The farm needs your help – please support us through our crowdfunder!

Link to our crowdfunder is here

Sims Hill is running an eight week crowdfunder to secure funding we urgently need to:

support our new entrant growers team achieve a successful season
ensure the sustained life of our infrastructure and machinery
provide solidarity vegetable share boxes, run more community events and connect even more people to the land

As you might know if you are a member of our CSA, we have been going through a lot of changes at the farm. We have scaled down the acreage we will be growing on this season to ensure that it is more manageable, we have increased our grower team from two to three members, and our growers team is now made up for three new entrants. This is fantastic, as it is offering the opportunity to train a new generation of farmers on the land, but it also comes with its own challenges. To face these, we need your support!

With your support, we can work on:

1. Now and the future – supporting the next generation of farmers
Nurturing the food sovereignty movement in Bristol and beyond through supporting new entrant growers

We want to have as many people committed to growing organic food as possible, in Bristol and further afield. This year, we have decided to have three rather than two growers collaboratively running the farm. They are all new entrant growers, meaning we are investing in the next farmer generation now, and therefore ensuring a more sustainable future for the food sovereignty movement. The money we raise will go directly towards wages for our third grower, which will provide resilience, capacity and wellbeing that we need to make this a successful growing season. It will allow all three growers to gain experience and practice on the farm, whilst also leaving room for expanding our community work and engaging with the local community. With the average age of farmers in the UK being 59, we need to do all we can to encourage the new generation of food producers in order to create a sustainable, abundant and resilient food system. With access to land expensive, and not many opportunities to work on a starter farm, we see this incubation of three new growers an important and rare opportunity to encourage more people into land work, which will strengthen food security for future generations.

2. Weathering the storm

Building infrastructure foundations, tractor skills and expanding resources

Farming can be unpredictable, and although there is not much we can do about the weather, we can ensure we are prepared for mechanical breakdown repair costs, as well as providing additional tractor training for our new entrant growers. By laying good financial foundations,we can continue building a better, more resilient food system which supports people and planet. While we love our old and trusty tractor Pierre, we will need more of a buffer for mechanical breakdowns. Pierre might be from the 1960s, but still has a long life to live. Because we are supporting new entrants, we expect them to need more frequent support from our tractor mechanic than a farmer with several years’ tractor experience under their belt. In this figure we have also included a tractor training course for our three new entrant growers. Finally, we are also in need of funding for additional seeds, compost and tools.

3. Growing communities

Providing solidarity vegetable share boxes, running community events and connecting people to the land

There is no Sims without community. Whether it is the community beneath our feet in the soil, our members, or those who come to lend a hand, we are here because of you. We want to increase the number of solidarity boxes we provide, as we believe that good quality vegetables should be available for all, particularly now in the midst of a cost of living crisis. We want to be able to continue to support and expand the social projects we facilitate, helping as many people as possible feel they are part of Sims. We want to run more events, meals and workshops at the farm to contribute to a thriving network of people working towards food and land justice in Bristol. We also want to provide more free half shares for a year to households who cannot afford our veg at the moment.