pandemic soup

Reflecting on Working, Supporting and Growing a Surplus Food Project in the Pandemic

By Ingrid Wakeling, Head Chef at Sussex Surplus.

The pandemic brought challenges for everyone, personally and professionally we have all had to constantly reevaluate our goals and tentatively take steps into a world that has changed.  

During the first lockdown we worked as a small team to create an instant outreach kitchen. Invited into a local community centre in Craven Vale, we responded each week to the needs of our city  - organising deliveries of meals and food boxes to as many people as we could. It was hard work, but great work. Between homeschooling my children, long and confusing zoom calls with family and friends and blustery walks it was a respite, a simple response to a complicated scenario.

I escaped the existential dread of the pandemic by sorting boxes of surplus vegetables, designing menus on my feet and filling line after line of boxes with colourful and nutritious food in neat patterns. My back ached, my feet hurt, my heart was full. 

As the lock down ended it was time to scale back, time to look towards what we had wanted to create in the first place. We found a home for our project, we rescued van loads of pumpkins to process into our first flagship product, I signed on to my first PAYE job in years and we were ready to go. And then we were in lockdown again. 

A huge pile of pumpkins filled the community centre. And my dreams. After a long day of being a teacher, a cleaner, a cook and a mum I would potter over the muddy lane by the Whitehawk Hill allotments and spend hours moving, chopping and cooking pumpkins. The existential dread began to creep in, would we ever move forward again? 

There are two key lessons I learned whilst working during the pandemic. The first is patience. We have felt like we have been moving so slowly, pulling forward as if through the mud that I slid around on as I went past the allotments, but we have achieved so much. We now have a team, we are stocked in local shops, our outreach continues to reach out and those are just the headlines. To get there we have had to be patient with each other. Whether through bouts of illness, confusion over implementation of constantly changing rules, worries over management, production, all the learning of new skills or even the ever challenging work life balance - we have been kind, we have been patient. We have taken the time to embed these principles at the core of what we do. Has it worked? Time will tell, but we’re still here. 

Secondly, I have learnt that communication is key. Communication has meant that the cofounders of Sussex Surplus, Phil & I, have done this together. Catching up includes the low down on our families, our mental health. Covering for each other means letting each know our worries, our successes. Being a team means sharing responsibility and slowly breaking down the hierarchy of expectation - we do what we can and know that the other will do so, because we have an open line of communication. . 

Community work is about engagement. For our team, our customers and our communities, that means being honest. When I sat down to write this I had in mind a short piece about the practicalities of working during the pandemic, how to get email responses from empty offices, how to work with moving deadlines, how to keep people safe. These are crucial of course but it turns out that the practicalities of working in an uncertain world are emotional. Staying strong whilst you rebook work days, events and meetings, is exhausting. Allowing time to admit that, talking to your colleagues about how you are, asking how they are - these are the keys to success.