The Saltmothers Table

In October 2025, 50 people gathered at The Saltmother’s Table for a speculative harvest feast born from the imagined folklore of Sheppey’s present. Inspired by the future harvests of Intertidal Allotment  – a prototype community allotment on the island’s north coast created by artist Andrew Merritt – the meal celebrates the intertidal zone as a place of encounter: where sea meets soil, the Thames Estuary meets the North Sea, fresh water meets salt, and humans meet other species.

Conceived and prepared by artist and researcher Cherry Truluck, the menu draws on local ingredients, wild foods, and plants and animals that could one day be cultivated on the world’s first coastal allotment. Each course is an edible chapter in a speculative Sheppey mythos, where the Saltmother – guardian of brackish waters and keeper of tidal abundance – invites you to taste the mingling of worlds.

Falling just after the Harvest Moon, this is a time for abundance without nostalgia: a feast of salt, soil, stories, and shared rituals, held in the shifting space between the tides. The convivial gathering was threaded with still moments for tasting, listening, sensing and tide-line magic.

For those who wanted to, the meal was preceded by a walk along Sheppey’s coastline, carrying salt from the site of the Intertidal Allotment prototypes to the meal at the Dockyard Church. The walk was guided by the ‘Friends of the Allotment’ who carried harvest totems (Oysters, Golden Samphire, ‘An Unfathomable Wreck’ by Uwe Johnson, Hillman Imp car, Selkie and Alexanders).

About Intertidal Allotment:

Saltmother is part of the wider project Intertidal Allotment. Cement Fields’ 2024-2025 Intertidal Allotment events programme invites people to explore ideas and test out materials for a new community allotment on the north coast of Sheppey – a proposed functional artwork by artist Andrew Merritt, one half of the artist duo Something & Son. In spring 2025, a variety of prototypes were installed on the coastline at Ship on Shore beach, enabling the impact on the local community and ecosystem to be closely monitored. Intertidal Allotment is being delivered in partnership with a range of national and local organisations, including Ideas Test, Swale Borough Council, and Sheppey Matters. The prototype will be monitored by students from the School of Anthropology and Conservation, University of Kent. 
The project has been commissioned by Cement Fields and kindly supported using public funding by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and The National Lottery Community Fund. With additional support from Ideas Test, Swale Borough Council, and Kent County Council.