Gift ideas to get away from Christmas consumer spending and towards a just, convivial and sustainable food system
Subscribe to a better world: memberships to last all year
Condiment Club
£95/year
Mint Lane Condiment Club is a membership subscription club for a limited number of members.
You will be able to collect 3 products per month. The range will be diverse and will include jam, jelly, chutney, pickle, pickles, marmalade, curd and sauerkraut as well as other innovative and exiting products developed by the We’re Jammin’ team.
Members will return their empty jars each month and collect the next month’s bounty at the same time, from Mint Lane Cafe.
Purchase from Mint Lane Cafe in Lincoln, open Wednesday-Friday. (Online payments available soon, from the Mint Lane shop on the Open Food Network)
LOGO membership
£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.
Be part of a wonderful, home-grown foodie community!
Membership form & payment details here
Cheese Society Subscription
£456/year (12 boxes)
The Cheese Society specialises in unpasteurised, farmhouse, handmade cheese.
Their thoughtfully curated cheese subscription is an introduction to a diversity of varieties and flavours from small cheese producers.
They also offer a Taste of Lincolnshire pack of cheeses from the county.
I asked our Board to recommend a book. Here’s what they said:
Caroline Kenyon (Chair)
Mind Food – Lauren Lovatt
£19
Plant based recipes for positive mental health
Jason O’Rourke
Eating to Extinction – Dan Saladino
£10.44
The world’s rarest foods and why we need to save them
Laura Stratford (Coordinator)
Braiding Sweetgrass – Robin Wall Kimmerer
£9.39
Indigenous wisdom, scientific knowledge and the teachings of plants
“Food, love, motherhood, and how to live on this earth – this has influenced how I think about everything important.” Laura Stratford
Mark Finn
The Courage to be Disliked – Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
£8.55
“The essence of the book, for me, is that it helps us to understand how much control we have over choices that can positively impact our wellbeing.” Mark Finn
Stockings: small is beautiful
Collective Ketchup
From £5
Made by the amazing Beatroot Collective from tomatoes grown by community groups as part of Edible Grimsby. Available form the Riverhead Deli in Grimsby.
More of Beatroot Collective’s spicy sauces here, or get to your local market for other home made chutneys and preserves.
Seeds
From £1.92
Organic, biodynamic, open pollinated seeds (that means you can save seeds yourself for the following year).
Vegetables, herbs, flowers and more.
Gift vouchers available.
Fair Trade Chocolate
£2.29
Profits are shared fairly with producers.
You can buy these from your local Oxfam or order them online here.
Find out more about Lincoln Fair Trade City.
Organic voucher
from £25
Taste the difference of an organic veg box from Eden Farm, based near Spilsby.
Delivery across the county.
Pay it forward: gifts for a kinder world
Give a gift to a friend or neighbour you haven’t met
£ your choice
Find your nearest foodbank or community larder and give as generously as you can – food, money, time, appreciation.
We are working together for a just food system, where everyone has access to nourishing, sustainably produced, delicious, culturally appropriate food. But right now that is not a reality for a lot of people in our county. Christmas is a particularly hard time. Your kindness means a lot.
Shares in Seed Sovereignty
from £100
You can now buy membership of 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!
Don’t send a card
£ your choice
Send a festive e-card and donate to the Trussell Trust – all for the cost of a card and a stamp!
Plastic Free & Zero Waste
Photo credits: Forage & Fill and Lincoln Eco Pantry
What is a present but a thoughtfully chosen something in enticing packaging? Refill shops create opportunities for originality as well as saving waste. You could also tie it in with a related recipe book? – Hodmedods have some good ones on grains and pulses – the secret heroes of sustainable diets!
More cool stuff…
Miller for a day
£120 for 4 people
Enjoy a unique and exciting experience as you become an ‘Apprentice for an Afternoon’ at Cogglesford watermill.
You’ll have the mill to yourself and be guided by an expert miller as you explore the inner workings of the mill, operate the machinery yourself, producing your very own bags of white and wholemeal flour.
Within your day, you’ll learn how to:
- Check the stones, engage the wheel and prepare for milling
- Start the wheel – open the sluice gates and get the wheel turning
- Mill – watch grain turn to flour, monitor production and take newly milled flour to be bagged.
- Use the boulter to produce white flour
- Bag and pack the flour
You’ll also enjoy several (crucial) tea breaks, as well as freshly baked scones.
Grow a biodynamic garden
£29.99
Lincolnshire’s seed producers have put together this very thoughtful collection, containing 12 Packets of Certified Organic and Biodynamic seeds, plus more information and vouchers to get you going.
This calendar could come in useful, too:
Biodynamic Calendar
£7.99
Optimal days for sowing, pruning and harvesting plants and crops.
Start your own market garden
£39.99
You wouldn’t want to go giving someone wild and wonderful ideas or anything…. would you?
The Landworkers’ Alliance Calendar 2023
£16
Join the Good Food Movement
Greater Lincolnshire Food Partnership 