Target reached!
With the extra money we'll be able to offer some discounted vegetable boxes to house...
Soul Farm — No dig regenerative market garden
Flushing, England, United Kingdom
Aim
We are now raising community shares - link in body
If you've supported us before, consider buying community shares here.
Soul Farm is a market garden in Falmouth, Cornwall
We produce vegetables on 1.5 acres of land in collaboration with the Trefusis Estate. The end of soulless food is here!
After our first season we have seen there is demand to supply more families through our CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) scheme.
With your support
- With this injection of funds you will be helping us buy manure, compost and the machines we need to move 100 tons of worm-filled soil that form the basis of our no-dig/no-till market garden
- We will be investing in a better irrigation system
- We have some key tools we need to buy to make the farm run more efficiently
- We would love a harvest cart
Soul Farm 
is a no-dig market farm growing seasonal vegetables
We sell to restaurants in Falmouth and the surrounding area and we're running a CSA veg box scheme. We’re looking to connect community and growers, so that you know what you’re getting. Labels like "organic" become irrelevant because you know exactly where your food comes from. We want to build up trust and customers can communicate with the farm and give feedback. It’s a membership, a club and a team. Community involvement is critical to the functioning of the farm.
We're on a mission to feed local people and to help people to think about where their food has come from. Our vegetables taste fantastic - fresh and full of nutrients that haven't wasted away in a truck coughing down the A30. We also love to challenge people to eat seasonal food they wouldn't ordinarily try.
We’re looking for pioneers, change makers and food lovers. Because, well… the world's food system needs to change. It needs to change one small farm at a time. The end of big, soulless agriculture is nigh. With Brexit about to happen we have a chance to think about the food we eat and we need more mindful farming, farming which looks at ecology and food.
I have double dug my garden once, then I met Charles Dowding (one reward is one of his calendars) and that all changed. No dig is a technique he has used for many years, and it has become more and more popular, with now courses, books and podcasts. On my scale, it's a lot more work than using a two wheeled tractor or rotivator. But by using a great deal of compost I can create a growing medium that smothers weeds and increases worm life, and that vegetables love. The soil biology is left undisturbed, meaning the soil is living. It has soul! We're increasing fungal life, bacterial life and balancing the fertility. This approach to farming is the at the core of regenerative agriculture and it is the future for our children.
Small scale farming is the future
There is a new movement towards small scale agriculture. But when an industry has the average age of 60 you know it’s in big trouble. The need for a different approach to industrialised agriculture is vital, and we are only just at the start of the rise of micro/ regenerative and urban farms. We need millions more all around the world.
The micro farm means that we don’t need motorisation. Increased diversity and soil biology means more fertility, healthier and tastier plants and no need for GMOs and pesticides. More humus in the soil means more water retention and robustness to unseasonal dry spells. These techniques can’t be achieved on industrial scales, that is why they are not practised. The use of machinery demands that farms become bigger and bigger. Tractor wheels take up huge amounts of space. For efficiencies they need to grow fewer crops. The bigger the farm the wider their market needs to be and the greater the pressure this puts on the environment through transportation. There are techniques like no dig and no till which help build soil, increase fertility, and manage weed and insect pressures but they are rarely practised on a large scale.
We're Bringing a walled garden back to life.
The garden has not been producing food on a large scale since the 1960s. During the war the greenhouse sustained bomb damage and is now being repaired and the pasture is turned into no-dig vegetable plots. You can stand in the garden and see the light glistening off the water of the Carrick Roads, you can see boats in the distance and you can almost smell the sea. Early in the morning as we harvest lettuce in the mist you can hear the fog horns sounding in Falmouth Harbour.
Your help, however large or small, is game changing
If you live in Falmouth then what I'm providing is actually for you. There are also some great rewards that you can take. You put food on our plates, we'll put food on yours. But if you live "up country" as they say, then there are some rewards that are just for you too, they're more one-off experiences or swag. We're all striving to leave a better world for our children so please consider supporting this little farm in Cornwall.
Rewards
We have some ace swag for you guys. We've saved some seeds from the garden. We've worked with illustrators Paul Richards and Nath Fletcher to bring you some epic enamel mugs, caps and t-shirts.
We have collaborations with grower Charles Dowding, bookbinder Sarah Jarrett-Kerr, and woodsman Tom Kemp, whether you want signed copies of Charles' calendar, a one of a kind leather journal or a bespoke one day course making your own wooden bench.
Could some rewards be Christmas gifts for a green-fingered loved one?
(t-shirts, caps and mugs won't be delivered before Christmas however)
We're also offering some great days on the farm learning no-dig growing that can work on whatever scale. Get the right reward and we'll open up direct line to us to ask questions and consult through the season. We're also offering amazing feasts for you and a few of your peeps with one of the amazing chefs Soul Farm works with.
Would you like to join the CSA?
You can find out more or drop me your details so you'll be notified when the CSA membership opens at www.soulfarm.co.uk or you contact us direct if you have any questions at [email protected]
This project successfully funded on 19th December 2019