As we prepare to launch our Crowdfunder, we wanted to have a quick look at where we are, how we got here, and what more we want to do in the future (spoiler: lots of things).
Wellington Community Food was established in 2022 with a mission to improve people’s lives by:
- Increasing access to healthy, affordable food for our community
- Supporting sustainable and environmentally friendly farming practices
- Strengthening our community by bringing people together around food and food education
We were incredibly lucky that around the same time the council instigated plans to buy the ‘Green corridor’. Talks commenced and everything seemed to fall into place.
We broke the ground and had our first harvest in 2023, providing weekly veg boxes to our 17 crop-share members. Our first growing season yielded over 2 tonnes of vegetables and provided 414 veg boxes. Around 400 people visited the farm for our Open Days and we ran over 50 sessions involving volunteers on the land.
In 2024, our second year, we have doubled the area of land under cultivation and from 0.5 hectares to one hectare – this area includes land ‘resting’ and also areas left for wildlife. We have also doubled the number of veg boxes provided.
WORKING WITH OUR LOCAL SCHOOLS
We are really pleased with the success of our outreach to our local schools. So far in 2024, 790 school children have visited the farm across 22 school visits from all 5 primary schools in the town. The children are invited to learn about how we grow the vegetables and to enjoy a range of activities from bug-hunts to planting potatoes to digging up carrots! With more school visits lined up in the autumn, we aim to have hosted 900 school children by the end of the 2024 season.
Some of the feedback from school visits:
“The children loved the farm trail. The children had the chance to dig up some carrots and take them back to school, we used them to make soup.” – Teacher
“Really well organised visit, activities were matched to the age of the children and they learnt a lot” – Teacher
“Visiting the farm is like freedom” – Pupil
THE FUTURE
Our longer term ambition is to increase our growing area to 2 hectares; design and build an educational hub; set up a barn, poly tunnels, and off-grid power; create new wildlife habitats; diversify our crops and develop tree planting projects. As we grow we will be able to employ more people and to host a wide range of groups and create space for new projects on the site. We estimate all this will require around £300,000 of further grants and investment support for the benefit of our local community and the natural environment, for now and for generations to come.
THANK YOU for reading our story – we hope you like what you see and want to help make this fantastic project thrive and grow.
Please donate and share our Crowdfunder far and wide on social media. If you have any questions please do get in contact via email or Facebook.