Meet your growers

Growing Communities' Patchwork Farm is made up of four small market gardens in Hackney parks and on estates - all organically certified. Sophie and her team of volunteers and food growing trainees grow a wide variety of salad leaves that changes with the seasons, as well as cucumbers, tomatoes, herbs, plants and more. You can also buy these direct from the site in Clissold Park on Tuesdays. We also welcome school visits and run team volunteering sessions on the Patchwork Farm sites.

Fruit and veg scheme farmer - seasonal

Petersons Farm is a new venture by Janis Petersons and his sons Oskars and Lauris. Janis worked as the grower for Brockman's Farm in Kent for many years and is now starting his own organic farming venture on the same site following Patrick Brockman's move. 

Find out more by following them on Facebook or Instagram

Farmers' market: weekly

Soleshare offer a weekly catch from day-boat fishers Paul and Lucy Stanley in Hastings as well as smoked fish direct from the smokers in Suffolk and occasional fish bought direct from a fishing cooperative in Brixham, Devon. Cordon Bleu chef Delphine minimises waste by making products from leftover fish to sell on the stall.

Lucy is one of the very few female fishers who has her own small boat and her fishing skipper's licence. Delphine and Georgia sell fish caught the previous night or early morning and bought direct from the fishers, which guarantees the fishers a good price and market customers a very fresh catch. Soleshare also offer a Saturday pick-up at the market for their fish box scheme.

Farmers' market: weekly

Phil Hook and his son Steve have a small organic dairy farm in East Sussex near Hailsham. They produce raw milk from their 75 Friesians and make cream and butter too. They also sell rose veal. The farm has been in their family for 250 years and their organic farm teems with a wide variety of flora and fauna. "We consider the cows' welfare and health are paramount," says Phil. "Cows in a conventional herd produce nearly 50% more milk than those farmed organically. This means our cows are not under so much pressure and stress as those in a conventional herd and are less prone to mastitis and lameness. Indeed, our cows on average live to be eight or nine years old, compared to the national average of six years old."

Farmers' market: weekly

Syd Aston's range of organic bread includes sourdoughs, walnut levain, spelt sourdoughs, sourdough rye, multi-grain cobs, cholla, as well as traditional soda breads and croissants. He makes excellent Eccles cakes, mince pies, lardy cakes and crodos (a tasty merging of a croissant with a doughnut) too.

Farmers' market: weekly

Global Fusion is a small family business run by Colga Parker. She makes a wide range of traditional creole soda breads flavoured with fruit and spices and vegan fritters with her famous hot sauce. All her products are vegan and she uses organic flour and biodynamic wholemeal flour sourced from Perrycourt Farm. Colga will also bake birthday and celebration cakes to order. Check their website for details.

Farmers' market: weekly

Pollybell is one of the larger farms we work with and crosses the three county borders of Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire and South Yorkshire. It's a diverse, organic family-owned farming business, that spans livestock, grain production and organic vegetables including broccoli, cabbages, leeks and caulis. The Brown family have farmed for over 120 years and have a strong commitment to enhancing the land and surrounding environment.

Better Food Shed supplier

Peach and Pippin is the new incarnation of Marina O'Connell's smallholding in Manningtree, Essex - four acres of organic paradise, a teaching centre, a woodland, an orchard, a food provider, an incubator, a spreader of goodwill and a home. The family-run enterprise was set up by Ian and Rebecca who live with their three young daughters, Romily, Miriam and Gwendolyn. Both Ian and Rebecca are teachers but also have a habit of complicating their lives with social enterprises, green projects, apple pressing extravaganzas, and lots of gardening. 

Ian has a history in environmental education and enterprise, teaches mindfulness, meditation and Chi Gung, and plants marigolds wherever he goes. Rebecca works in education as a system leader for a multi-academy trust although originally trained in music and arts leadership. She drives an electric car and makes a mean chocolate brownie.

Rebecca and Ian saw that the Apricot Centre and all its wonderful orchards and spaces was for sale. Ian had always wanted a van and Rebecca dungarees. It seemed the perfect match.

Follow @peachandpippin on Twitter and Instagram.

Better Food Shed supplier

Farmers' market: seasonal (usually soft fruit from June/July, plums, apples and more from August to December)

Eric Beaumont is a Hackney-based bee-keeper who sells honey and beeswax from hives in Hackney, Walthamstow, Tottenham Marshes, Stoke Newington, Epping and Dagenham at our market on a seasonal basis. He also often has comb honey and baker's honey (slightly too "wet" and often starting to ferment - perfect for cooking). He is always at the market in late autumn and in the weeks leading up to Christmas, and often has a stall at other times of year too. The Dagenham honey is made in hives set up by Eric on our Dagenham Farm.

Farmers' market: fortnightly until the honey runs out  

Tim keeps bees that produce delicious Hackney honey. He also makes exquisite bowls, boards, ornaments, lip balm boxes and more using wood from fallen Hackney trees, which he sells at the market during December.

Capel Mushrooms, in Suffolk, supplies our veg scheme with mushrooms all year round. It is very much a family run business, initially set up by Peter Hearne, when he purchased his first site, Churchford Grange, in 1962.

Of his eight children, three work on the farm, and two have run or still run mushroom farms of their own.  Capel Mushrooms is now run by the founder’s sons, Damian and Patrick Hearne. In 1988 the decision was made to go organic. In all likelihood this makes them the first organic mushroom farm in the UK.

Closed cap white mushrooms, brown cap, portabello and portabellini mushrooms are grown on Organic compost at the site in Capel St Mary.

Capel mushrooms are particularly proud of their compost making facility, as most mushroom farms will buy in ready-made compost. The base material is wheat straw which, of course, must come from organically grown wheat. At the end of the mushroom cropping cycle most of the spent mushroom compost is sent to nearby Home Farm at Nacton, who also occasionally supply our veg scheme with vegetables.

Better Food Shed supplier

Grahame Hughes has been growing organically in Norfolk since 1982 and selling produce from other organic farmers in East Anglia since the early 1990s. He founded and ran Eostre Organics, the marketing arm of the East Anglian organic growers co-operative until it folded in 2008. Grahame and Lizzie Hughes, together with their son Josh, still grow veg in their greenhouse in Bunwell, Norfolk. They also run a wholesale business that provides much of the veg for the box scheme, as well as the bananas, which are imported from organic growers in the Dominican Republic.

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Organiclea is a workers' coop based on the edge of Epping Forest in the Lea valley. They grow fruit, vegetables and herbs at the Hawkwood Nursery market garden outdoors and under glass. Like Growing Communities, Organiclea's star product is its salad, with a mix of over 40 different plants evolving through the seasons, but it also supplies celery, squash and other veg to the box scheme, as well as providing some strawberries in the summer. The site offers regular volunteering opportunities for those with or without previous growing experience, as well as both formal and informal training and skillsharing workshops involving practical work on the site.

Better Food Shed supplier

Paul Ward and Sara Rowan started growing fruit organically in 1994, after discovering that 90% of the UK organic fruit market was supplied by imports, sending the environmental benefits of these production systems abroad. They now grow fruit on five sites in Kent which include conservation areas to provide bio-diversity and a home for natural predators who feed upon the crop’s insect pests as well as offering a wealth of habitat for native wildlife. They grow apples for the box scheme.

Better Food Shed supplier

Toos Jeuken has run an organic farm in Cookfield since 1978, when she arrived from Holland and started cycling around Sussex looking for land. She specialises in winter veg, but also grows strawberries, broad beans and leeks.

Fruit and veg scheme farmer