Nine days to save Chagfarm
Chagfarm, a not-for-profit Community Interest Company, has nine days left of its 8-week Crowdfunder campaign to raise the much-needed £5,300 and secure the farm’s future.
With £9,700 already raised via 136 backers from the philanthropic Crowdfunder community, the Farm Directors have stepped up their campaign and introduced a new prize draw for all pledgers to encourage last minute donations, including an Ashburton Cookery School voucher and a meal for two including wine at Parke Café in Bovey Tracey.
In exchange for donations starting at £5, there are a wide-variety of rewards up for grabs, including a cheese-making course, an introduction to the art of hedge-laying and the honour of naming one of next season’s milking goats. All pledges are entered into our prize winning draw.
“We’re really humbled and amazed by the level of support so far but frustratingly, even if we raise ninety-nine per cent of the £15,000 target, we won’t receive a single penny, so desperately need everyone to keep donating in our final week as every little certainly helps,” said Sylvan Friend, Founder of Chagfarm.
“Having reached sixty five per cent of our target already, it’s clear that people outside of the local community see the value in developing small-scale farms and we’d love to be able to continue to show that locally-grown food is both affordable and sustainable,” continued Friend.
With conventional farming already very heavily subsidised and little funding available to Chagfarm, crowd-sourced funding is needed to help build a milking parlour, construct a cheese cave, carry out essential repair work and invest in the farm’s electricity supply by installing solar panels.
Chagfarm currently has 35 members of varying membership types, some can take a portion of the farms produce in exchange for a more traditional paid subscription while the more adventurous can apply for a limited number of ‘work share’ memberships by working shifts in exchange for the produce.
Members can even trade a variety of in demand materials with the farm such as animal feed and farm equipment.
Chagfarm Member Angharad Barlow, said: “I became a member of Chagfarm because i belive that’s how all food should be produced, That all our food should be produced locally organically and not sourced via supermarkets.
“The benefits of membership for me are very much the fact that it’s a family project, that we can bring the children and they can interact with and get and understanding of the animals we have and the pets that we have.
“also that the food that we eat it’s not just something plucked off the shelf in the supermarket and that there is this whole process of life involved around it.”
To support the local food renaissance and make a donation now, please visit the Chagfarm Crowdfunder page here.
