Last week, on an unseasonably sunny hot morning in Jan, I visited Ripple farm to talk about planting plans for the coming season. 40 mins by train from London, Ripple is a small 14 acre farm situated in the Stour valley at the foot of the North Downs. Growing Communities partnership with Ripple goes back 10 years, when we visited them to persuade them to have a stall at our farmers market in Stoke Newington.  Ripple then began supplying the box scheme and is now one of our main suppliers.

The farm is rented by farmer Martin Mackey, originally hailing from county Cork, Ireland. Martin first went to Wye to study for a masters from the (now defunct) Wye valley agricultural college. After graduation, a job at Ripple farm later led to him renting the site with a colleague from the landowner and assuming the management of the farm in 1999. 

‘Home farm’ is the hub of the farm: The two fields surrounding the barn are a visual testament to Ripple farm’s commitment to small scale, sustainable, organic mixed farming. Phacelia is grown to encourage bees. A patchwork of different vegetable growing is interspersed with pollytunnels of salad and strips of fallow ground, where grass and clover is grown to rejuvenate the soil before crop rotation ensures the soil’s nutrients are once again utilised to grow the food that GC members eat. On the other side of the valley an ancient earthwork is evidence of the 2000 year old agricultural history of the area.

As well as Martin and his wife Sarah, the team at Ripple consists of local growers, harvesters and packers. Many have worked at Ripple for years.  Some have come through the apprentice programme that Martin runs in conjunction with a local college.  Being a tenant farmer is very far from a lucrative occupation. It is also very hard work, with long hours and six day weeks the norm. But get Martin on the subject of organic farming (particularly potatoes) and you get a sense of the drive that keeps this operation going.

The story of the relationship between Ripple and Growing Communities symbolises everything that Growing Communities was set up to try to achieve.  As the box scheme has grown and thrived so it has provided a stable, predictable income to Ripple farm. This in turn has enabled Martin to be confident in renting and utilising more land in the local area for sustainable growing: which includes an unused Victorian walled garden complete with Haversham-esque collection of dilapidated buildings and glass houses, now used for propagation. Both organisations have been able to generate employment for their communities and train the much needed growers, processors and farmers of the future.

More news this week of former Growing Communities employees going on to do great things. Many long standing members of the box scheme will already know the trajectory of our previous growers, with Ru Litherland running Organic Lea’s hawkwood nursery in north London (also supplying our box scheme) and Sara Davies busy setting up growing projects in her native Zimbabwe.

Now we’ve heard a rumour that Maisie 1 (our former milkfloat and stalwart extraordinaire of the delivery run) is treading the boards at the Barbican no less! Yes, the old gal was renovated and rejuvenated by the magic fingers of milkfloat engineer Trevor, before being painted green and tasked with ferrying on the operatic cast of Britten’s adaptation of a midsummer nights dream.  We imagine that Maisie’s somewhat temperamental nature might fit in quite well with the artistic warblers of the Guildhall school, although providing her with her own dressing room will no doubt prove to be a bit of a sticking point. Show starts 28 February 2012 http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/home  

Last week, Growing Communities hit the road again, this time to visit another community box scheme: Local Greens based in Herne Hill South London.

Local Greens is a not for profit enterprise and the brainchild of three friends: Therese, Jean and Maria. Fired up with the desire to create an alternative to the current food system they joined the Growing Communities’ Start up programme in 2010, a programme we set up to train and mentor other communities to set up community-led box schemes based on the Growing Communities' model. 

Local Greens launched their box scheme in June 2011 and are now packing and distributing over 100 bags of produce a week. Like Growing Communites, the Local Greens box scheme harnesses the purchasing power of their community to buy local sustainable food and supports small-scale organic farms by paying them a fair price for their produce. As a result of Local Greens' endeavours, the farms they work with are planning to increase the amount of organic growing in 2012 as well employ more local people. In turn the surplus monnies generated by Local Greens has led to job creation in Herne Hill and enabled them to start plans for an urban market garden project. 

Sometimes when you embark on new ventures you just don’t know whether they are going to work. The risk seems particularly high when you are a small community organization in Hackney with very limited financial resources and a small number of staff. When we embarked on the ‘Start up’ adventure we didn’t know whether success in Hackney could be replicated elsewhere. On this evidence, it can. A sustaining thought in the effort to create a fairer, sustainable alternative to the current food system.

To find out more about the Growing Communities Start-up programme: http://www.growingcommunities.org/start-ups/

To find out more about Local Greens: http://www.localgreens.org.uk/

It’s been a couple of weeks now since our last Seasonal Taster but some of us are still thinking about, and perfecting, recipes cooked up at the taster events.

The idea behind the seasonal tasters is to celebrate some of our smaller pick-up points such as Chats Palace and Dalston Eastern Curve by cooking up some delicious food straight from the box scheme for our members picking up their bags on the day.

Using fresh and seasonal ingredients from the box scheme and providing recipe sheets explaining how to make each of the dishes has been a great success and provided an opportunity to take some of the more ‘difficult’ seasonal vegetables such as swede and beetroot and highlight really affordable and creative ways of using them in the kitchen.

The Beetroot and Walnut Humous was a stand-out success, as was the Kale pesto (which we discovered through a box scheme member who picks up at Hackney City Farm – thank you again Alex!).

The staff at GC are loving the chance to experiment with all the yummy produce in the bags for these events and we plan to host more Seasonal Tasters later in the year. And rest assured that we’re updating our website as we go so you can find all those mouth-watering recipes there…

Other unusual dishes served up at the taster events have included swede and potato pasties, orange and carrot cake (a huge hit with the kids!) and celeriac minestrone. And all washed down with chocolate mint tea, made with mint grown on one of Growing Communities’ Patchwork Farm sites at the Hackney Tree Nursery.

We’re planning another seasonal taster on 6th June at Hackney City Farm, and after that we’ll be at the Castle in July to link up with their summer garden party.  So keep your eyes open for some delicious samples to taste at a pick up near you.