Bake Your Lawn

Please help the Real Bread Campaign to nurture our grow-a-loaf book.

We need your help to raise £5000 by 23 July 2023 to produce and publish the book. 

It’s an all or nothing crowdfunding campaign, so we have to harvest at least that much by then or everyone keeps their cash, we get nowt and won’t be able to publish the book.

If you help us to exceed this target, we’ll have a larger pay-it-forward fund for our plan of getting this book to schools, community groups, libraries and families for whom the cover price might be an obstacle. Any surplus will help the charity Sustain to keep running the Real Bread Campaign.

Grow it, mill it, bake it 

At the book’s heart is a step-by-step guide to helping children take a handful of wheat to grow, mill and make into Real Bread, at home or in a community setting. It includes notes on working with farmers, traditional millers and Real Bread bakers.

The book also offers a feast for hungry minds, revealing how bread is embedded in almost every aspect of life and can be used as a topic in a range of subjects, including language, science, geography, history, religion and more. 

What teachers and parents said

Bake Your Lawn is based on the project of the same name we launched in 2011 and its predecessor, Lessons In Loaf. We’ve updated, adapted and expanded the guidance for use at home, school or other community setting.  With your help, our new book will help to inform and inspire many thousands more children.

Here is just some of the fantastic feedback we received from people taking part between 2010 and 2013.

“We grew four square metres of wheat, using about 100g of seed sown in March. We harvested a reasonable-sized sheaf, threshed it etc. ground it up ended up with 400g of flour - just enough for a loaf, and what a loaf it is. We made it in school today ready to show at harvest festival tomorrow. We're quite pleased with ourselves, children have a new-found admiration for farmers and bakers, but more importantly were blown away by the process of making and eating their own bread. Brilliant campaign we loved the experience - but my coffee grinder probably won’t recover.” Berkswich Primary School, Staffordshire (photo above)

“Thanks for the inspiration for this. As the first secondary EcoSchool Ambassador School we are now telling other schools how easy it is to do it themselves!" Mark Moody, The Skinners' School, Kent.

“Thirty year-four pupils took a whole day to firstly mill the wheat which we had harvested in August. We grew about a kilo of wheat, so I think we did really well!!!! We used a fan on the roof and the children held the bowl of wheat and the light chaff blew away (well all over the children, which they loved) and they were left with the berries. Then they spent the rest of the day making the bread.  We made bread rolls for whole class and it was delicious. We would love to do it again next year.” Chisenhale Primary School, London

‘We have thoroughly enjoyed this project and may well grow wheat again in the future.’ Northfield Junior School, Derby

“Here is a picture of the crop we grew at the allotment. It shows the crop just after we started to harvest it. We have arranged with a local mill for the wheat to be ground so we can use it for baking. Thank you very much for your help with this project.” Ysgol Gymraeg Treganna, Cardiff.

"Home-grown, home-ground wheat, homemade sourdough starter, salt and tap water. Unless we dig a well and evaporate our own sea salt you can't get much more home made! Well done on a great campaign and lots of fun for everyone. Here's to next year's loaf!" Sarah Dickinson, home educator.

Rewards 

**IF YOU WANT ONE OF THE REWARDS, PLEASE PLEDGE BY SELECTING THAT REWARD, RATHER THAN ONE OF THE DONATION OPTIONS**

Every penny helps, so please pledge what you can - even a few pounds. If you pledge £10, we’ll send a (virtual) wodge of gratitude by thanking you on our website. If you’re able and willing to chip in £15 or more and select a reward option, you’ll also get a copy of the book and a mention in it.

Don’t want the book yourself? No worries, we’re running a pay-it-forward scheme so you can give a leg up to someone else by us passing on your copy.

We’ll post physical copies to £15+ doughnors in the UK who select a reward and, as an extra thank you, cover the P&P. 

Alternatively, you can choose to make a straight doughnation of any amount without a reward...and if you want to top up your pledge, you can add an extra doughnation at any point.

GiftAid

If you make a straight doughnation (ie choose not to receive the book) and are a UK taxpayer, please authorise us to claim GiftAid from the government. This means that for every £1 you give we get £1.25 - at no extra cost to you! We can also claim GiftAid if you select a reward for a pledge of £61 or more (ie greater than four times the £15 cover price of the book). 

What happens when?

Assuming we meet or exceed our basic target, in August 2023 we'll publish an article on our website thanking all of our doughnors. We'll then crack on with finishing writing, editing, proofreading, sourcing images and designing the book. We hope to have it done and printed before the end of the year but, to be on the safe side, have set a delivery date of January 2024.

Baking more than a lawn

The book’s name comes from Campaign co-founder Andrew Whitley. Before he moved from London to Cumbria in 1976 to run The Village Bakery in Melmerby, he turned his Clissold Park allotment into a (small) plot of wheat. Scotland the Bread and other non-commodity grain organisations are now working to make Andrew’s vision of community self-sufficiency in Real Bread a reality. Meanwhile Bake Your Lawn will give the next generation an appetite for seizing the dough and developing a greater appreciation of the food they eat.