It’s a sunny Thursday when I arrive at the farm, early enough in the summer that the warm weather is still a novelty. The space smells of a heady fusion of hay from the bales I’m sat on, wildflowers from the table and smoke from the cooking pit, from which Peter is soon brandishing a platter of farm sausages, the perfect accompaniment to the giant pot of tea that Henri soon appears with.
I’ve been to a lot of vegetable farms over the past five years, most of them ranging from 0.5 - 5 acres in size. But when I heard about Plowright Organic and that they were growing on 30 acres of land, my ears pricked up and I figured it was time for a visit.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent a lot of time on farms; I’ve got used to the way things work, the way they operate. But occasionally, I stumble across somewhere different, somewhere a bit special. Model Farm falls firmly into that category. They tick a lot of the boxes with their organic and pasture reared certifications, but I was itching to visit and see the farm for myself.
Step two in my locavore Christmas adventure was to source the vegetables to go with my duck. I get a weekly vegetable half share from my local CSA, the wonderful Sims Hill. But I realised this wasn’t going to be enough to feed myself and my parents, and leave me with vegetables for the rest of the holiday period, and so decided to supplement this with a seasonal box from another local producer, the Community Farm.
It’s a sunny Thursday when I arrive at the farm, early enough in the summer that the warm weather is still a novelty. The space smells of a heady fusion of hay from the bales I’m sat on, wildflowers from the table and smoke from the cooking pit, from which Peter is soon brandishing a platter of farm sausages, the perfect accompaniment to the giant pot of tea that Henri soon appears with.
I remember the first time I picked a chanterelle in Canada. Taught by my farm hosts who’d been foraging for decades, I was shown how to identify a couple of different types of mushrooms found commonly around the farm where they lived. Off walking on my own one day, I spotted a golden trumpet poking through the forest floor. Feeling confident enough with my knowledge to pick it, I gathered a few dozen of the mushrooms along way and returned to the farm overjoyed at my finds and ready to cook up a storm.
‘What on earth is a supper club?’ I hear you cry! Think of it as a cross between a restaurant and a dinner party. The venue is usually someone’s home, or a pop-up location, and you’re often seated at big tables with the other diners. The feel and set up varies, but expect multiple courses of delicious food and a BYO booze policy.
Working in local food for the past year, I’ve learnt a lot about the wider challenges in the agricultural sector. One of the most pressing is the subject of land access, especially for new entrants to farming. With agricultural land prices trebling in the last decade, it makes starting a new enterprise out of reach for many people.
Growing up, my sister loved milk. She’d drink glass upon glass of the stuff, but I was always pretty indifferent. That was, until I lived on a farm with a Jersey cow in Canada. The taste of fresh milk, rich and creamy, sweet from the summer grass changed everything. Milk stopped being this tasteless white substance that came in a carton, and became something delicious and nutritious, produced by the lovely but rather temperamental Ellie-Mae.
I fell in love with fermenting in Northern BC as the weather cooled and the leaves began to fall. In the chilly climate of Canada, a majority of your garden has to be pulled before the first frosts hit and the snow begins to fall, and so the question of what to do with the bounty is a very real one.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve spent a lot of time on farms; I’ve got used to the way things work, the way they operate. But occasionally, I stumble across somewhere different, somewhere a bit special. Model Farm falls firmly into that category. They tick a lot of the boxes with their organic and pasture reared certifications, but I was itching to visit and see the farm for myself.
If I told you that people were farming and growing fresh produce in a shipping container behind Temple Meads, you probably wouldn’t believe me. But that’s exactly what Pete and Dermot from Grow Bristol are doing with their aquaponics set up, and soon I find myself sat in their office, cradling a cup of coffee and talking about how they ended up here…
