“Giving thanks for food and fellowship”

Dear friends of Pandy Farm

Our first community volunteer day was a great success and we’re springing into action for the growing season of 2024!

Thank you to our fabulous volunteers who came to lend a hand last Sunday. It was amazing to have so many old and new friends arrive full of energy and enthusiasm for local food production. A very special thanks to Mark, who stayed on until the very end of the day to finish off the new asparagus bed - he definitely received our volunteer of the day award!

Our next community volunteer day will be on Sunday the 19th May. Join our WhatsApp group to get volunteering updates

Some of our fabulous volunteers enjoying a cuppa in the workspace.

New Accommodation for Tourists & Visitors

As part of our farm plan for 2024 we are supporting paid roles by using some of our accommodation to host visitors to the area. Our cosy new cabin - Cockerel View - sleeps four people and boasts a fabulous view of the hen enclosure (hence the name).

If you plan to visit North Wales why not consider staying at Pandy Farm? You might even like to volunteer for a few hours in exchange for some veg!

Our farm is brilliantly situated for visitors, right on the Lôn Lâs Ogwen cycle track and only five miles from Bangor train station. The North Wales Pilgrims Way also runs right through our farm and links with dozens of other public footpaths that criss-cross the stunning surrounds.

Please help to spread the word about our new accomodation and support our farm’s new venture.

A word on our philosophy

As the visionary writer, EF Schumacher wrote in his classic book: Small is Beautiful. At Pandy Farm we are creating a small example of how growing food for a small community might be done. We see this as a task that unfolds over many generations, with small successes and plenty of mistakes along the way to keep us humble to the ever-unfolding dance of Nature.

Our market gardens exist within an ecology, not only of our small farm, but also of the land around us. Mountains, woodlands, wetlands and meadows all sustain the soils and rivers with which we grow our food.

We choose not to use social media to advertise because we believe that word-of-mouth is the most powerful tool to share our message from one like-minded soul to another. That is why we rely on you, our community of friends, to help spread the word and get involved in a small farm for a thriving future.

That being said.. we do have a WhatsApp group where you can receive the latest updates on produce and get notified when opportunities to get involved arise.

Book Recommendation - Feeding Britain by Tim Lang

This book takes stock of the UK food system: where it comes from, what we eat, its impact, fragilities and strengths. It is a book on the politics of food.

After a brief frenzy of concern following the financial shock of 2008, the UK government has slumped once more into a vague hope that the food system will keep going on as before. Food, they said, just required a burst of agri-technology and more exports to pay for our massive imports.

Feeding Britain argues that this and other approaches are short-sighted, against the public interest, and possibly even strategic folly. Setting a new course for UK food is no easy task but it is a process that needs to begin now. This book explores how to do it.

Government Support for a Small Farm Future

By Elen Jones

The Welsh Government’s new Sustainable Farming Scheme has attracted some controversy amongst elements of the Welsh farming community. In January i attended the event in Caernarfon where policy makers explained the scheme in depth and was deeply shocked by the anger and aggression of some members of the audience there. To my ears the scheme sounded brilliant, securing biodiversity and habitat needs for the more-than-human world, while supporting farmers to keep farming.

The scheme, which is currently under review, requires that all farmers allocate 10% of available land to habitat and tree-cover by 2030. The way it was explained at the event in Caernarfon made it clear that there were several stipulations to support farmers to do this in the best way possible, considering productivity and land management. While I totally understand the frustration of farmers who have seen damaging projects in the past, where perfectly good farmland was allocated to tree-planting for carbon capture, this is not what the Welsh government are suggesting.

We need to move away from the idea that an ideal farm is a wall to wall (or fence to fence) monoculture of perfect green grass without a shrub or a tree or a cluster of nettles in sight. There is a massive crisis of pollinator diversity and farmers need to be on board with the future, creating and maintaining healthy habitats for insects, lizards and other key species.

It’s just not rocket science.

At Pandy Farm we celebrate a policy that supports small farms like ours, producing the food we need and leaving space for other life to thrive.