Ideas to get away from Christmas consumer spending and towards health, conviviality and a sustainable food system

Do something wonderful!

Laugh out loud!
£10
…And at the same time support Louth Neighbour’s Kitchen, at a comedy night at The Priory Hotel in Louth.
Also live music nights to warm the cockles in the depths of winter!
Various events. Vouchers available.
Learn to cook
£25
For anyone who already loves to cook, this will be a well received gift!
For anyone who does the cooking day in and day out, a cooking class is a little time out from their own kitchen, a way to inject variety and joy into the every day.
For anyone who wants better health, cooking more from scratch is a no-brainer way to include more veg and less nonsense.
I suggest cooking class vouchers from Curry Jacks – the masters of curry and big supporters of local food – purchase from the van or email spiceyourlife@curryjacks.uk to get it posted.

Plan a garden
from £1.60
Apart form planting fruit trees, winter is the time for planning and dreaming…
Packets of seeds from the Seed Co-op
Gift Vouchers from the Seed Co-Op from £5
(Also see books, below.)
I enjoyed Huw Richard’s book Grow Food for Free – you can buy it for £12.69 on Hive and support your local bookshop.

Shares in Seed Sovereignty
from £100
Stand with the seed savers (without having to step out into the wild wind in December!)
You can now buy shares in the Seed Co-operative as a gift.
Seed sovereignty, and the maintenance of organic open-pollinated seeds capable of reproducing themselves, are crucial to a just and sustainable food future.
Read more about the Seed Co-op and the future of seed and then give this incredible gift to someone whose future you want to invest in!

Subscribe to a better world
Memberships & Subscriptions to last all year

A magazine from your grocer
Free online, or print edition with your veg box (starting £12:45)
Fantastic food journalism from Riverford Organic Farmers – I read the print version cover to cover every time it is delivered!
The magazine is free online – subscribe here to receive it by email, or a quarterly paper copy is free with an organic veg box. Veg boxes from £12.45
Grow organic
£8/year
Membership of Lincolnshire Organic Gardeners Organisation gets you entry to lots of excellent events, tours, talks, seeds swaps and contact with some very knowledgable growers. Such a great community!
Recipe box
from £33/fortnight
Increase your repertoire of delicious plant based meals effortlessly – recipe box delivered to your door (Lincoln area)

Read – Learn – Change
Some books that have influenced me this year.

Local Food Ecosystems
Pay as you feel
Duncan Catchpole describes in detail how a better food system might look – and how it is being put into practice in Cambridge.
Duncan’s ideas make complete sense to me, and I’m interested in how we might apply some of these ideas in Lincolnshire.

Edible Paradise
£14.40
Vera Greutnik sparks lots of ideas for beautiful, productive gardens using no-dig and permaculture principles.

Cook book
£26
What is a sustainable diet like?
Healthier, tastier and much more exciting and diverse!

Eat & Drink Lincolnshire
Support small scale local farms. They’re important.

Pasture for Life
Pasture for Life means that animals are fed ONLY on pasture – without the need to use additional land to grow feed crops or clear environmentally sensitive land across the world for feed imports. Pasture grazing sequesters carbon and regenerates soils, increasing biodiversity, improving animal welfare, and producing healthier meat.

Plastic Free & Zero Waste
Food gets put into fancy packaging and sold as “gifts.”
Let’s subvert the commercialisation of Christmas giving by choosing and reusing containers in a thoughtful or imaginative way.

Lincolnshire has an increasing number of refill shops, including:
- All Good Market Stamford
- Forage & Fill, Lincoln
- Lincoln Eco Pantry
- Refill Revolution delivery in Stamford area
- Spill the beans, Cleethorpes and Louth
- The Refill Society delivery in Lincolnshire (cleaning products, not food)
- Zero Waste Boston, delivery in Boston area
10 Christmas gift ideas towards a better food system in Lincolnshire
Tweet