When we consider poverty, we don’t always think about rural areas. Poverty is often thought of as an urban problem – not unreasonably since in the urban context hardship can be seen and felt on the streets as much as anything.
Looking at an area like Wiveliscombe and its nearby parishes, you might not suppose it is all that hard up. Quaint old cottages planted across green fields could paint a picture.
And yet, for all its outward beauty, over 50,000 meals have been distributed to those in need over the past 27 months. This is the work of the Wivey Food Project.
The Chair of the Food Project is Kate Benson, who has lived in Ford, just outside Wiveliscombe, for 11 years. Mother of six Kate is a trained cook with a storied career. Kate trained at the award winning Prue leith School of Food and Wine before kicking her career off co-editing a glossy food and wine magazine.
She later ran a catering company in Hong Kong, before becoming the head cookery teacher at a Bristol private school. Kate also ran a residential cookery school in Cornwall near Watergate Bay.
During the first Covid lockdown Kate gave a lot of thought to those struggling with their finances, and with fear – of going out to get their own food. After speaking to Somerset County Council and arranging a steering group, the Wivey Food Project was born.
Wivey Food Project volunteers hard at work at the Waterrow Village Hall (Tindle )
Kate says of that time: “You couldn’t see your friends legally, but you could volunteer, so it was very easy to get groups of volunteers to come and do the cooking. We found 50 volunteer cooks and drivers.”
The Wivey Food Project was granted permission to come under the umbrella of Wivey Cares, a local charity. This allowed the Project to apply to become members of Fair Share.
Fair Share is a charity that distributes surplus food to food projects across the country. The food, which largely comes from supermarkets and wholesalers, would otherwise be dumped in landfill.
The food that the Project cooks up isn’t ever past its date. Kate explained they receive food designated as surplus and set to be discarded. Food could be discarded as ‘surplus’ for anything from over-ordering to updated packaging making older stock unsaleable.
The Wivey Food Project are now waste partners of Waitrose, Bookers and of local Co-Ops. Since its creation the Wivey Food Project has cooked and distributed 53,000 meals. Kate told me demand for food has risen since the Covid lockdowns, on account of the cost of living crisis.
Kate said: “There is a lot more deprivation in this area because there are a lot of rural isolated people, a lot of elderly, who can’t get to shops. With the cost of living crisis we’ve got transport poverty, food poverty and obviously financial insecurity with the cost of electricity and what have you. There are more people desperately needing food from us now than during the lockdowns.”
She added: “I got a call from a local school who told me there were children there who hadn’t had their evening meal or breakfast the next morning. There was no food in the house. Other families have rung me up and said ‘my children are coming home soon and I have nothing to give them for supper’. There is deprivation, there is hardship like nothing else and you just don’t think that it happens the but it does and it’s bad.”
Food being dished out in preparation for freezing (Tindle )
I was keen to see firsthand the good work that the Wivey Food Project does, and visited them at the Watterow Village Hall.
There were around 15 volunteers in attendance, part of a larger group who are organised into teams. The volunteers were diverse, including French women whose husbands worked at Hinckley Point, a Ukrainian lady who arrived as recently as November, and people both young and old. Kate told me: “The youngest we’ve had as a regular is 23, he’s just finished university and comes in and helps us. We’ve got mums, new retirees, literally all ages, men and women, mostly women.”
The operation was run with military efficiency. Volunteers were carrying out the work of cooking, dishing out and freezing the food like a well oiled machine. There was high-tech equipment on site too, including a blast chiller donated by Somerset County Council.
The quality of the food was exceptional. The Wivey Food Project had cooked up roasted peppers stuffed with a nut roast, and a butterscotch and waffle pudding. Kate and her team get creative with the ingredients they are supplied with from Fair Share.
“It’s like Ready Steady Cook. For example these waffles came in today and we knew we were doing and apple source to go with the pork and I knew somewhere in the depths of the fridge we had some cream so I thought we’ll make a butterscotch sauce and make that into a nice pudding for people. Sometimes it’s a stew, today we’ve got a roast which is always popular.”
But in what Kate described as a “major blow”, promised funding has been pulled from the project. Now the Wivey Food Project is in need of fresh funds. Kate told me: “We are in need of more funds. We were hoping to move into a new unit. Bulland are saving us – we were due to move into our own permanent kitchen next month but we just had this funding pulled.”
“Every week we just about cover our costs. Every week we might have to buy containers, or dish washing liquid, or we might have to buy meat because we’ve had loads of deliveries with no meat. So we do need cash for surplus ingredients and surplus things. More would be better.”
Volunteers packaging the cooked food in recyclable tupperware (Tindle )
The Project may have a creative solution to the question of funding. It plans to set up a local lottery. The hope is that 200 local people will sign up to the Project’s lottery at a cost of £10 per month. This would be sufficient to cover rent and overheads.
The Wivey Food Project have since my visit relocated to the Bulland Shoot’s kitchen now the pheasant shooting season has finished.
When I visited their Watterow premises it was spotless. Kate was proud of the high standards in place. She said: “The Environmental Health Organisation have come and registered us, it’s almost like OFSTED we’ve been checked and given five stars. The procedures and the way we operate are fully in line with environmental health. 25 of our volunteers have all done their food hygiene level 2 certificates.”
The Wivey Food Project has two self service freezers. One is located in St Andrews Church in Wiveliscombe, and the other is at St Michaels Church in Milverton. Supplies are topped up and replenished throughout the week, and people are free to help themselves. The food is not means tested but those who can afford to donate some money are encouraged to.
Those who have issues of mobility can have their meals delivered by one of the Wivey Food Project’s volunteer drivers.
