Our Standards

At FCF we want to leave our soil, and all the living things that rely on it, in better shape than we found it. We don’t till our soil and rely on gentler methods like using a broadfork to prepare for planting, inspired by Jean-Martin Fortier’s organic market gardening methods.

We aren’t Soil Association certified organic (mainly because of administration pressures), but we do follow organic guidelines as close as we can, most importantly for our members we don’t use chemical fertilisers or herbicides/fungicides/pesticides. Instead, we try to use considerate planting methods (e.g. mixing carrots with onions to deter certain pests), encourage natural predators by leaving plants in the ground for as long as we can, use organic inputs where needed and most importantly: accept that some veg will always be eaten/damaged and this is a part of sharing our land!

We feed our soil with compost and this is increasingly produced ourselves on site - this means we can trust exactly what has gone into it, and we aren’t out-sourcing our needs.

Hive Helpers, a beekeeping and conservation CIC based at the farm, help us with planting for pollinators, looking after our hedgerow and tending to the non-cultivated areas of the site.