Help Goonown to Keep Growing!

Aim

To continue and expand our community health & well-being and education work, grow more food and enhance our biodiversity

PLEASE HELP OUR COMMUNITY GROWING PROJECT so that we can continue to feed our community with delicious local produce whilst meeting our social, environmental, educational, and well-being aims. We are passionate about community well-being, production of nutritious food and working with nature, not against it.

WE GROW, SHARE & CELEBRATE FOOD - involving local people and with a particular focus on benefitting those with mental and physical health conditions. We have created a space where people of all ages, abilities and backgrounds can get involved, meet, chat and be part of a welcoming community.

Your donations will enable us to:

• continue our health and well-being work,
• offer more educational visits and host other events,
• improve our veg growing
• and enhance the areas for wildlife on the farm.

Your funding will secure a future for all the therapeutic sessions and courses that we run, benefitting a wide range of people, and enable us to continue creating a vibrant community garden, welcoming to all, full of biodiversity and nutritious veg, and supplying affordable organic produce to our local area.

We are aiming to provide a PRACTICAL SOLUTION to climate change and the mental health crisis - we are on your doorstep and it’s all about food, nature and people! Help us grow resilience in our local food system, and in our local community.

OUR STORY SO FAR…

Six years ago three families came together to start a community growing project, with the aim of growing fantastic organic food with and for our local community, addressing the climate and ecosystem emergencies by creating a vibrant biodiverse certified organic growing site, and using our site as a place to help mental well-being.

We formed Goonown Growers (a not-for-profit Community Interest Company), took on a long-term tenancy and started transforming two small grass pasture fields. Since then, we have built up a team of 8 paid staff (4 full-time equivalent) and have been helped by hundreds of wonderful volunteers - we have planted over 2000 trees & perennials, grown tons of wonderful organic produce, created a safe and welcoming space in the community and hosted hundreds of people.

WHAT WE DO…

We grow and supply organic veg to our local area, but we are much more than a market garden. Goonown has become a place where our community can gather, connect to nature, learn, run events, volunteer and improve health and well-being. We are passionate about being a place people can turn up every week even if they are struggling - where they know it is safe to talk about mental health, get their hands in the soil, sit and eat with people of all ages and leave feeling more resilient.

“Goonown is my happy place” (one of our volunteers)

This year we have run groups for care leavers, young refugees and asylum seekers, people in recovery from psychosis, children from St Agnes Academy and courses using nature connection and therapeutic horticulture to improve health. People come to us with conditions like chronic pain, low mood, anxiety, PTSD, epilepsy, bereavement, trauma - because being in nature, being with people and growing veg together helps to boost mood and well-being and create good health. Our volunteer sessions every Friday are an open community drop-in where people can learn about growing but, more than that, it has become a ‘farm family’ to many people.

We work closely with St Agnes Surgery and Coastal Primary Care Network to provide green social prescribing, and veg boxes and volunteering on prescription for people with diabetes. We are part of a research project with Exeter University to gather evidence that this approach works - that local growing projects can make a significant difference to public health through the power of growing, cooking and eating veg.

WE ALREADY REACH LOTS OF PEOPLE…

• We have delivered over 13,000 veg boxes in the past 5 years (currently about 80 households) to St Agnes and surrounding villages
• Run a weekly market stall every Saturday in Truro
• Supply 15 local shops and caterers with produce
• Hosted 100s of volunteers
• Cooked a free hot meal for the community every week
• Run therapeutic horticulture courses
• Provided veg boxes on prescription & cooking workshops for people with diabetes and pre-diabetes symptoms
• Hosted feasts, open days, talks, folk nights, film evenings, fermentation workshops

…AND WE WANT TO DO MORE!

WHERE WILL YOUR FUNDING GO?

Your donations will help us:

Continue our existing community work - providing a safe and inclusive space, bringing people together each week around growing, cooking & eating healthy and nutritious food. For example:

• our weekly facilitated volunteer sessions. These run year round, where people come to share knowledge and skills, increase social connections, feel more connected to nature and ultimately feel better. These sessions include a free hot meal each week
• nature and health sessions for people with physical and mental health conditions benefitting from a gentle programme of activities and connection with nature

All of our veg income only just covers the core costs of running the farm, so all this community work survives on outside funding. Your donations will provide wages for a social prescribing and volunteering facilitator to continue this great work

Improve our facilities so we can host schools and more events. For example:

• a stretch tent for an outdoor classroom. We are excited to start hosting regular classes from St Agnes primary school. An outdoor covered classroom would provide a perfect space for kids to experience nature and learn about sustainable food production
• gazebo, tables, chairs and cooking equipment so we can host community meals, feasts and provide cooking workshops

Improve our veg growing - we are looking to grow more veg and buy essential tools to make the market garden more productive and sustainable. For example:

• polytunnel improvements to enable us to expand our production of veg throughout the year (reducing food imports, and making our community food supply more resilient)
• a walk-behind tractor to make our veg growing more efficient and kinder on the soil

Enhance biodiversity and soil health - we have already created lots of habitat for wildlife around the farm but we’d love to go much further, for example:

• improved compost systems to make more and better quality compost, including creating a wormery
• creating more dedicated wildlife areas including a second pond, a forest garden and sensory trail

WITH YOUR HELP WE CAN EXPAND & THRIVE. We are passionate about growing and sharing great food, celebrating the seasons, connecting with the land and each other, and using our site and the work we do to benefit people’s mental and physical well-being. We know that all our community work has a positive impact on people's lives - we want to sustain what we offer on a long term basis, and start offering more so we can benefit more people.

BIG THANKS FOR STAYING WITH US THIS FAR - we hope you like what we’re up to and want to support us, we’ve got some great rewards!

PLEASE DONATE NOW!!!

Funding method

Keep what you raise – this project will receive all pledges made