Autumn News

​Hello local fruit and vegetable enthusiasts! 

As the nights draw in and the weather changes we thought it would be the perfect time to let you know how things are progressing here at Tomnah'a Market Garden at Comrie Croft.

Apologies for taking so long to get back to you after you very kindly completed our survey and left contact details. We have had nearly 100 respondents which is fantastic. Thank you so much for lending your support to our fledgling project. It has been very interesting to see your preferences for the what, where, when type questions you answered. We have taken on board your ideas and comments and have shaped our plan of action accordingly! 

Here's our mission statement which will give you the essence of what we are all about...

Tomnah'a is an integrated Market Garden born from our individual passions and a shared desire to create a beautiful, bountiful place in which to work. We aim to consistently grow delicious, fresh and vibrant produce; providing for the local community through our seasonal vegetable box scheme, breathtaking cut flowers, eggs from woodland free-ranging hens, refreshing herbal teas, fruits and berries, gourmet mushrooms and more. By enriching and regenerating soil fertility we work in partnership with nature using wildlife friendly growing methods to increase biodiversity and sustainable long term productivity. 


Heres a quick update of some of what we have been doing since starting in the summer:

• Building compost bays and making loads of compost from straw, green waste, grass clippings and manure
• Ploughing, liming and sowing an overwintering green manure on 1 acre for outdoor vegetable growing for next season crops
• Creating beds for the soft fruit plants
• Creating a wildflower meadow patch
• Creating beds for perennial flower plantings and planting out a range of woody and herbaceous plants for flower arrangements
• Building a spiral herb bed and heather rockery
• Planting loads of lovely garlic 
• Planning for building 6 polytunnels over the winter
• Applying for funding through the SRDP Young Farmers New Entrants Scheme of which your survey responses helped to form the business plan

The question on everyone's lips surely is when can I get hold of your fresh and tasty produce??

We are aiming to have our first laying hens on site by April, our first salad leaves harvested in late April / May and looking to start our box scheme by June. Flowers should be blooming by summer. So watch this space for more updates in late winter / early spring for where and when you can sample our produce.

Community Supported Agriculture (CSA): 

We want to be more than just a food producer and would love to give people the opportunity to get hands on with us on the farm. The box scheme could be set up using a CSA model. For more details about this please check out this great website with loads of information and case studies.

http://www.communitysupportedagriculture.org.uk/what-is-csa/


In essence it is a box scheme that goes beyond just supplying a regular box and becomes apartnership between the farmers and local consumers in which some of the responsibilities, risks and rewards are shared. It usually involves the members getting involved with the scheme such as: volunteering a small number of hours over the season, helping to organise social events, assisting in packing and distributing the boxes in local clusters to further reduce food miles. 

If this sounds like it might be your cup of tea and you want to find out more please get back to us. (I know some of you have indicated this through the survey already but just drop us a quick response if you are keen if possible, thanks!) We hope to hold a meeting in Comrie with interested parties in the new year.

Volunteering

Linking to the CSA model would be volunteering opportunities, from regular workdays, occasional work parties, getting involved with social events, or just dropping in to see what we are up to.

We hope to finalise this by Spring but if anyone is really super keen to come and get stuck in we have tons of fruit bushes and fruit trees to plant, autumn bulbs to plant and more. Again if you are interested please get in touch.

Facebook

If you haven't seen the page already, we've gone and germinated a facebook page

you can find it here - please like, share and generally shout it from the hilltops :) 

https://www.facebook.com/tomnahamarketgarden


If you prefer to call rather than email you can get me on 07894687407
We've also got a website in the pipeline, watch this space
 

I'l leave you with a lovely rainbow over the field:

Thanks for reading, hope to hear from some of you soon, 

Sam and Tomnah'a Team!