Some general notes on forming kitchen teams. To be clear, I’m not claiming that we do this particularly well.

For small rural groups like ours, it’s hard getting a kitchen workforce. Nearly everybody in the group is an officer, and already busy during an event. They are often happy to help with preparatory work, but you can only do so much. They often live in another town, which makes co-ordination harder.

Rural groups have more turnover than city groups. Work is scarce, so people drift to the cities, and now they have all these great SCA friends there.

In the country, many members have young kids, so helping in a feast kitchen means making childcare arrangements. Usually we don’t ask them, though some would probably play if asked.

We have always relied on family and SCA friends from outside our group. Alys’ daughter Jessica is a key member of her kitchen crew. Friends in Polit (SCA Canberra) have been great.

However you get your team, you need to be pretty flexible about using them. People with experience in a commercial kitchen, or big families, tend to be faster and can work for longer. Volunteers vary a lot in their technical cooking skills, so you need to teach as you go, without being patronising. On the plus side, it’s a great way for your volunteers to learn about deglazing or oil temperatures or food safety.

In recent years, Adora (SCA South Coast) has supported our kitchen crews and we have supported theirs. They have a long, thin geography that runs along one edge of Okewaite, such that it’s often easier to attend our feasts than get to the other end of theirs. It’s a natural and fortunate partnership.

In Polit, they have the “Politarchopolis Assault Catering Corps”, a group of peers who do many of their best events. They are the gold standard in kitchen crews, and more anarchist than you might think.

For Okewaite, I’ve acquired some team aprons for a “Team Squirrel” crew. I’m hoping that will build into something good.

Alys has made the point that you should count your kitchen team as a table when serving up, so that they get fed. Yes, that’s a good point. For myself, I don’t tend to eat when I am feast steward — too busy and too much adrenaline.

You need a separate team to do the final clean, because your cook team will be exhausted.