Hyperlocal heroes: meet the chefs growing their own

Stockport’s Sam Buckley is part of a wave of Noma-inspired gourmets swapping gastro-science for gardening and sourcing produce from within a few miles – or metres – of their restaurants

There are plenty of tools you might expect to see in a chef’s hand: a knife, a blender, a blowtorch. But Sam Buckley, the 34-year-old chef-owner at Stockport’s Where the Light Gets In, is standing in a small field in nearby Marple, holding a rake.

It is January and so this patch of land, rented from the surrounding farm, is green but dormant. Its apple trees are bare, a frame of runner beans is brown and withered and, but for some chamomile shoots in the greenhouse, there is little sign that by summer this will be the primary source of fruit and vegetables for WTLGI (scored 10/10 by the then Guardian critic Marina O’Loughlin in 2017).