Climate Friendly Food CIC was founded in 2009 by three vegetable growers who were advocates for ultra-low carbon food and Jonathan Smith separately created a footprint calculator https://calculator.farmcarbontoolkit.org.uk
Jenny Griggs went onto create a care farm - "Fir Tree Community Growers" in St Helens and received five years funding under Big Lotteries Local Food. Between 2010 – 2015, we worked on average with 2000 beneficiaries a year.
From 2015, the decision was made to continue the care farm solely with traded income from produce which has meant the outreach ambition had to be reduced, principally because Jenny worked full time elsewhere. Jenny Griggs at that time became a volunteer and joined forces with Organic Direct’s Kirsty Montgomery becoming a co-director.
Jenny and Kirsty are experienced therapeutic horticulturalists and run two volunteer days every week – Jenny on a Tuesday and Kirsty on a Friday. Our third director is Alan Abbott who is the landlord of the wider farm. Alan (who is in his late 70s) does all the wider mowing and field cultivations with his tractor.
Fir Tree Community Growers’ care farm is on 5 acres. Our majority income is vegetables and orchard fruit and we have some innovative features including earthworks for children to enjoy adventures and are piloting “wet farming” crops including irises for cut flowers.
Everyone is a volunteer. The majority of the eight-strong core volunteer team (also steering group) and drop in community members (30+) have protected characteristics especially disability and older people at risk of social isolation. We run farm open days and training days which are well attended by the local community. We average 4000 volunteer hours per annum and most of the volunteers would be considered marginalised principally because of diagnosed mental health conditions and age.. Five of our volunteers are men over 60..
