Bake Your Lawn book crowdfunding
Please help the Real Bread Campaign to nurture our grow-a-loaf guide.
The Real Bread Campaign needs your help to publish Bake Your Lawn, our book to help parents, carers, teachers, community project leaders etc. guide kids along a hands-on journey from seed to sandwich.
Read full details and pledge now
Target
We need your help to raise £5000 by 23 July 2023 to produce and publish the book.
It’s an all or nothing Crowdfunder 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.
Rewards
**IF YOU WANT ONE OF THE REWARDS, PLEASE PLEDGE BY SELECTING THAT REWARD, RATHER THAN BY MAKING A DONATION**
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, you’ll also get a copy of the book and a mention in it.
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.
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.
Alternatively, you can choose to make a straight doughnation of any amount without a reward...and you can top up your pledge at any time with an extra doughnation.
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
“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, home educator.
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.
There are llamas in the fig tree
Oh, sorry, you’re still here.
Hurry: This crowdfunding campaign ends at 00.01am on Monday 24 July, but please don't wait until then to pledge!
It would also be really great if you help us to spread the word on social media and in real life.
Photo credits
Taken by the Campaign or published by kind permission of participants in our orginal Bake Your Lawn project.
From top left: © Chris Young (2010), Peatmoor Primary School (2011), Anthony Roper School (2012), Ryton Gardens (2011), Sarah Dickinson (2012), Chris Young (2010), Bridge Mill (2011), Berkswich Primary School (2011).
See also
(But only after you've pledged, obvs...)
Published Monday 3 July 2023
Real Bread Campaign: The Real Bread Campaign finds and shares ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet. Whether your interest is local food, community-focussed small enterprises, honest labelling, therapeutic baking, or simply tasty toast, everyone is invited to become a Campaign supporter.
