SRM Carver ad.qxp_Layout 1 18/06/2020 09:08 Page 49
Tip-top topsoil surprise success for Somerset business
IT’S been a difficult few months for everybody so it’s great to have a local good news story that shows us some silver lining. After the work halted abruptly for their aggregate recycling company Sam and Rosie Carver used some of their industrial equipment to screen earth and produce premium quality topsoil. At first this was a sideline for SRM Carver & Son, with just a few local customers, but with so much of the world staying at home, either baking or gardening, then this grew faster than expected and they could barely keep up. Every gardener knows that a great garden needs great topsoil and with a young family of a three-year-old and another at 18 months, life was already busy for the Carvers but demand continued to grow as word-ofmouth spread. Rosie Carver said: “We couldn’t believe it at first, we had new customers every day and our existing customers just couldn’t get enough. We were regularly working until 2am just to meet the demand of 200 tons of topsoil a day.”
Rosie goes on: “The demand still continues to grow but we’ve got much more efficient at it now and our lives are back into a normal rhythm.” Based just outside of Shepton Mallet, SRM Carver & Son now deliver to a full 30 mile radius that stretches from Bristol to Taunton and from Bath to Salisbury. Sam Carver showed me around the site where they screen and sift the local earth into varying grades. He was very proud of the product at the end of the process and I can understand why as the premium quality topsoil had an almost silky texture to it.
It’s a two-stage screening process with the largest rocks and stones taken out with the first screening machine before being fed into a 30-metre monster that does the final sorting down to 10mm. Having gained the British Standard Seal of Approval, the soil is analysed for chemical and physical composition to continue to meet the BSI standards and then from here the premium topsoil is cossetted away into a bund, where it is stored indoors free from risk of weather or contaminants and to keep the topsoil in tiptop condition before it is bagged up and
PROFILE
shipped to customers. With a new Hiab truck now added to the fleet, the daily deliveries range from a handy-grab 1-tonne bag to a full 20-tonne load. Even though we now see the easing of lockdown restrictions, I think the baking and gardening is set to continue for some time and I, for one, am really looking forward to the imminent burst of floral colours across the sunny South West all through the summer and then the delicious taste of all those home grown vegetables by the time we sit down to harvest supper. If you want to raise the game in your garden the natural way then you can contact SRM Carver & Son on 01373 480068 or send an email to info@srmconstructions.co.uk
If you mention this article in Mendip Times, they will be very happy to give you a 10% introductory discount.
MENDIP TIMES • JULY 2020 • PAGE 55