Connecting people
to the planet
through food.
OUR LIVING FOOD CAMPUS
We believe the food we choose has the power to transform our health, our wellbeing and the planet.
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What began as our original cheesemaking factory has evolved into the Brown’s Living Food Campus in Tigoni, Kenya. A working farm, food production campus and place of learning dedicated to traditional food craftsmanship, biodiversity, soil health and regenerative agriculture.
Join us for an immersive farm and food experience near Nairobi, where you can discover how some of your favourite foods are made and why the way food is grown, processed and eaten matters.
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Discover Slow Food, Cheesemaking & Traditional Food Craft
Your experience begins at 11:30 am with a nourishing welcome drink and seasonal canapés.
From there, we take you behind the scenes of our working food campus. You will:
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Discover the traditional steps of artisan cheesemaking
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Visit our dairy and learn how milk is transformed into cheese
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Peek inside our ice cream production room
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Visit our ageing cave and discover how hard cheeses develop flavour over time
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Explore our artisan bakery
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Try your hand at milling fresh flour
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Learn about Kenya’s diverse and indigenous grains
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Discover why slow processing, fermentation and traditional techniques can improve flavour and nutrition
Artisan Cheese Tasting & Seasonal Farm Lunch
After exploring the campus, enjoy a generous artisan cheese tasting board featuring seasonal Brown’s cheeses paired with breads, crackers, jams and pickles made on the farm. This is followed by a relaxed organic seasonal lunch, inspired by ingredients grown and produced around the farm.
Explore Our Organic Farm
After lunch, head outside to explore our working organic farm and discover how healthy soil, diverse plants, animals and food production are connected.
Depending on the day and season, you may:
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Visit our soil laboratory and look at living soil under a microscope
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Learn about regenerative and biodynamic farming
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Discover the importance of biodiversity and circular food systems
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Meet our fascinating stingless bees & taste the wonder of their honey
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Meet our dairy cows and even try your hand at milking a cow
Finish your visit with a stop at our farm shop, where you can take home a selection of cheeses, breads, ferments, pantry products and other foods made at Brown’s.
A Farm-to-Table Experience Just Outside Nairobi
The Brown’s Living Food Campus experience is designed for anyone curious about where food comes from, how artisan food is made and how better farming and food choices can support both human and planetary health.
Come hungry, curious and ready to experience food from soil to table.
Classroom Workshops
Our classroom at the Brown's Living Food Campus offers you to connect to Kenya through interactive cooking classes, fermentation sessions, food demonstration meal, foraging and more.
Our creative workshops are designed to support you to make regenerative and nourishing choices back home, reconnecting you back to your food.
We're constantly collaborating and developing engaging curricula that is inspired from the ancient and the modern within Kenya and across the globe!
The Farmyard
Our business started as dairy. Without our animals we would not have the products that we have, nor would our shamba be as bountiful! There is an inherit interconnection between the food we eat and animals.
Did you know it takes 17 days for food to fully pass through a cow's digestive system. In this time it makes protein from the fibre it has eaten through the microorganisms in living in their gut meaning their dung is essential for building up the humus in the soil. That is why our cows play such an essential role in the aliveness of our entire business, and in supporting your health.
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The health of our cows, and that of our farming community's cows, is crtically important. What they eat and where they rest matters. Ventilation, shade and water must be plentiful. Curing any health issues quickly matters. We consider ourselves as setting the bar high for others in the industry, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Shamba
“It is in the roots, not the branches, that a tree’s greatest strength lies” – Matshona Dhliwayo
Regenerative biodynamic farming at the Brown's Living Food Campus means an abundance of life, and colour, and activity and observation. There's always so much to pay attention to. To touch, to taste, to smell, to watch, to listen to.
Biodynamic is derived from two Greek words, bios (life) and dynamos (energy), indicating that the farm should be treated as a living system. Regenerative biodynamic farming is all about wholeness. It is about connecting with nature and our senses. It is about giving back to the land rather than taking.
We work with the force of nature, not against it, for after all, we are a force of nature too. Food that is produced in this way nourishes and revitalises humanity!
Learn more about these principles in our blog series.
Patient Processing
As you explore the different areas of the campus, a common thread that you will notice is patient processing. We do this because slow food is good food. Traditional techniques of stone-grinding, aging and fermentation enhance the nutritional value and flavour of food. By tending the products regularly, our team are building a relationship with what they are crafting and that same care is passed onto you as you enjoy.
Soil Laboratory
Come and get curious about soil. After you've peered under a microscope, you'll never look at soil the same way again!
Soil is essential to life on earth, without it life could not be sustained. It is also money in the bank: the better the soil, the more interest you get. But sadly, much of the world’s agricultural soils have become inert and lifeless from the consistent application of chemicals. It is in healthy soils that crops can grow to their full nutritional potential, passing that same potential on as they are eaten.
That is why here at Brown’s, we look after our soil before anything else. In fact we don’t just care for it, we actively heal and regenerate it through biodynamic farming principles.
Seed Bank & Nursery
So much depends on seeds. They are the soul's biodiversity, beyond just food. If seeds aren't cared for then we risk losing important genetic diversity that supports life on this planet. Open access to seeds is also important in supporting smallholders to adapt to changing market demands and the changing climate - it increases resilience, one seed at a time.
This is why we're been carefully collecting ancient seeds from across the country. It is our small quest in quest helping to preserve the diversity and abundance that exists and making seeds more available for you to take home to plant and share more widely. And, if you'd prefer to take home plants, we've got these for sale too!
Circularity
“Nothing is lost...everything is transformed" (Antoine Lavoisier)
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Over the years, we've learnt from nature that life operates in cycles and everything can be regenerated if given the chance. In our shamba, production areas and classroom, we always ask ourselves 'How could this be reused? Where may this have value? Might we be limiting nature to regenerate?'. This leads to creativity, abundance and ultimately a business that operates by circular economy principles.
The soil, in which we grow many of our ingredients, is rich from the addition of organic 'waste', cow dung, shamba cuttings and processing bi-products (supported, of course, by the ingenuity of worms)! Many of the ideas for our new products are born from having siginficant volumes of bi-product that needs a new home. Without our Grove+Meadow kombucha we wouldn't have the Grove+Meadow Raspberry Fruit Bars. Without cutting up our Cheddar we wouldn't have Kid's Cheddar Bites!
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