Incredible Edible Todmordon
- Danielle Klaff
- Apr 16, 2019
- 3 min read
Updated: May 28, 2019
Who and What is Incredible Edible Todmordon?
‘If you eat, you’re in!’
Todmordon is a town in West Yorkshire, U.K. The residents of Todmordon grow and campaign for local food.
Todmordon has gained world-wide acclaim as a town leading the way in vegetable farming all over the town, including verges, sidewalks, and empty plots of land, graveyards, the fire station, railway station and schools.
Here is how they describe themselves – ‘We are passionate people working together for a world where all share responsibility for the future well being of our planet and ourselves.’
Their aim is to provide access to good local food for all, through
• working together
• learning – from field to classroom to kitchen
• supporting local business
Membership: If you eat you’re in.
From their small beginnings – planting herb gardens, to planting trees and growing veggies all year round – these residents have taken ‘growing veg’ onto another level.
Every school in the town is now involved in growing veggies and they promote food-based learning for the community as a whole.
Their growing around town is now run by a group of volunteers, the Community growers’ group. They grow for anyone to pick and use. Volunteers have been growing vegetables around Todmorden for three years, and herbs for longer. Mostly they have had permission; sometimes, they have just gone ahead and done it. Why not go ahead yourself?
Most of their growing around town is done in raised beds. That means they can use fresh uncontaminated soil and avoid messing surrounding areas.
Many of the beds are adopted by groups of people, who do much of the planting and maintenance themselves and may benefit from the produce too.
Some of our town centre beds that are more in the public eye are looked after by the group together.
Local Food – the residents have promoted growing local food by offering a free service listing of local food growers, distributors and retailers of locally grown produce. By doing this, every producer is able to sell their harvest and ‘local food goes back on local plates.’
A local farmers market opposite the town hall, also supplies the community with local vegetables, meat and dairy. Cafes and restaurants are making a point of purchasing their food and special ingredients directly from the farmers.
Schools – the residents’ passionate belief that young people need to understand the importance of local food and making food culture school culture is key to their schools’ growing programmes.
By educating the young people about growing and cooking food, a resilient community for an uncertain future, is created (like an ark in the flood.)
The picture shows their first work with schools: providing them with a growing boat http://www.incredible-edible-todmorden.co.uk/projects/growing-in-schools
The group, having worked hard at building relationships with the primary and high schools of Todmordon, is now changing food culture in the schools.
Every school in Todmorden is actively involved in growing food. Each year, participants in the annual Agricultural Show, let children’s imaginations run wild by growing veggies in unusual containers, for their inspiring competition.
The grounds of the High School are to be the home of the fish farm, and currently there’s a student-promoted project to keep chickens so they can have their own eggs.
They facilitated free staff training through the FFLP (Food For Life Partnership) for primary school teachers around local food culture and have supported the start of parents groups in each school.
They are the first town in the U.K. to have a town-wide schools orchard, where all the primary schools have fruit trees, which are planted at the High School and partner trees in their own grounds.
Herb Gardens – after 5 years, the herbs in the garden opposite the park is a great success. These are grown for culinary use and recently the group has created an apothecary’s garden next to the car park of the new Health Centre.
Every Egg Matters - their aim is to encourage the production and consumption of local eggs – and to have fun too! In 2009 a campaign was launched called Every Egg Matters with free pancakes, brilliant egg painting and feathery hen hard hats. That Easter saw our Eggstraordinary Spring Festival with fun for children of all ages and their serious message underneath: let’s try and be self-sufficient in eggs.
They offer lots of resources with advice on keeping chickens, the rules and regulations, and how to sell surplus eggs, as well as maps and lists of local producers.
Orchards - Starting with a grant to plant trees, many of these trees – cherries mainly – are dotted around the town centre itself. There are seven orchards now planted by teams of local volunteers after the pioneering ones. Their medium-term aim is to make their tree-planting self-perpetuating. They have been running grafting courses, and doing their own grafting.
For more information please visit the Incredible Edible Todmordon website
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