Thank you once again for supporting us in 2023 by filling a basket each week with the finest produce around! Shopping with us helps micro-businesses to grow, family businesses to keep going for the next generation, local people to be employed, and new entrants to start out in farming.
Your shopping basket directly helps build a better local food system in our area, and pays a fair price to our brilliant community of growers and producers. Thank you all for keeping us busy for another year, and to those of you who helped us celebrate our 10 year anniversary, which felt like a wonderful milestone for us to see in together!
2023 has been a super busy year for wider Tamar Grow Local activities too...
• We've been working with the Landworkers' Alliance on a Defra pilot project called the New Entrant Support Scheme, helping new entrants into farming with business planning, learning and mentoring.
• We're piloting a land matching project in the South West, which we hope will develop into a national project working with partners in the next couple of years.
• We've supported others nationally looking to set up resilient food systems and Tamar Valley Food Hubs type projects in their local areas.
• We've continued the Grow Share Cook project into its 8th year with Plymouth City Council, providing fresh vegetables to people facing food insecurity in the city.
• We've supported Harrowbarrow & Metherell Community Vineyard group to organise and manage a vineyard, resulting in a 930kg harvest this autumn, which is being made into wine at Tamar Valley Vineyard near Bere Alston.
• We've started welcoming volunteers on to our Farmstart site and demonstration market garden.
• We've continued to work collaboratively with other organisations and develop a regional wholesale route for selling local, agroecological produce at fair prices through the Good Food Loop.
• Thanks to your donations of veg bags, we've supported people referred through Callington and Tavistock food banks with fresh vegetables, and raised over £400 for the food banks at our 10 year anniversary celebration.
• We've developed and trialled a new apple juicing facility to enable community groups and individuals to make their own juice next season.
• We've also been shouting about local produce, helping people grow food and learn more about our market gardening heritage in the Tamar Valley through the Promoting our Produce branch of the Tamara Landscape Partnership Scheme.
• We've supported the University of Exeter in research projects about sustainable food systems and running a sustainable business.
• We harvested 3 tonnes of ancient grain wheat with the help of our brilliant local farmer James, which is going to be milled into flour by Reclaim the Grain, and sold through Tamar Valley Food Hubs next year.
If you would like to hear more about projects like these and keep up to date with all of Tamar Grow Local's wider activities, you can subscribe to our newsletter here, or follow us on Facebook, Instagram and X (Twitter).
You can also find out more about our foodie and growing workshops, events and news which are part of the Tamara Landscape Partnership Scheme, via our newsletter here.