Grow a Grower at Sims Hill

Aim

Support us to Grow a Grower this season. We want a new trainee grower to join our team at Sims Hill.

Grow a Grower at Sims Hill

For 2019 we want to grow a grower. Sims Hill has an abundance of skills and knowledge. We feel it’s time to share our skills with the next generation of growers. 

Sims Hill wants to start offering training opportunities to new growers in Bristol. This year we would like to offer a 2 day a week paid trainee role for one new grower.  We need £5000. The money raised here will help us kickstart a traineeship program. 

We anticipate that expanding our staff with the traineeship this year will mean we can fund the traineeship from improved turnover in seasons to come.

Why support training for new growers?

We recognise the need to upskill new producers and build a new generation of food growers in Bristol. Raising this money we will be opening an opportunity for a new grower in Bristol.

5 reasons we think you should support us to Grow a Grower:

• We want to provide an opportunity for a new grower to access skills and learning.
• We want to expand our team and our ability to produce more local food
• We want to pay our trainee a fair and decent wage. 
• Access to land can be a significant barrier to starting a career in horticulture. The traineeship will offer this opportunity.
• We need to support new local food producers and growers to feed us.

What does it bring to Sims Hill?

This is an opportunity to build our farm and produce more food for Bristol households. With the help of a trainee we will open up more land for production this season and grow more vegetables.  

We would like to grow the project and need to expand our team at Sims Hill to make this possible. 

About us

Sims Hill is a pioneering cooperative owned by its members.  We are a Community Supported Agriculture Project (CSA), growing food just 4 miles from the centre of Bristol.  Instead of just buying veg from us, people become members of the project. Our core aims are to produce healthy, local, seasonal veg using using organic principles, whilst making good local food affordable and accessible, especially those in more difficult financial situations.  We currently grow food on around 2.5 acres for 120 households across Bristol.

We run a weekly Community Food Centre for people who struggle to access healthy locally grown food. Our approach to community support brings people together to volunteer on a working farm and to cook a meal together with farm grown produce.

At the end of 2018 the Sims Hill field was proposed as a suitable site for a new Park and Ride.  In response we had huge support from people across the city and region demanding that the land should be kept as a farm. Our land is high grade agricultural food producing land and is in an area which traditionally contained market gardens for Bristol. Bristol’s Mayor has announced full council support for an alternative site to be found further north, and protecting valuable growing land for future generations. With this news, we want to grow Sims Hill even more and this season aim to produce more vegetables than ever.

Joining Sims Hill Shared Harvest

You can have a share of Sims Hill and receive fresh, seasonal veg every week. We have two sizes of vegetable box available at £7/week or £12/week. Get in touch if you are interested. We have different drop off points around the city in Bristol.

More information on how our CSA works

Sims Hill is a Community Supported Agriculture scheme operating on a shared risk, shared responsibility basis.  The CSA  model connects the farmer directly with the consumer and creates much more stability and support for the farmer in terms of planning what to grow.  It reduces waste by effectively growing to order, and in really bad years, if yields are low, members agree to take less veg whilst still paying for their membership to help the farm through hard times.  We have quarterly members meetings and we all decide together the price of the share and what we will grow. 

Any Questions

Please contact us at [email protected] or visit our website at https://simshill.co.uk/

A selection of the rewards:

2 holidays at Churchtown Farm, on the South East coast of Cornwall.

Print designed by Libby Bove  https://libbybove.wordpress.com/

Print designed by Queen Mob

Book by Isy Morgenmuffel

Dinner at Pitchfork Cafe, https://www.facebook.com/pitchforkcafe/

This project successfully funded on 16th April 2019