Lauriston Social Farming Initiative

Aim

Install a new 25m x 8m poly tunnel to increase production of biodynamic vegetables for supply to our local village and co-op members.

We are Lauriston Farm - a charitable community owned social farming business on the Blackwater Estuary in rural Essex.  We work along side people with a learning disability to grow vegetables, raise cattle and sheep and look after wildlife on this internationally designated piece of land.  The farm and all its produce is certified Biodynamic.

We started in 2004 and formed the co-op in 2017 which is now owned by 194 people with over 80% living in Essex.  There are four people working on the farm.  Andre and Monique grow the vegetables on a couple of acres and Spencer looks after the cattle, sheep and conservation work with Jenny co-ordinating our social farming activities.  

Almost all our produce is sold locally through a box scheme, local markets and our farm shop but we also supply Farm Direct in London every week.

Our nearest village is called Goldhanger and this year the weekly vegetable van stopped coming and the village shop closed over ten years ago.  A group of people have asked us if we can supply vegetables to the village which we would love to do but we need to expand our production a little to do it.

Fundamental to this is the need for a second poly tunnel to grow more spring crops for a longer period.  This will free up the existing tunnel to concentrate on Summer crops and extend their season too.

We hope to have the tunnel in place by March 2020 for the Summer crops and we are asking for your support to make this a reality.  We are offering 5% of your pledge as a voucher for farm produce in addition you will be kept up to date with farm news so maybe you'd like to com

along on one of our open days and follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

To see how this fits into our broader fund raising campaign and to find out more about the farm you can download our prospectus by clicking here.

The film below was made by Monique's 14 year old nephew and it gives more information on the farm - we all hope you can give a little to enable us to supply those wholesome veggies to people in our local village!

This project successfully funded on 29th December 2019