There’s a real thrill to be enjoyed when you have fresh, locally grown vegetables delivered directly to your door. And it’s an experience that is now open to families across Bath thanks to the very friendly team at Middle Ground Growers.
The team from Middle Ground Growers offer local and seasonal veg boxes all year round, available in three sizes of boxes and delivered to your door on ebikes.
Middle Ground Growers began on a small market garden in Bath, supplying a local shop and a handful of veg boxes, all delivered by bike and grown without chemicals. “Our beginnings are rooted in community: the strong relationships between our founders, our initial co-growers team, our neighbouring community garden Dry Arch Growers and wonderful local people and families who supported us from the very start,” recalls Hamish Evans, the head grower at Middle Ground Growers.
“The idea of Community Supported Agriculture is about this reciprocal relationship between growers, community and place. We grow food with shared values and ecological ethos, harvest it and deliver fresh by bike with a smile to local families. Need the food system be more complicated?”
Starting with 30 veg boxes in 2020, Middle Ground Growers soon upscaled to grow for 80 families, then 120 and they’re now approaching 200 in 2023.
“We need 40 more on board the veg ship to reach our target this year,” said Hamish. “We have maintained ecological and social ethics at the core of our work, utilising permaculture principles to grow abundant food whilst regenerating and diversifying landscape – and bringing more community to these places.
“We collectively purchased and crowdfunded to start an ‘Ecological Farm for Bath’, now growing on these beautiful 15.5 acres with a solar barn, 800 fruit trees, beehives, community tree nursery and thriving no-till market garden.
“We now train new growers to carry out this mission in a hyper-local food model, whereby new market gardens are popping up all over Bath (once again!) to feed communities and grow healthy food in a regenerative, soil building and joyful way – restoring the noble service that farming really is for people and planet (we think so anyway!).”
Hamish explained that they offer a range of veg boxes, now including fruit options as well, and employ a sliding scale veg box scheme where some community members choose to pay a little more to enable Middle Ground Growers to offer cheaper and donated boxes to families in need.
“Our boxes are seasonal, grown primarily on our small market gardens in Bath with some top-up produce sourced from the best organic farms in the region,” said Hamish. “This allows us to collaborate and support a wider movement of growers whilst providing an adequate variety for a year-round veg box – such as procuring incredible biodynamic fruit from our friend and mentor Jonathan at Avonleigh Orchards.
“We deliver to homes on electric cargo bikes around Bath, approximately within a seven mile range from the farm, and there are 12 drop-off community hubs around the region where people come together to collect their fresh produce each Friday.
“This is a really exciting time to join the veg box scheme and our community, as we enter an abundant season of healthy fruit and vegetables. Supporting this work is more important than ever in the social, environmental and political climate. We have seen various ‘shocks’ of food supply collapse, supermarket shelves emptying and health crises from our current food system. It’s time to start building a new one – more resilient, healthy and joyful. This starts with you, in this place we call home!
“Sign up for a local veg box today using the web address below. Quick and simple online form, try it out for a week and lettuce know! Or send us an email email hidden; JavaScript is required“
www.middlegroundgrowers.com/copy-of-veg-boxes
Social media: @Middle Ground Growers