Chris is the brains when it comes to cooking up delicious dishes…
He can look at a crate of local veg, a few herbs, a pan, and somehow make it taste like something you’d happily eat standing at the counter before it even makes it into a tray. I, on the other hand, tend to sit more in the business development, ideas, critique and marketing, “what if we did this?” side of things.
Which is why, when it comes to growing, I’m very much entering my “all the gear, no idea” era.
I have, of course, bought heavy duty gardening dungarees and a fresh batch of gardening tools. So visually, we’re halfway there.
But in all seriousness, while we’ve always been passionate about using fresh, local produce at Kismet and The Pantry, I’m going to be honest and say that I am not coming into this as someone who knows it all. Far from it. I’ve grown up in a heavily hospitality and tourism based family, and food has always been a huge part of my life, but I’m also a millennial baby who has grown up in a world where convenience has become king.
We shop quickly. We cook quickly (whilst juggling parent and work life). We expect things to be available all year round. We don’t always question how food gets to us, why one carrot costs what it costs, why one potato in the cupboard seems to outlive all reasonable logic, or what has happened to our food before it reaches the plate.
A lot of us (let’s say, the younger – but not that young generation) are on autopilot. Not because we don’t care, but because life is full, noisy, increasingly stressful, expensive and fast. We do things because they’ve always been done a certain way. We trust systems because, well, what choice do we have?
But the more we (Chris and I) have stepped into The Pantry, the more we’ve been pulled into this growing community of Islanders who are asking much bigger questions about food, farming, sustainability and resilience.
And I don’t mean sustainability as a nice little buzzword to put on a label.
I mean sustainability as in: how do we actually feed ourselves? As an island, what happens if the boats stop, the supply chains wobble, prices keep rising, or the systems we rely on suddenly don’t feel quite so reliable?
It’s a bit dramatic, I know. But also… is it?
Because when you really start thinking about it, it does feel slightly odd that food now needs a label saying “organic” to tell us it hasn’t been sprayed with chemicals. As if the chemical bit is the default setting and the food grown without it needs to explain itself.
And then there’s the bigger question: what does all of this mean for our long-term health, our soil, our biodiversity, our hospitals, our children, and the way we live?
I am not here pretending I have the answers. I absolutely do not. I am at the very beginning of understanding this properly. But I do know that something about it feels important. Really important.
At The Pantry, we’re not trying to say our food is the lowest fat, the highest protein, the cleanest, leanest, trendiest thing you can buy. That’s not our lane.
What we can say is that we care deeply about where our ingredients come from. We care about putting money directly into farmers’ pockets rather than everything disappearing into the middle. We care about cooking real food, with real ingredients, without loading it with nasties just to make it sit on a shelf for months. We cook it properly, with flavour and skill, then freeze the goodness so it’s there when you need it.
And the more we build The Pantry, the more we’re realising this is about so much more than just food.
It’s about connection.
Connection to the people who grow it.
Connection to the land it comes from.
Connection to what we put into our bodies.
Connection from soil to soul.
As part of our growth in this area, I recently signed up to a smallholding course being run through Farm Jersey / Jersey Business.
At a basic level, I wanted to better understand what it actually takes to grow the ingredients we use, cook with, sell and talk about. I wanted the grounding. The foundations. The confidence to say, hand on heart, that when we champion local produce, we understand a bit more of what sits behind it.
Because it’s one thing to say “support local farmers”.
It’s another thing entirely to start understanding the work, skill, patience, science and instinct that goes into growing food well.
The course has been set up by Jess McGovern from Farm Jersey at Jersey Business, and led by Laura Hudson at Bats End Farm. Laura is one of those people who clearly has a ridiculous depth of knowledge, but shares it in a way that makes you go, “Oh. Of course. Why didn’t I know that?”
It has been hands-on, practical, theoretical and, honestly, a bit of an awakening of the instinctively obvious.
We’ve covered things like working with the space you’ve got, understanding sunlight and shade, microclimates, access to water, garden structures, paths, protection, soil health, no-dig growing, cover crops, compost, weeds, what to grow, when to grow it, seed sowing, propagation, plant care, pests, irrigation, mulching, harvesting and seed saving.
Basically, all the gardening shiz I really should know before I start confidently wandering around in dungarees talking about market gardens.
But what I’ve loved most is that the course isn’t just about “how to grow veg”.
It’s about how everything connects.
Soil health. Food quality. Biodiversity. Water. Climate. Community. Our own health. The choices we make. The systems we rely on. The little ways we can all do things differently, whether we have a field, a garden, a balcony or a few pots outside the kitchen door.
One of the biggest things I’ve taken from the course so far is how much unlearning there is to do.
Some people on the course are experienced growers. Some are complete beginners. Some have small garden plots. Some are exploring community spaces. Some are from farming backgrounds and are looking at regenerative ways of working. Others, like me, are somewhere between “I’ve grown a courgette before” and “please can someone explain soil structure without making me panic?”
It’s a wonderfully eclectic mix.
But there’s a common thread running through it: people want to reconnect.
I think a lot of us have become quite disconnected from what it really takes to get food from soil to plate. We know we want good food. We know we want local food. We know we want to be healthier, kinder to the planet, and more resilient as an island.
But knowing and doing are two very different things.
And I think part of our mission at The Pantry is to help bridge that gap. Not by preaching. Not by pretending we’re perfect. But by being honest, curious and active.
By saying: we’re learning too. Come with us.
This is where things get exciting.
We are now exploring how this learning feeds into the next chapter of The Pantry and Kismet Cabana. How we can better support local farmers and producers. How we can grow some of our own ingredients. How we can use land responsibly. How we can trial heritage, unusual or forgotten vegetables that you don’t often see in supermarkets anymore. How we can connect our team more deeply to the produce we cook with. How we can build something that feels good, useful and rooted.
Not overnight. Not in a “look at us, we’re farmers now” kind of way.
More in a: we’ve bought the dungarees, we’re asking a lot of questions, and we’re ready to get our hands dirty kind of way.
This is just the beginning.
There are plans in motion, and I’ll share more soon about what this might mean for The Pantry, our menus, our shop, our farm-to-kitchen ideas and the wider soil-to-soul journey we seem to have stumbled, quite happily, into.
For now, I just want to say how grateful I am for the course, for Jess and the Farm Jersey / Jersey Business team for creating the opportunity, for Laura’s generous knowledge, and for the brilliant group of people I’ve met along the way.
It has sparked conversations, ideas and a real sense of momentum.
And honestly? It feels like we’re onto something.
Something simple. Something obvious. Something old and new at the same time.
Growing. Nurturing. Feeding. Learning. Connecting.
From soil to soul.
Anyone interested in joining a future course should contact Jess McGovern at Jersey Business: jess.McGovern@jerseybusiness.je
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