Enter through the double gates of our organic enterprise and a whole new world of food production, educational and community activities becomes apparent.

Each area of the smallholding demonstrates our commitment to providing natural, nutritious food in a sustainable, environmentally-friendly way.

The 134 fruit trees in our orchard provide apples, pears and plums with the assistance of the bees from the hives that also give us honey to sell in the site shop.

This corner of the site also houses a large 22,000 gallon storage tank for the water that we collect and reuse on all our plots.

A large fruit cage stretching almost the whole width of the plots helps protect our soft fruit products from birds and other wildlife. This ensures that we can provide seasonal berries such as gooseberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, red currants and loganberries.

Our strawberry plants lie outside the protection of the fruit cage but, in keeping with the organic way of production, we rely on nature and natural protection to ensure there’s always plenty of these summer favourites for sale as berries or in jams.

Wormeries and natural composting areas run alongside the main plots where we grow our stable vegetables and herbs, with flowers in the borders for their beauty and complementary planting properties.

The barn that is the only original feature on the smallholding houses all our gardening implements, machinery and the everyday essentials of a commercial growing enterprise.

A large Polytunnel enables us to protect and enlarge the growing season for many of our root crops and salad items and we now have  a second Polytunnel with raised growing beds which is used specifically for horticultural therapy lessons.

In another corner of the site, our acquatic friends such as frogs and newts are have had their pond space increased as we have expanded on one of the most popular areas for school visits. We have also constructed a boardwalk over the enlarged pond to enable our young students to be able to pond dip for aquatic creatures in safety.

As a result of this work, the water feature almost reaches the most prominent feature on the site – our eco-build education centre – with its large circular multi-purpose area, commercial kitchen, offices and cold storage area.

The centre is already the focal point for a number of community and educational activities and will become an increasingly important facility for all age groups in the years to come.