Futurefarms grew out of one man’s idea. He was concerned that although he lived in the midst of fertile countryside none of the food which reached his table had been grown or reared there. More importantly he was concerned by the way in which produce is grown, by the use of pesticides and insecticides, and by the ‘food’ miles travelled losing freshness and goodness along the way, so he decided to do something about it. 

He had in mind a community farm, run by the people for the people, to provide fresh meat and vegetables sufficient to feed the Parish of Martin. In order to get his ideas across he held a presentation in the Village Hall and from that a committee of 10 was formed and thus Futurefarms was ‘born’ in August of 2003. 

That was the easy part – we were then faced with finding land and finance to get things off the ground. A huge amount of time was spent searching out funding and although there appeared to be a lot of money out there we always failed to tick all the boxes. However, in the end, one of our applications turned up trumps. Nick applied and was successful in achieving ‘start-up’ funding of £5,000 from the UnLtd Millennium Award Scheme, who were intrigued by our project (a Level II award was granted the following year to further develop the business). These applications had of course to be backed up by budgets, long-term plans etc. We were also appointed a Project Manager, who was on hand to give advice on running a business, and were offered Workshops which we felt applicable to us. 

On the land side, one farmer allowed us the use of a large barn to rear our chickens and in return received a chicken every now and again, while another let us use a small corner of his land for rearing pigs in return for some meat but the land for vegetables proved very difficult indeed. Finally we decided to get things off the ground by using an acre of land which Nick was renting, but not using for his landscaping business, and started with the basics – potatoes, onions, carrots, and leeks. 

We also needed an outlet to sell the produce and as Martin doesn’t have a shop we opened up our Saturday Morning Market in the village hall with an ‘honesty’ barrow on the verge for the sale of vegetables throughout the week. (Interestingly the barrow accounted for 43% of vegetables sold in the second year.)

We have come a long way since those early days. The land issue continued to be a struggle so when some local land came on the market in 2006 one of the committee members purchased it and rents some of it to us. Last year we rented 4 ½ acres and this year we will rent 7.  Some of this will remain fallow and be planted with a green manure crop, with 2 acres for pigs, half an acre for the chickens, and the rest for vegetables.  This, together with produce from our polytunnel, will allow us to produce a full range of seasonal vegetables which will keep us going throughout the year. Our customers are so delighted to have fresh tasty vegetables they don’t mind the irregular sizing or a bit of dirt.

There is no doubt however that the success and growth of the scheme is as a result of lots of hard work and dedication by the committee. We were most fortunate in the breadth of skills which came with our committee: a consultant radiologist (Chairman and responsible for health and food hygiene); software engineer (treasurer, IT and web development); pa (secretary and administration); landscape gardener and plantsman (founder and business developer), to name but a few and there is no doubt this has helped us enormously. However when it came to this type of thing we were all amateurs at heart and progress has been made through trial, error, and sheer hard work.  

The committee meets fortnightly to discuss matters in hand and most of them have other tasks for which they are responsible. There is also quite a bit of work which goes on behind the scenes: the day to day administration (we use rotas quite a bit), planning the vegetables to get best use and yield from the land plus planting and harvesting.  With regard to working on the land, apart from committee members, we are primarily volunteer based, with 1 paid part-time member of staff throughout the year plus about 20 hours of paid help during the week in summer for weeding and harvesting, which helps to keep the costs down. Although we are able to borrow some equipment for planting and harvesting most of the work is still done by hand so in order to attract as many ‘volunteers’ as possible we offer them high tea in return – lots of lovely home-made cakes washed down with cups of tea. However apart from several very enthusiastic volunteers we continually struggle to get people involved. They’re always extremely interested but busy lives take over. 

Although the scheme was aimed at ‘Feeding Martin’ we soon found we had to open our doors to surrounding villages in order to sustain it. Martin comprises of 164 households (394 people as of 2001 census) and we estimate that approx 45 -50% of villagers now use the scheme however uptake was slow in the beginning.  Not surprisingly the villagers were sceptical. However with the passage of time and the visible dedication of those involved to say nothing of the high quality of our produce we are slowly winning them over. We continually attract people from outside the village plus the ‘drive-through’ customer who buys from our barrow. The scheme is constantly evolving and we are always looking at ways to improve the service we offer. As a result we sell local cheese and lamb with villagers selling (or even donating) their surplus in the summer months.  We work hard at keeping customers informed by updating our website, producing a Meat Calendar and recently a quarterly Newsletter. We also keep in touch with members via email.

Saturday mornings are now so successful that we have extended our opening hours and are looking to open a couple of afternoons a week commencing mid 2008. There is no doubt that the village has benefited from the scheme. Saturday mornings have become lively affairs with the market providing that meeting place which has disappeared from most of our villages. 

As a food business, we had to register as such with the District Council. They passed our details to both Trading Standards and Environmental Health who have been very helpful in advising us on issues such as food labelling, hygiene and refrigeration. There are many areas of legislation that must be followed, including employment law, even if those working for the farm are volunteers. The Soil Association were also most helpful; they were running a particular scheme at the time in conjunction with Co-ops UK through which we became a Limited Company. 

Futurefarms owes its success to the dedication and hard work of an enthusiastic group of people with the support of the local community together with the invaluable help from grant funding without which we would never have got off the ground.