A Day with a Unique Muslim Family

Lauren Booth

Date:

Channel: Lauren Booth

File Size: 12.94MB

Episode Notes

Share Page

Transcript ©

AI generated text may display inaccurate or offensive information that doesn’t represent Muslim Central's views. Thus,no part of this transcript may be copied or referenced or transmitted in any way whatsoever.

00:00:07--> 00:01:03

No more sadness for iamb and cleanse, no more animosity. Finally the chaos makes peace be upon you. Hope this finds you well and blessed. So I'm in a little rain shower in Oxfordshire at one of my favorite places so far away from Turkey and back in the UK, and I've come to the only functional and profitable Halal to a type level mashallah farm in the United Kingdom. You're gonna love this. Ruby has been here for 18 years and it was her and Professor Lutfi her husband, who had this grand idea a long time ago of moving out to the country. And since

00:01:05--> 00:01:11

then let them tell their story. Today you can learn about why organic is important. Charla

00:01:14--> 00:01:18

we grew up in North London, potentially and supported arsenal,

00:01:19--> 00:01:21

went on to do my PhD in Oxford.

00:01:22--> 00:01:32

Subsequently, I was offered a post bacc at Oxford University. So we sort of moved from London to Oxford as a family by which point two three children I think

00:01:34--> 00:01:37

my name is Dr. Luffy Ridhwan.

00:01:39--> 00:01:40

Welcome to Willowbrook farm.

00:01:44--> 00:01:58

So this is the farm and the farm shop where customers come on, they're open days. Outside COVID. Obviously, this is Ruby what Radwan do. I'm here to meet today.

00:02:01--> 00:02:02

Okay,

00:02:03--> 00:02:31

I'm still trying to figure out how to film in COVID. So, excuse me, we are we are taking COVID regulations. And we're very serious here. So there's gonna be it's gonna be like watching, you know, one of the soap operas where they're now like, I love you, and they're like half a mile apart. I love you to love you, Ruby. We'll work this out that and that is that is a compost heap. And what does that mean to you? It's all this stuff that our chickens give back to us, him

00:02:32--> 00:02:38

all piled up here. Absolutely wonderful. It is like gold dust. This is what creates the best vegetables.

00:02:43--> 00:03:28

150 200 years ago, in farms across the UK, people would have farmed organically, they would have found that a small scale, they would have had mixed farming where the relationship between the animals and the crops and the rearing on the farm. And even possibly the slaughter on the farm would have all been very much small scale controllable and sustainable. We've shifted over the last 100 years to mass production in large factory settings be that for poultry or even cattle and sheep now, and large avatars with a lot of transportation of down the country. So there's so many environmental issues and the Halal industry has just fitted into that as part of that system. And we've sort of

00:03:28--> 00:03:31

forgotten the deeper aspects of what is halal.

00:03:35--> 00:03:39

And then there's kale, purple sprouting broccoli,

00:03:41--> 00:04:14

some red cabbage, carrots and parsnips. So that's what we are managing to grow the season. I am sure that people that bring a lot more in the polytunnel does a few more things we'll get into in a bit. So we're trying so hard ever so hard to eat seasonally, which means we have a quite restrictive diet. So tell me about your restricted diet. Then well, we will walk around and consider that well, okay, the garlic and the onions have already been harvested and stored. All the squashes we've got Hokkaido, squash and Ebanks

00:04:15--> 00:04:22

it's called a spaghetti squash. So we're living on those two potatoes, all those things are already harvested and put into storage.

00:04:23--> 00:04:30

What's going out here in terms of greens, it's a purple sprouting broccoli, but actually the leaves the

00:04:31--> 00:05:00

the cabbage butterfly hasn't laid eggs on and had. It's still there for us. But as long as we leave quite a bit of greenery on it, it'll photosynthesize and then we will still get some purple sprouting in the new year. That's this plan right in front of you to have a closer look. You can see the moth has had some of the leaves can you see they've been eaten down? That's what happens when you don't use pesticides. And what does it so why don't use pesticides what does it mean to you what what is the

00:05:00--> 00:05:41

ethics behind the way you farm. I can go for ages. But there's a there's a number of levels. Firstly, why poison something? I mean, why would you poison anything because what's the pesticides, it's a poison to kill something, okay, it's going to kill insects and the things that share your food, but they're essential to the biodiversity of the planet, you know now everyone I think basically knows we're more bacteria than we are human cells, right we have more bacteria DNA in our body than human DNA. That's a fact just Google, it's very simple. Don't don't use the chemicals, you don't use the pesticide going back to the initial point, because it will actually take the nutrients

00:05:41--> 00:06:01

away from the plants. And it'll leach into the soil and it will deeply boron and all sorts of minerals that are naturally in an organic natural soil, use pesticides, herbicides, use chemical fertilizers, and that stuff's not there anymore. So we're all depleted of basic minerals or vitamins from our vegetables, because we've killed them.

00:06:04--> 00:06:50

We came to a sort of crisis point, probably about five years before we started to farm where we were not happy eating Hello means very little, it's mostly factory farmed chicken. It's mostly mass scale slaughter in very large abbatoirs. It includes a lot of chemical inputs, either in the rearing of the animals who were prepared to go vegetarian. We looked at possibly buying organic only in saying Bismillah as we ate the food, we thought of many options. And then somehow, out of the blue came the idea that we would sell our house by a 45 acre farm and actually rear the produce ourselves. It wasn't such a jump because I had worked a lot abroad in many rural communities. The whole family

00:06:50--> 00:07:02

traveled with me to Sudan, where we'd kept some animals and growing our own vegetables. We then spent a year living in Egypt again, similarly, where we were very close and connected to the food that we're eating.

00:07:04--> 00:07:31

Walking into the farmhouse is like walking into a jumble of activity and serenity. It wasn't always like this for them. By the way. They used to live in a caravan for 14 years, they built their whole farm house, and we've been one for their children from scratch. And now they live a deservedly comfortable life. Mashallah, so, I'm in the farmhouse today.

00:07:32--> 00:07:40

It's so beautiful. I visited here, as a camper, you can come camping in the summer. And I've

00:07:41--> 00:08:03

seen the festival Mashallah. And I've come to see the place at different times in the year as well. So, you know, the height of the hay season. And now Now we're in I guess, the the English rainy season, if you like, we do need a frost for all sorts of things, all sorts of things in nature needed for the plants. So the parsnips are saying that they needed they needed.

00:08:06--> 00:08:20

I know I couldn't believe that getting the passage on the ground, they're all going to get what they can split it across such a learning curve. What are what are the what's the biggest advice that you can give

00:08:21--> 00:08:31

to families who want to live a more tired life talk to me about tired in your life? So tied for me is really about

00:08:33--> 00:08:53

being balanced and healthy. Because tired isn't just about food, is it? You know, food is halal. And Allah says what's halal? And it's a lot of it's that which is telling you. Yeah, and we've talked about tape in other areas, we've used the word Halal in other areas, like your income or you know,

00:08:54--> 00:09:00

it's except things that are acceptable, I think, that aren't really acceptable. And tyeb is about

00:09:02--> 00:09:35

being balanced and pure, and good, good things opposed to bad things. So it's all connected. And that is a pertinent to all walks of life. Everything we do has to be halal, and tell you the way they communicate. We talked about that, didn't we? And expecting the best from people in the world we eat or we say it's it's so mentioned in the Quran the way we are, you know, everything should be balanced. We don't do extremes extremes than a positive ID. Were the most balanced

00:09:36--> 00:09:39

people in Sharla if we had a day that

00:09:40--> 00:09:52

we didn't go off on extremes, I wonder about people who come to your farm. What do they find? What do you think they find in its essence that is different from other foreigners?

00:09:53--> 00:09:59

I don't know because I live here and you asking me to put but I have to admit I am

00:10:00--> 00:10:04

so humbled by our customers when I look at Google

00:10:06--> 00:10:18

comments on Google, and they're always so kind of sweet, but the most beautiful thing is, they always say people always say things like, carry on, and that we have

00:10:19--> 00:10:28

to make, you know, people pray that we carry on. They give us the blessings. I just, you know, that's invaluable. That's so beautiful.

00:10:29--> 00:11:09

Because what what I sense here, brothers and sisters in faith in humanity of this, that there isn't, when you work, walk into an environment movie, where there is a commercial, it's a commercial enterprise, you know, for example, right? You might like a specific coffee shop, okay. But when you go in, they've got it time that you're gonna see there, 17 and a half minutes, and then they want to turn around that table. Now, whether or not were aware of that consciously or subconsciously, the music that they play, the way that you might be pestered or ignored, is all within the profit plan. Okay, yeah, Dan, we haven't planned that.

00:11:11--> 00:11:48

I changed the whole ethos now will fall. But when you when you walk into somewhere where you're aiming to be tired, he let you let people relax and be themselves in sync. I think it's actually our intention is that we want people to connect us Google Willowbrook farm in Hampton gate. We're going to be open from around about end of March, April. So we'll be in Dubai, lambing, oh my goodness, ignore it and see our learning. Connect with birth. Not not not human, but my birthright loving, loving lands a bit. But being but we've got chicks. And

00:11:50--> 00:12:21

just I entered, everything is green in spring is beautiful, just hope, the vegetables hope for the animals hope for a more decent environment and hope that this COVID madness is over. And we can start connecting with each other. It's been so difficult for people being isolated. You know, they do that in prisons when they want to talk to you. Right? And people are having to do that in their home. So it's really been difficult. You know, we need to get back to connecting with each other and encouraging each other to do good things.

00:12:23--> 00:13:07

We don't have an intrinsic right to treat the rest of nature as a commodity wanted to use nature for our own benefits. But instead, it's actually an intrinsic responsibility to care for that nature to nurture it, to manage it wisely. And this comes out very much in the concept of Khilafah. In the Quran, that it's mentioned many times and in the Quran is mentioned that we've been placed on Earth as the qualifier or fill art, and that's used in the plural term that not just a single Khalifa, but each individual person is their own steward of nature. Lots and lots of doors for all of you watching. Leave your comments below. I'll be posting lots of information about Willowbrook farm, how

00:13:07--> 00:13:23

to get in touch. You can also get your halal and tired meat here in China to Allah So may Allah to Allah bless you and thanks so much for welcoming me into your amazing home don't forget to subscribe and hit Bell and make your comments and I'll see you soon inshallah. Letter ama