A dozen volunteers spent an afternoon on Wednesday 6th July out in the countryside helping local organic growers.
The afternoon was organised as part of a pilot for Greater Manchester's Land Army to test out our methods and systems, as well as explore tasks which are most beneficial to the growers. One team was dropped off at Moss Brook Organic Growers in Glazebury and the second taken a few miles down the road to Tom Rigby's farm. The Moss Brook team hoed leeks, whilst the team at Tom's weeded sweetcorn, pumpkins and squash. Despite the odd shower and hail storm each team had a productive afternoon and learnt about what the farmers are growing and how.
The majority of the people who volunteered were new to Kindling and at such short notice it was hugely encouraging that we had so much interest. On Monday (11th July) we will be taking another fifteen people out to different farms .
In total we contributed 36 people-hours and have contributed to greater yields and therefore a greater income for the growers. As part of the pilot we will carefully record our inputs in terms of time, labour and cost etc, but it is almost impossible to accurately calculate the financial benefit to the growers; they were, however, truly grateful for both our solidarity and hard work.
Over the next few months we will be running a few more pilots and we will keep you updated with our progress. Once we have collected feedback from farmers and volunteers alike, and analysed the figures, we hope to develop a volunteering programme that is financially sustainable and offers a long term contribution to Greater Manchester's growing sustainable food movement.
Finally, we'd like to thank the volunteers and the farmers for an amazing day, and Making Local Food Work for funding this pilot as part of their Food Systems programme.