Common Soil is a community farm. We grow food naturally, providing 75 households with regular veg boxes and we connect people to food growing, the land and each other. We hold regular volunteer sessions and run food growing and outdoor cookery workshops for groups such as teenagers, people seeking asylum or who are refugees, and people with additional needs for support.
We set the organisation up five years ago to meet the demand from the long waiting list of another community supported agriculture scheme in Stroud. Rather than growing the existing organisation, it was felt preferable to expand in the way mushroom spores spread – dispersing the energy to create other small farms in different localities around Stroud. This keeps each farm diverse (avoiding monocrops) and food provision very local: around a third of our vegetable box members come from the residential street that we’re situated on, so we have a very close community around the farm.
What helps the farm succeed
The farm relies heavily on a mixed operational structure and integrated local community networks to run the daily operations smoothly.
Key areas of focus include:
- Local community support: Our neighbours pitch in for all sorts of things, such as borrowing a trailer for transporting manure, moving huge compost deliveries, or plugging a fridge in outside their house as the farm is off-grid.
- Financial stability: We follow a classic ‘community supported agriculture’ (CSA) model where people sign up for a whole year of veg, sharing in the rewards when the harvest is large and sharing the risk when a crop fails.
- A mixed operational team: We have a team of seven staff who all work part-time (between one and three days a week) and a core of devoted volunteers. This structure plays to a range of skills and prevents physical burnout.
Examples of the work in action
- Environmental outcomes: Prioritising a sustainable local food system by growing food on a small portion of the site, complemented by a wildflower meadow, seed saving work, and fruit and flower areas that create immense biodiversity.
- Nutritional and learning feedback: Helping members eat more vegetables, try new recipes, and connect to the seasons. Workshop attendees and parents report that harvesting and cooking food outdoors inspires teenagers to show a real interest in food sourcing and preparation.
- Emotional wellbeing changes: Providing regular volunteers and newcomers to the area with a non-pressured environment to socialise, chat naturally while weeding, build friendly relationships, and find a meaningful sense of purpose and belonging to the local land.
“It makes me smile and feel better about the world every time I go up to the site to collect my veg.” – Veg box member.
Plans for the future
We’re focusing now on stabilising the farm for the future by exploring how to move away from costly mains water, produce eco-friendly energy on-site, and create a closed-loop system of fertility through composting and woodchip. We are also looking at how we can keep engagement from all sorts of different people and work with other local regenerative farms to contribute to changing the food system so that more people can affordably access and cook nutritious food.
