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What's happened so far? July 2011 update:
Following on from our successful grant award from the Welsh Assembly Government (£130,000 over 2 years), we have now appointed to the key post of Knowledge Transfer Officer. Sophie Durnan, who has recently been working for The Firewood Company in Cowbridge, brings to the job a degree in sustainability and ten years’ experience working on a market garden in Somerset. She also brings her partner Tim Halewood in a jobshare and a bundle of enthusiasm. We look forward to working with her. Adam York, our previous grower, continues with us in an advisory role and will be mentoring Sophie and Tim for another year.
Many of you have asked about opportunites to volunteer at weekends. We’re working on it, including the possible provision of free lunches and taking away some spare veg. Watch this space! October 2010 update: We're now well into our trading phase, supplying up to ten restaurants and local retailers, the farmers' market at Rhiwbina, and our new box scheme. Great work Adam and Pete! Crops are now into their winter phase - heavy on the kale! - but enough to see us through. We are hoping that new funding will allow us to build our first polytunnels soon. Our recent members' evening and site visit were very successful and hopefully answered a number of shareholders' questions. Early July 2010 update: Adam York, our highly experienced grower who's on site 3 days a week, has been beavering away, with some help from some Future Jobs Fund trainees and lately other help from 'WWOOFers' (the 'willing workers on organic farms' scheme) and other paid help. Adam has borrowed tractors and cultivators, and we're currently trial cropping on just under one acre. The rest of the site had been ploughed, and waiting for the right weather (a bit of rain) to sow green manure crops. The crops which are growing now include Courgettes, Ridge Cucumbers, Coriander, Parsley, Spinach Beet, French Beans, Peas, Russian Kale, Cavolo Nero, Pointed Cabbage, Leeks, Lettuces, and Sorrel. See recent site photo below.
The hot, dry weather has been a real challenge for Adam. He lost some broad beans, and some other seedlings are struggling but will probably come through. The problem is both the lack of organic matter in the soil - which has been used as pasture for the past ten yearsand a very low pressure water source. We've addressed this by bringing in some green waste compost (the courgettes are loving it!) and we've bought a 10,000 litre water tank and pump so we can fill the tank overnight and irrigate properly. Our long term plan has been to dig a borehole, but this is expensive, and we may survive without it if the new system works well. When the polytunnels are up later this year, we'll harvest water from the roofs. Our first crops - courgettes- have just been harvested on 6th July!. We're planning to launch a veg box scheme which will supply 20 families (with some bought in veg to supplement what we are growing) . Some veg - especially where we get a glut - will also be sold at local farmers' markets. Several restaurants have also confirmed their interest in buying from us, although we get a reduced price that way so it's our least favourite option. On the business side, things are progressing well. We now have 53 shareholders, and have raised over £5k in this way (our target was a minimum of 2k by the end of June). We need to keep plugging away at selling shares, however, as we need to raise £20k by the end of September (up from our initial 10k target) and another £10k by next Spring so that we'll be well on track to get all our capital equipment such as the polytunnels and our own tractor this year, ready for full production next year.
The Market Garden project has been in development for several years, while we made sure that every detail had been thought through, and has now been launched.
This year we'll be setting up the site infrastructure, while focusing on building soil fertility, through using 'green manure' crops such as clover, and trial cropping. In 2011 we will be in full production, and by early 2012 we will have full organic status.
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The
latest news on outlets this year is that after much planning and
preparation, we’ve opened a fortnightly veg stall in the main
cafeteria at the Heath Hospital, with fantastic help from many of
the key staff in the relevant departments there: healthy eating,
facilities management, promotion and so on. It’s for a three-month
trial and if it works out as we all hope, this will be a remarkable
pioneering project, a true first.
Now
that the veg is growing at some pace we’re planning to expand
our veg box scheme, so please consider signing up and tell your
friends - with the shareholder discount you will have paid off the
cost of one share in 2 years! We also need to make a few changes.
First of all, the price of our vegboxes is going up to £40
a month, or £38 if you’re a shareholder. As you all will
have noticed, we opened last year at tremendous value in order to
introduce ourselves. Now we must focus on the business side and
that means getting our margins right. However, we are still offering
a significant edge over our nationwide competitors, like Riverford
Organics and Abel & Cole. And we are of course as local and
fresh as you can get. 
