Daily Bread

Two loaves of rustic bread with a crispy crust, placed on a bed of oats.

In 2020 we grew a crop of wheat in a specially built planter in the church courtyard, to connect city-dwellers with food production, explore humanity’s 10,000-year relationship with wheat and engage with ecological implications of our agricultural systems.

Sowing the Wheat

Our wheat was blessed and sown in the courtyard at St James’s on Sunday 15th March 2020, and also across London and beyond by members of our community. The very next week the country went into lockdown, and care for the growing crop in Piccadilly fell to Lucy our Rector, as the gates were shut.

Clergy wearing purple and white vestments are standing in the St James Church courtyard, gathered around a large planter. The priests standing in the centre with her hands open in blessing. Congregation members stand holding service sheets.
Close-up of green seedling sprouts emerging from dark soil.

Grain of Hope: Slice of Heaven

A video reflection by Sara Mark

Wheaten Reflections

Despite frequent lockdowns and physical separation, we remained deeply engaged with our wheat throughout the 2020 growing season. Our many community growers regularly reported on their allotment, garden and window-box crops, and we published regular reflections on the process.

These reflections are available in PDF format on the link below.

Browse reflections

Harvesting and Milling the Wheat

The bulk of our crop was harvested, threshed and winnowed by hand in September, ready for Harvest Festival in October.  

Close-up of a wheat field with green wheat stalks and ears of wheat, with houses and trees in the background.
Bundle of harvested wheat stalks on the ground next to a green sack and a cream-colored cloth bag.
Two people stand outside and work together to process and mill wheat stalks. They transfer the stalks from one container to another.
Open cloth bag filled with brown wheat grains.
A yellow grain mill stands on a kitchen worktop. It is processing wheat grains. The processed grains are being transferred into a red mixing bowl.
Four rustic leaves are cut and arranged on a wooden cutting board. This bread is made from wheat grown as part of the St James's Daily Bread project.

Lammas Loaves and Harvest Festival

Two rustic loaves of bread with flour dusting, surrounded by scattered oats. This bread is made from wheat grown as part of the St James's Daily Bread project.
An altar of St James's Church Piccadilly, decorated for the Harvest festival with wheat sheaves, fruits, grains, and pumpkins, surrounded by autumn leaves.

Harvest

A video reflection by Sara Mark

Resilience, Religion and the Arts

Book cover titled Multidisciplinary Research on Resilience with subtitle Examples from Theory and Practice. Author Catherine Rigby, associated with the Frias Institute for Advanced Studies at Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg. The cover features a blurred background with a pen on ice, and a circular badge indicating the Frias Lunch Lecture Series 2020/21.

Prof Kate Rigby, Director of the Research Centre for Environmental Humanities at Bath Spa University, gave a lecture about the Daily Bread project in November 2020.

It was part of a series of lectures which contributed to the FRIAS’ (Freibury Institute For Advanced Studies) focus on ‘multidisciplinary research on resilience’ through the lens of the environmental humanities, and in particular environmental religious and cultural studies.

Watch the Lecture

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