The road leading to Bruern Farms gradually narrows as we leave the station behind. Hedgerows are heavy with elderflower, their sweet, heady scent drifting through the open windows. Before long, the Cotswolds opens into wide, ripe fields basking in the July sun.
Henry Astor walking us through the Bruern Farms wheat fields.
Henry is waiting for us. Before we sit down to lunch, we walk. It's a custom on his farm. He leads us into the wheat, still only knee-high, still green, a few months away from becoming flour but already carrying the promise of it. As we wander between the rows, Henry talks about heritage grains, cover crops and the long view of farming. Years of working this land have taught him to think in seasons, even lifetimes, rather than months. Standing among the wheat, it's easy to forget that one day all of this will become something as familiar as a loaf of bread.
Now, lunch is almost ready. A long table stretches beneath white parasols, looking back across the fields we've just left. It’s ready for people.
The table is set.
Once a year we invite the people behind our food to spend a day together. Around the table are farmers, cheesemakers, growers, fermenters, millers and makers whose work finds its way into our bakeries every day. Some have known each other for years, others are meeting for the first time. It doesn't take long before conversation is flowing—or to realise they have more in common than the food they make.
Farmers, growers, millers and makers gather around the table.
Lunch begins – a menu inspired by the people around the table.
Roane has cooked lunch much as he develops every new dish at GAIL's, beginning with people and the conversations he’s had with them. Henry's wheat is baked into sourdough, while toasted grains are scattered over ripe tomatoes. George's fruit juices are poured into glasses. Josh and Lisa's elderflower kombucha is being reduced to a syrup and poured over a giant pavlova. Frank's chocolate is baked into a cake with olive oil and sea salt.
A strawberry pavlova, finished with Josh and Lisa’s elderflower kombucha, reduced to a syrup. Frank’s chocolate was paired with olive oil and sea salt for the cake.
The menu is a portrait of the people gathered around the table. Only one course is adapted: the afternoon has become too warm to serve the cheeses as planned, so Roane returns from the kitchen carrying warm cheese biscuits instead, each one baked with a different maker's cheese and served alongside green tomato chutney made to Tim Jones's mother's recipe from Lincolnshire.
Two cheeses, two biscuits: Lincolnshire Poacher and Quicke's.
As it should, lunch stretches comfortably into the afternoon. Stories drift across the table as easily as the serving bowls. Conversation drifts from harvests to holidays, from bread to orchards, from fermentation to family. Gradually the meal reveals itself for what it really is: a gathering of people whose work has found its way into our kitchens. As the afternoon goes on, it becomes harder to think of ingredients as ingredients. They're expressions of the work and care of the people sitting around the table.
Lunch stretches comfortably into the afternoon.
We spend a great deal of time talking about ingredients at GAIL’s, less often about the people whose lives are wrapped up in them. Yet they shape our food as surely as our bakers do.
As the afternoon draws to a close, chairs are pushed back, hugs are exchanged and people gradually find their way back to the farms, dairies, orchards, kitchens and workshops they came from.
Tomorrow they'll all return to making the things they care deeply about. So will we.
And somewhere between their craft and ours, breakfast will be waiting on a bakery shelf.
A walk around the farm.