Last Thursday 8 of us took a minibus excursion to Stroud to visit Stroud Community Agriculture. They are a similar project to ours but have been going for quite a few years. See the photo gallery for some highlights.
It was very interesting to see how they do things. They have a shed on the farm where people come to collect their produce weekly, weighing it out themselves. There is a whiteboard on which they list the week’s share, and a scale to do the weighing. They have a ‘gift box’ where you can put vegetables that you don’t actually want from the current share, and from which you can freely take what others have put in.
They have both a vegetable and a meat share, like us, and they supplement their vegetables with bought-in vegetables at times when the farm offerings are limited. They devote a lot of their field space to the livestock and fodder for them, and the resulting manure is very important to the fertility of the vegetable growing.
Our hosts were very welcoming and helpful, and gave us lots of useful information and ideas. One strong impression I took away was that we are doing very well, considering what a short time we have been running.
Diss Community Farm 