producing a dish before any ingredients land on a chop- ping board. Weeden says: “My big thing at the moment


In recent months rotas have been adapted to


schedule time for the wider Culpeper team to spend at the farm tending the crops. Weeden says: “Across every site, both front and back of house have time on the rota, paid for by the company, to come here and that’s now part of their working pattern. This is new, but we can already see they’re not just bringing back herbs and salads, they’re bringing back expe- riences and the interactions of the day with nature and the natural world, and that’s the human value of doing this.”


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is to change the mindset of chefs who are so used to picking up the phone and doing a sec- ond order. If they’ve been here and they’ve seen what it actually takes to grow something, they’ll understand why placing those expec- tations on our producers, just so we can be a little less organised, really isn’t where we want the food system to go.”


Seasonal selection


Weeden joined the Culpeper group in 2019 when it took on the Duke of Cambridge in Islington, where he was head chef. The Duke was the first pub in Britain to be certified as organic by the Soil Association and he had been at the forefront of the project under pre- vious owner Riverford.


Working under the constraints of an organic-only kitchen that uses solely British produce has given him an understanding of the realities of production. He says: “Part of that journey was understanding just how dif- ficult it is to get produce 12 months of the year. To the point that one year Giti [Singh, the pub’s founder] said ‘when the vegetables run out, we won’t have vegetables to sell and we’ll have to tell people we don’t have any vegetables’. “That’s because the hunger gap is a real thing.


Finding really well-grown produce is always a challenge and we don’t have the food security to provide fresh produce 12 months of the year. We love having organic status at the Duke but we have to restrict what we do and work with what’s being produced. That’s real and anything guaranteed for 12 months of the year is not real.” The creation of the farm is, of course, a wonderful thing to be able to share with guests, but both Weeden and Tréguer explain that the messaging around the reasons for pursuing the product need to be communi- cated in a positive way. “First and foremost we want to prove it’s pos-


sible,” says Tréguer. “We’re in a fun industry and it’s a very serious subject that can be quite gloom and doom. We can’t be about shame and guilt – we want to show that it’s possible and inspire.” In just six months the farm has proved that


fantastic produce can be grown in a city using organic methods and the team are already eye- ing up new plots to expand production. Tréguer adds: “I think it’s unlikely we’ll have


a countryside-size field anywhere in London, but a collection of small plots is very real pos- sibility and that’s where we want it to go.”


15 September 2023 | The Caterer | 21


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