Wow! What a week this week has been!
What started off as a "one day far in the future" kind of dream has slowly gained momentum and has snowballed into this amazing adventure that we are so proud of!
I've always been the tree-hugging hippie in my family and I'm the one who gets the strange looks at the grocery store for bringing my own produce bags. It makes absolutely no sense to me that oranges need to be wrapped in plastic when they already come in perfectly compostable skins! Growing up, we always had a compost bin for kitchen waste, and chucking a banana peel into a black bag just feels wrong to me. Luckily my better half shares my tree hugging sentiments and we are often bewildered as to why it is so difficult to make good choices for the environment in mainstream settings. We're all on this planet together, right?
Having our little one Arienne diagnosed with food allergies, we'll probably experience early-onset blindness from having to read the tiny print listed on the ingredients of commercially available food. We've also become Google experts, because some of the unfriendly chemicals go by many names and we'll think it's okay for her to snack on, only to deal with a nasty rash later on. We've come to the realisation that unless you grow the food yourself, you won't know what goes into it's production and what you may be ingesting that is not necessarily so great to be putting into your body. The way food is produced in modern times is en masse, at the cheapest price, with little regard for environmental impact. While we spend less money on food now, we pay for it in terms of health, and damage to the environment.
Luckily I'm at my happiest when I'm up to my elbows in dirt! Must have inherited that from my Dad (Sven) who has always had some or other vegetable growing in the back garden. Numerous pecan nut, peach and fig trees in the backyard are usually interspersed with tomato, butternut, sweet potato and broccoli plants. I don't have the space in my garden that my dad has, but boy, do I make every square centimetre count! Lockdown gave me the opportunity to really appreciate the time, effort, energy, sunshine, water and nutrients that goes into getting a tiny seed to grow into a vegetable for your plate, only to be gobbled up within a few minutes.
Hubby Byron is quite tolerant of my gardening hobby (obsession) and Christmas presents of hygrometers and rain tanks earn him lots of brownie points! Having more time our hands during lockdown, we took things really slow and enjoyed having a home baked loaf of bread in the bread bin. The poor birds never got to eat stale, mouldy leftovers of the shop-bought bread in a plastic bag, because we always ate the whole loaf of our home bakes! We grew our sourdough starter, named Lockdown Rise Up and she has wowed us with many a loaf of bread with perfect "ears" (bread nerds will know what this is) and an inside full of air bubbles. I've felt like a scientist and wildlife film maker, watching the dough bubble and rise, as if by magic! Byron the baker has become skilled bread maker, getting the dough to shape just how he wants it, while I end up with more flour on my clothing than in the oven... And so we each have our talents!
My sister Marijke has the most bubbly, energetic, positive personality of anyone I have ever met. She is a go-getter, a doer, a problem solver. Her travel business has been seriously slammed by the current pandemic. Having more time on her hands without worldwide travelers to look after, she graciously agreed to be our operations manager, head of marketing, product developer, organic ingredient sourcer and ideas person. This is a lady that can network! Her hubby Andrew is Mr practical, problem solver and delivery man. Oldest son Joshua is an absolute computer whizz kid and conjured up our amazing website within a matter of days. Hannah is the baker and creative arts and crafts genius who folded all the packaging for our marigold seeds.
My mom Celia has always raised us to be Do It Yourself experts and is always looking for new ways to veganise recipes for the herbivores in our family. She is a social butterfly of note and if you ever need a contact for anyone who knows anything about anything, she's the lady you go to! She's an expert baker, seamstress, knitter, crocheter and all round handywoman.
Rooted Herbivores sprouted in the cold climate of Coronavirus. For us, it's a family effort to provide healthy, delicious food with high quality ingredients, while treading as lightly on the planet as we can. Over the past few weeks we've discovered how talented each family member is and how each of our unique skills has contributed to the realisation of this dream. We've broken lots of literal and figurative bread by baking and sampling and having Google meetings and whatsapp calls and deciding on our branding and suppliers. Byron and I have discovered exactly how hard it is to install ceiling boards and I've injured butt muscles I never knew I had while laying tiles in what will soon be our oven ("Herbie the Herbinator")'s new home. Arienne has coated her gum boots in a fair amount of paint too, while she unleashed her creativity on the blank canvas that will be the walls of our bakery!
We have been so blessed to have so many messages of support from all who know us and know how passionately we are undertaking this project. We are so grateful and uplifted by your messages! We have many new and exciting ideas, and have already added two new products to our range: Delicious dunking rusks (perfect for at-work lunchboxes, or stay-home zoom meetings), as well as washable, re-usable cotton face scrubbies to remove make up or form part of your daily face wash routine without the landfill of disposable wipes or plastic-based sponges. We have more products in the pipeline and hope to show Herbie in his new habitat as soon as we have a few more licks of paint on those new ceiling boards and have the "all clear" from the electrician.
Please feel free to chat to us! We'd love to hear your thoughts and feedback and hope to be sending a freshly-baked delivery to your door!
Off to vacuum the last of the tile adhesive powder from my boot, will chat again soon!
Claire
Tree hugger
Gardener
Chatterbox