05 March 2022, Starts: 10:00, Ends: 15:30

Join crofters Tessa & Helen to see The Green Bowl in action and discuss the challenges/opportunities in setting up a local food hub.

Saturday 5 March 2022   10.00 - 3.30         in-person event
at      The Elphin Tearooms  Elphin  Lairg  IV27 4HH

The Green Bowl  is a group of crofters and non-crofters in Elphin and Knockan (NW Sutherland), working together to market, sell and distribute locally grown food to our community.  Seven producers sell a range of meat (beef, pork and mutton), eggs, honey, vegetables, fruit, herbs, bread and other baking.  Most sales are online, with weekly home deliveries to customers around Ullapool or pickups from Elphin.  In the summer, we also have a small farmshop, selling to tourists as well as residents.

We’ve found a system that works for us, focussing on convenience and regular supply for our customers while keeping our overheads down.  We know that each township has different challenges, but also different opportunities and strengths. We want to share information and chat about the challenges you are facing, to help find solutions to enable more production and sales of local food to local communities.

Our main product is meat – locally grown animals, and now mostly locally butchered too in Tessa’s new “crofter made” on-site butchery unit.  While not essential, it has made this side of the business more rewarding and we’re looking forward to telling you all about it on the tour.  We’ll also look at some small scale horticulture, and discuss online sales, delivery logistics, pricing, environmental health requirements and working together.

Lunch, tea and coffee will be provided. And cakes, because we all need cake.

COVID Safety
We'll be outdoors for the croft tour so this is low risk, however as we will be inside for lunch we require that you take a lateral flow test before coming. Please show evidence of a negative test (email/text) on arrival. You can pick up free tests in most pharmacies.

If you have Covid symptoms, or have been in close contact with someone with Covid, please stay at home and let us know.

There will be hand washing facilities and hand sanitiser available.

Register for this event

Nourish Scotland writes

This is a part of the partnership project 'Agroecology: Facilitating Mindset Change' funded through the Scottish Government's  Knowledge Transfer and Innovation Fund and delivered collaboratively by the Landworkers’ Alliance, Soil Association Scotland, Food and Farming Countryside Commission , Pasture Fed Livestock Association and the Nature Friendly Farming Network. Between January and March 2022 we plan to run 15 online and in-person free events designed to appeal to a wide range of farmers and crofters.

Full details of all the events are available on the  Nourish Scotland website