Enterprise, horticulture and a sustainable future: challenges for the Get-Growing project.

money-grows-on-trees

Money grows on trees

Getting what you wish for is often the beginning of a real and arduous challenge.  We have worked hard over the last three years to establish our ideas of the potential of community growing and to find a secure base from which to develop them and the funding to give us the chance to build something that might actually last.

Winning three years of funding form the lottery and moving our Cwm Harry garden across town to Pen Dinas has put us in the position we hoped for and imagined a couple of years previously… which leaves us the challenge of actually delivering on those expectations. Taking on work experience trainees from the college and our first apprentices has also been a significant milestone for the project giving us the human resources to take on more work and achieve more, but it also puts a pressure on us to perform in a way that generates revenue.. as we now have employees we will need to generate wages for, as well as our own, if we are to survive beyond the point when our funding package runs out.

So, we have set ourselves the challenge of developing three enterprises this year, to begin to build our income generating potential, a challenge which is amplified by the fact that we have almost no investment capital and have a significant set of targets to meet to satisfy the funding we won from the lottery. The next few months will be really telling for the project as to whether we realistically have a long term future.

Enterprise number one: Horticulture, propagating plants for sale, these will include hardwood cuttings, herbs and other perennial plants as well as vegetable plug plants for home and allotment growers. We also hope to be able to offer a garden set-up service using the skills and energy of our new Get-Growing team. We also hope to develop direct sales of our own fresh produce either via the Cwm Harry food cos box scheme or direct sales via a market stall.

Enterprise number two: Radnor Raised Beds. This is a growing system we developed in 2011 in partnership with an NHS client who is keen to get much more of the public involved in producing fresh food and the healthier lifestyle that goes with increased activity and exercise. We are offering not just a versatile and durable raised bed growing system, but on line support and real time advice of what to grow and how to grow it. Timely gentle prompts via a live blog giving tips and reminders of what to do and when to be a successful and productive small-scale organic grower..

Enterprise number three: Community Transition, developing public awareness of the challenges and opportunities that will be generated as we turn away from energy hungry lifestyles and face up to the pressing responsibility of reducing our CO2 emissions by 80% over the coming 20 years in response to climate change mitigation directives.

At present my thoughts in terms of the third enterprise are focused on putting together a conference in the autumn to help the Mid Wales community explore some of the ramifications of the challenge of transition. Whereas increasingly the population at large are perceiving that there are some fundamental, deeply structural problems facing in terms of our growth led economic system, in world of peaks, limits and an increasingly fragile environment I don’t think the same is true when it comes to seeing the possibilities of  a way forward. Therein lies the challenge. We need to visualise and explore a positive and attainable vision of our sustainable future.. thus far we have been presented with enormous challenges like Climate Change yet been told the solutions lie in recycling and eco light bulbs, where clearly a much deeper, far reaching and profound change is going to be required. There are many positive examples, case studies and potentials to be explored and these need to be profiled and amplified if we are going be successfully build a consensus around the kind of changes and responses we will need to make to create a genuinely sustainable society and economy.

Here is to a fruitful 2013... and we hope you will be able to help support and spread the word of our work here as we all move towards a deeper understanding of the challenges and opportunities of the sustainability transition before us.

 

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About admin

I lead on the Cwm Harry Skills and training enterprise, am a qualified teacher and permaculture design tutor and garden designer and project consultant. I write several blogs and am an avid networker and communicator on the subjects of sustainability, transition and co-operatives. I have written an occasional column for Channel4/green and have worked for Channel 4 on their 'Dumped' seriesworked as well as for BBC Wales as a green advisor on their Changing Lives- Going Green series, Nov-Dec 2009. I have been working in sustainable development, on project management and development, teaching, growing and small business development all my life really. I also grew up living and working on farms and have a broad experience working in Britain and Canada and Zimbabwe on sustainable agriculture, grass roots permaculture projects, micro business development and housing and worker co-ops. I have been based in Wales since 1994 and currently live in the Welsh borders.