Lauriston Farm - Scotland's largest urban farm - would use this funding to build an outdoor community kitchen, where residents of the local area can cook and share fresh, locally grown food, in a communal setting. Not only will this put free, nutritious food in the hands of anyone who needs it, but our meals will offer an opportunity for folk to sit down and chat together, connecting with their neighbours over delicious grub.  

The kitchen itself will also be constructed with the community,  as part of the project. We plan to run:

- 10 workshops to teach building techniques and construct an earthen shelter using earth and straw. 

- 4 facilitator-led workshops to build the clay oven.

- 30 scheduled gatherings - held throughout the growing season - for communal cooking and eating.  

Our earthen construct will provide enough shelter even during poor weather, and we'll supply all the facilities required to cook and share meals, using food from our allotments, our thriving market garden and surplus from partner organisations in the area. From plot to plate, our shared meals result in zero food miles, contain no processed ingredients and a negligible carbon footprint!  

The community kitchen has been developed as an idea with the input of our allotment holders: not only to give them a space to socialise and eat after working hard in their gardens, but to extend that welcome - and their surplus produce - to the rest of the local community. In 2023 we'll be releasing more plots to local residents, so contact us through www.lauristonfarm.scot to express your interest! 

We want to set up small farms in three community cafes around Edinburgh: training volunteers from these spaces to transform waste including cardboard and coffee from their cafes into delicious nutritious food they can cook and use in their cafe’s kitchens.

Being able to grow our own food indoors from local waste is a really valuable skill in a time of increasing climate instability which threatens outdoor crops. Indoor mushroom cultivation can be practised year round at household or community levels which is very significant in a country where we have to import 90% of our fresh produce in winter.

The aims of the project are to  1) reduce waste and emissions by growing food with zero food miles from waste within cafes 2) engage new audiences in food growing, and its links to climate change by offering an accessible year-round indoor food growing project 3) Train people in mushroom cultivation skills to build resilience in our communities 4) build connections across Edinburgh by starting a network of community micro mushroom farms.

The funds would be used to pay for a mix of material and staff costs. These include the material costs of building an automated mini mushroom farm and the supplies needed to run it for a year. In a space the size of a cupboard we can set up a mushroom farm able to grow over 10 kilos of fresh mushrooms every month. The grow space would be located in a public facing part of the cafes to allow people to enjoy watching the beautiful mushrooms grow. 

The staff costs would cover extensive training for volunteers from the three community spaces we partner with. This training would include: a tour of our own mushroom farm; time spent with volunteers building their own micro-farm; 5 follow up sessions at the cafes where we carry out the mushroom ‘inoculations’ together, a special session on cooking mushrooms and some follow-up check-ins and support.

Because mushroom cultivation can be practised indoors year round, sat at a table, without the need to stoop like most forms of food growing it is accessible for people with mobility issues, be that because of age or disability. Mushrooms also have a very short cropping cycle, taking only a few weeks to grow - making them an exciting project for the short attention span of children. We plan to use these features to engage a diverse group of people who may not usually participate in food production. As a final part of this project we would bring together people from the three cafes to take part in shared events, including meals. This would be an opportunity to share their experiences learning to grow mushrooms, and form a diverse network from across the city of new community mushroom growers.