!! food glorious LOCAL food !!

 PART ONE - TOMNAH'A MARKET GARDEN

We feel our main role at Perth Community Farm is to teach and demonstrate food growing, gardening and about environmental issues in general, rather than growing tons of food. So it was very interesting for me to visit Tomnah'a Market Garden, near Crieff, where they are growing a huge amount of fruit and veg, as well as building community food resilience and local people's connection to their land.

Tomnah'a from the air, five acre site with lots of polytunnels

HAS THE PENNY DROPPED YET?

Food prices are in the news a lot at the moment... not for the first time... when will the penny drop that it makes more sense to grow and eat locally as much as possible rather than shipping our staple foods in from the other side of the world? How much of the food we eat in Perth is grown anywhere near here? Why aren't there market gardens dotted all over Perth? The sooner we get off our arses about food security the better... Anyway... here's a little guided tour of what local food production can look like:

Lots of very well organised and managed polytunnels

Wide variety of crops...

...all well established early in the season

Irrigation system

Weeding by hand

Vast solar power array

Masses of seedlings

Ground not in production kept under cover