Each month at the Gate, we set ourselves a monthly Green Gate Challenge.

Green Gate is what we call our sustainability policy and we like to embark on monthly challenges.

These challenges are about changing how we think in the long term (and not just for that month), but we’ve found that giving each month a focus helps us keep sustainability and our Green Gate Policy at the forefront of our thinking as an organisation.

This month we decided to eat seasonally.

Purchasing local foods and eating within the seasons helps to protect our planet because you’re reducing the number of miles your food has to travel before it reaches your plate.

Buying local, seasonally grown produce (we mainly focused on fruit and veg) was our challenge for October, and we decided that we’d try to make this a communal activity too (yes, that means some baking happened too!).

Why not take on the #GreenGate challenge?

As always, here’s how we found it!

Before this challenge, I had very little knowledge of what was actually in season because – quite simply – you don’t need to anymore and so, reflecting on this, I realised this challenge would be really useful to reset those norms. I baked an apple dorset cake for the office, and I got my apples from a local greengrocers. I thoroughly enjoyed swapping out my usual fruit for seasonal offerings and I even took (locally sourced) apples and pears into the production meeting for I Call My Brothers, in order to encourage our wider team to think about how they might eat seasonally too. I’m not sure how much this challenge will stick, but it has made me think twice about what choices I make and how I can take advantage of seasonal offerings. I do have to keep googling what is in season, though, so I’ve got some way to go…
Chrissy Angus, General Manager

Before this challenge, I’d never tried pumpkin pie, but now, I’ve not only tried it, I’ve made one from scratch! My attempt to eat seasonally had me checking food labels to see where produce had come from, and cooking things based on what raw indigents were actually available – rather than just eating the same three meals I always cook! It was an interesting exercise, and a really fun prompt to try new things.
Daisy Cooper, Producer