How it all started.
Dream it.
We began by building the oven, it took Me Gatis and Kaiga a few days to build. We started off making a platform from things laying around the farm then put some bricks on top of that, made a basket out of willow and hazel in the shape we wanted the inside of the oven to be, covered it in paper, mixed up clay and straw from the site then layered this mixture onto our form. After a few weeks drying we took out the form and had ourselves an oven.
The oven lay unused for a good few months and at the time Perivale Brewery had started to do tap days so a few of us did a few little pop ups and after trying out a few different things in the oven we tried pizza which was a huge success. After the first pizza day I was saying how hard it was to knead such large volumes of dough when Deborah mentioned that there was an old mixer in one of the sheds, i had a look, bought a dough hook for it and did some trial loaves.
The trial loaves went pretty well and in autumn of 2019 there was talk of converting one of the old sheds into a shop. So Me and Paul set to work transforming an old shed into a place that is food safe and suitable. There was a lot to do, we poured a new floor, installed a ceiling, rendered the walls, installed sinks, shelves and a work counter (the shelves and counter are made from wood that was milled on site and came from Southall)
The early days
One of the first firings
One of the first pizzas
It was hard but we DID it.
Me and Paul spent pretty much all of September, October and November building to get the place ready for the GRAND OPENING in December. There were times when it felt like it would never end, when mixing render well into the night and getting there at the break of dawn just so it would be done on time.
Fast forward a year.
2020 was a roller coaster of a year, there was a week we couldn’t open because I couldn’t get flour. There was the first lock down where the farm was closed so everything had to be delivered. Now I’m happy we can set up shop twice a week.
