Little Woodbatch is a one acre Market Garden in Bishop's Castle, Shropshire. Weekly veg box CSA, local restaurant supply, market & shops.
We're a community-focused, regenerative veg producer growing according to organic practices. We offer a weekly or fortnightly veg box Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) subscription. Please get in touch for our wholesale price list for local restaurant & shop supply. Find us at the BC Market on the 3rd Saturday of each month from April to October.
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Dave & Daphne met in London, got married and have started a little family. Dave has spent a decade working as a software engineer and Daphne is finishing her PhD in Food Policy.
Two big factors influenced our decision to buy a “micro-farm” and start growing veg:
Daphne’s research: Having spent years researching the food system and getting more and more concerned about its direction (bigger, more industrialised, less sustainable, less equitable...), we had lots of conversation about the way we felt food could and should be produced in a better way.
Raising a family: We started to feel like our time in London was winding down and that we wanted a different environment to raise a family. To us, this meant space for a child to play, learn, breathe clean air, and a place where we could live raise baby according to our values.
We decided that starting small was the best way to do that. So we bought a two acre farm that had been largely inactive for about 60 years, other than for grazing a few sheep or cows. A one acre section was fenced in, flat and the soil was good. Being within walking distance of a very active, engaged and attractive town was a big selling feature, and we felt that the public walking path along one side of our field was a great way to showcase our project and chat to the community.
So we started to research and plan - watching, reading and listening to everything we could on small-scale, organic veg production, and what we would need to get started. One big influence has been Jean-Martin Fortier & Maude-Helene Desroches from Ferme La Grelinette/Ferme Les Quatre Temps in Quebec who use a permanent bed system to intensively farm organic veg, and apply ecological principles like building up organic content and low-till practices to enhance their soil. Another has been Curtis Stone of Green City Acres in British Columbia who grows veg in an urban setting and has an extensive back catalogue of video blogs on your tube. Both Fortier and Stone has books that we have found invaluable. Other influences have been Richard Perkins of Ridgedale Permaculture in Sweden, Charles Dowding of “no-dig” fame in the UK, Conor Crickmore of Neversink Farm in New York State, and Ben Hartman, author of The Lean Farm and owner of Clay Bottom Farm in Indiana.
2018 will be our first growing season, and we will be at our local farmer’s market in Bishop’s Castle from April onward. Our hope is to provide our community with a source of local, healthy, affordable veg, grown without chemicals and as little fossil fuel input as possible. We believe that small and local are essential components to a healthier, more sustainable food system, and that local farms can do a lot to build the local community, economy and support the environment. In addition to this, we will be documenting our experience and learning process as we go in order to support other new farmers with information and resources, with a focus on getting started in the UK.
