GROW YOUR OWN
seeds of
Sowing the self-sufficiency
The Food Forest Project is a grassroots organisation that aims to help communities grow their own food. Emma Dance finds out more.
P
erhaps it’s an increasing desire to live more sustainability, or the way that the lockdown highlighted the therapeutic effects of gardening, or the ever-rising cost of living, but more and more people are looking at ways of growing their own food.
Mallet, is on a mission to create community food forests across Somerset — using pockets of disused land to providing fresh, seasonal food to local people, as well as encouraging people to reconnect with nature, and boosting biodiversity by providing habitats for wildlife.
But for many people, it’s not possible or practical to cultivate much more than a few pots of herbs on a window sill, or perhaps dedicate a patch of flower bed to courgettes or carrots.
“We wanted to start an intersection where environmental and social issues converge,” said Tristan Faith — one of the founders of the Food Forest Project. “We knew that there were issues with food poverty in the area, we knew that there were issues with habitat and biodiversity, and we knew there were issues
But the Food Forest Project, based in Shepton
with social isolation. So we came up with the Food Forest Project.” They currently have two food forests in Shepton — including one in the Hillmead housing estate — and another in Wedmore, with more in the pipeline. There’s also a market garden at Rock Farm just outside Shepton, which is used to grow produce for food banks and will also help stock the Shepton Community Fridge when it is up and running. But what exactly is a ‘food forest’? “The best way to describe it is somewhere between an allotment and an orchard,” explains Tristan. “Allotments aren’t accessible to a lot of people — they can be expensive, and they are high maintenance — while orchards are not very diverse. The middle ground is a food forest, which is very low maintenance. “We start by planting three ‘layers’ — the canopy layer of berries etc, then a mid-layer of things like pears and apples, then the likes of chestnuts and hazels. Then the aim is that there will be another four layers planted by the community. “The food forests then produce food, which the community can harvest and eat. “We hope that there won’t be any surplus or wastage. Produce that doesn’t get harvested or used, we let it mulch into the ground. Our soil is in pretty bad health so part of what we are trying to do is to regenerate the soil. By letting an amount mulch down it feeds the microbes which helps create much healthier soil.” One worry, however, is that people won’t take the food because they don’t have the skills or knowledge to know how to prepare it — or even that, with the energy prices going sky high, they can’t afford to run the appliances to cook a meal from scratch.
28 | THE WEST COUNTRY FOODLOVER