Target reached!
If we raise more money, this will go towards: Our solidarity vegetable share scheme,...
Support community farming in Bristol
Bristol, Bristol City, United Kingdom
Aim
We need to grow and support our growing team, sustain community projects and solidarity veg shares, cover tractor training and repair costs
Sims Hill Shared Harvest is running an eight week crowdfunding campaign to raise £10,000!
We are a grassroots farm and community supported agriculture (CSA) project, growing food for people in Bristol. We run through a cooperative structure and as a CSA we are owned and run by the members who receive a share of our vegetables. This means that we feed local people who are then able to have a larger connection to the farm. We have open access for visits, have our members come and gain practical growing experience and ask them directly what they want from us. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship which means the farm becomes a site for community building as well as food production.
We feed around 180 households in the city; we also distribute our vegetables to volunteers, community groups and food banks and organisations in Bristol, as we want to make sure our vegetables reach as many people as possible. We use organic growing methods and permaculture principles to grow vegetables, cultivate healthy soils, and support social action through land-based activities. These include: our workshare programme, where ten members of the farm work a half day with the growers team to grow, harvest and pack our vegetables; their time is exchanged for a full share of our veg every week; our Soil Connections programme, which involves working with a group of asylum seekers, migrants and refugees who have an interest in horticulture to increase social connection, work based experience in food growing and linking to other sources of support in Bristol; community events such as our recent Spring Equinox event held at the farm on 18th March, in which we exchanged seeds, celebrated the work on the land and invited members of the public to learn more about our work.
We are looking for funding for the future of our farm, to ensure we survive the current economic and climate crisis. We believe work on the land builds resilient tangible responses to climate change, social isolation and food shortages - which we urgently need to ensure a better future for us all.
Why are we raising money?
In the current landscape, long term food security and community-led climate solutions are not prioritised. This means that small scale agroecological farmers are all too often undersupported and overworked. We believe this needs to change at the policy level and we are an active part of the food justice movement demanding greater land access, support and training for new entrant growers, access to good food, and community-led climate solutions. But in the meantime, we need your support to survive and keep working towards a sustainable future for all.
We love connecting people to nutritious food, community and sustainable farming knowledge in the city, which we have been doing successfully for over 10 years. Through this connection we know that small farms directly address food insecurity, regenerate the land, create diversity in our diets and build communities that are more resilient in the face of climate change. We want to celebrate our success, and keep giving to the good food movement - but we also have to recognise that last year brought many challenges. With unforeseen costs, weather and illness, it was an incredible effort to keep everything afloat. It worked, but we had to go through rapid change. We are raising money to support the farm through this time of transition, so we can keep feeding Bristol for at least 10 more years.
With your support, we can work on:
1. Now and the future - training the next generation of farmers
Nurturing the food sovereignty movement in Bristol and beyond through supporting new entrant growers
We want to have as many people committed to growing organic food as possible, in Bristol and further afield. This year, we have decided to expand and invest in training and developing our entrant growers programme, so that in the future we expand our growing team that run the farm. This programme ensures that we are investing in the next farmer generation now, and therefore ensuring a more sustainable future for the food sovereignty movement. The money we raise will go towards training and development costs for new entrant growers, which will provide resilience, capacity and wellbeing that we need to sustain Sims Hill in the long term, and build the movement of young growers who understand nature-friendly farming and support local solutions to climate change. This will also enable us to expand our community work and engaging further with local communities. With the average age of farmers in the UK being 59, we need to do all we can to encourage the new generation of food producers in order to create a sustainable, abundant and resilient food system. With access to land expensive, and not many opportunities to work on a starter farm, we see this programme of training for new growers an important and rare opportunity to encourage more people into land work, which will strengthen food security for future generations.
In order to achieve this goal we’re looking to secure £5,400.
2. Weathering the storm
Building infrastructure foundations, tractor skills and expanding resources
Farming can be unpredictable, and although there is not much we can do about the weather, we can ensure we are prepared for mechanical breakdown repair costs, as well as providing additional tractor training for our new entrant growers. By laying good financial foundations,we can continue building a better, more resilient food system which supports people and planet. While we love our old and trusty tractor Pierre, we will need more of a buffer for mechanical breakdowns. Pierre might be from the 1960s, but still has a long life to live. Because we are supporting new entrants, we expect them to need more frequent support from our tractor mechanic than a farmer with several years’ tractor experience under their belt. In this figure we have also included a tractor training course for our three new entrant growers. Finally, we are also in need of funding for additional seeds, compost and tools.
To reach this goal we need £2,600
3. Growing communities
Providing solidarity vegetable share boxes, running community events and connecting people to the land
There is no Sims without community. Whether it is the community beneath our feet in the soil, our members, or those who come to lend a hand, we are here because of you. We want to increase the number of solidarity boxes we provide, as we believe that good quality vegetables should be available for all, particularly now in the midst of a cost of living crisis. We want to be able to continue to support and expand the social projects we facilitate, helping as many people as possible feel they are part of Sims. We want to run more events, meals and workshops at the farm to contribute to a thriving network of people working towards food and land justice in Bristol. We also want to provide more free half shares for a year to households who cannot afford our veg at the moment.
To reach this goal we need £2,000
We understand if you cannot donate at this time but we would love it if you could let others who might know about it!
Here are photos of the beautiful handprinted linocuts by Petra that we are now offering as rewards!
A5 print on reused potato sack! support small farms - share good food
large print - A3 on potato sack! support small farms.
This project successfully funded on 3rd July 2023