Photographs by Zoe Robertson

🌿 The Community Shelf

So we’re here, where it all started, our lovely community shelf.

What is The Community Shelf?

The Community Shelf is a shelf we put outside of our garden gates, and started, and continues to be, a lovely little hub of our community. It was put there as a way to combat food waste - as you know from subscribing to my channels - I create, make, bake and cook up a storm in this house, but if my husband and I ate everything, we wouldn’t end up moving, haha! So I thought, well what a lovely idea it would be to pop it outside our home and our incredible community can come along when it’s out and pick up some goodies!

It went down a storm from day one, with media and news outlets taking a real shine to it all and picking it up for their articles and shows, it was - and still is - so lovely and such a wonderful thing to see, people at the garden gates sharing conversation and stories and making friends.

Community is everything to me, there is such a beauty and comfort in talking to people, in delving into their stories and who they are, even just a smile to a stranger. It sounds so small, but I truly think so many people are bored with the fast pace we have all found ourselves in and are, for the most part, indoctrinated in. There are heads buried in phones all the time, people not looking up and smiling at strangers, offering help or a conversation to their neighbours and I now think people are craving that and knowing there is importance in community.

We now get almost daily knocks on our door with neighbours and people from the community, or different suburbs dropping off gluts from their gardens and allotments, sharing what they’ve lovingly grown and handing it over to us to create something delicious for the community. Words would never be enough for how much that fills me with joy.

On the shelf, you can expect things like jams, chutneys, brownies, cakes and other experimental things from my kitchen. I was learning lamination at the time I first put the shelf out, and expecting disaster, I thought it would be a great way for the community to experience what I was doing, and it went down a storm! There was a little honesty box for cash donations, but that promptly got stolen, so now I have a QR code on there so people can donate instantly, should they feel the need, as it’s not customary at all, and those donations go to charity.

Photographs by Zoe Robertson