Chagford Community Agriculture (CCA) is a new local food initiative supplying seasonal fruit and vegetables to Chagford’s residents. The scheme was launched in March 2010 in response to demand from within the community for more availability of fresh and affordable local produce.
CCA is a two-acre market garden near Easton Cross, one mile from Chagford. In our first year we will be supplied 25 local households with a weekly veg-box delivered to a central pick-up point in the town. In our second year we expect to supplied 50 boxes a week and now going into our third year we hope to be supplying 75 veg-shares a week by April 2012.
The initiative was fortunate to secure an inital grant from the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food programme which was established in 2008, specifically to help local food projects get off the ground. The grant has been used to pay for capital investments such as fencing, polytunnels, tools and equipment and also to subsidise initial running costs. Within three-years however CCA will be entirely financially self-supporting.
In an effort to make CCA as low-impact as possible we use horse-power for cultivation, tillage and transport of our vegetables. Samson is a Dartmoor-Welsh Cob who has been trained by us from a foal. He works on the field 1-2 days each week using a French designed tillage tool called a Kassine.
The Soil Association have recently made a short film about Chagfood, how we started, what we do and how we do it – we hope you have a minute to enjoy it too.
