I'm on the Map: Why I'm joining the Good Food Trail this year

There's a small and passionate crew working behind the scenes at Shropshire Good Food - Some of you might meet us at events, or chat with us on zoom calls, but most of the time we're working away quietly, connecting the dots across the food system - linking people and projects, advocating for food system change, consulting and generally organising and pushing good things forward. It's a chaotic old world out there, but believe me when I say that our work is optimistic at its core because of all the incredible people we meet every single day, doing world-changing things with food as their medium.

In short, we believe in what we do and we live what we believe.

I'm Daphne, and I've been with the Food Partnership as a director from its inception in 2021. I lead on our resilience and policy areas, the Good Food Trail and more. And this year, for the first time, I'm going to be opening up my own farm as a venue on the Shropshire Good Food Trail.

Daphne Du Cros @littlewoodbatch - Partnership Lead at SGFP

Little Woodbatch (or @littlewoodbatch on instagram) operated as a market garden from 2018-2022. I had moved from academic research in food policy into growing because I felt disconnected from food production, like many academic policy makers. I wanted to experience first hand how local food production really connects communities, livelihoods and ecology (and how these can coexist).

We took a break post-pandemic, and working at SGFP helped me feel that I was still able to live those values, albeit at a different landscape scale, and draw on my academic food systems lens.

And the farm has continued to develop and thrive as our family context has changed... We grow for ourselves with surplus to our local food bank. During the pandemic Food Forward BC launched the Bishop's Castle Community Seed Bank as part of its Community Food Resilience Strategy and we grow seed at Little Woodbatch to share with the community. CPRE Shropshire has supported us with hedging and wonderful volunteers, and Natural England has contributed a pond for wildlife and water catchment. We often host the Going Wild Kid's Club on the farm, which gets young people outside. We host six hives for a local beekeeper in our meadow. Two new acres of land has given us space to plant what will become a community orchard - we have over 300 diverse fruit and nut trees along with perennials in a permaculture system.

Our goal is building out community food resilience.

I see the world through the lens of food. I believe that food is an incredible tool to drive change: everyone can relate to food in some way or other, and food touches nearly every single part of our lives - social, ecological, economic, taste, joy, travel...

This is why I wanted to open up my own small farm - this is to illustrate that no matter the size of your space, you can tend your patch and still have a bigger impact. We all have 'orbits of influence'.

Working across different scales and connecting the dots - a diagram of how we can shift food systems from home, outward.

So for the first time, I'm excited to host visitors during the Good Food Trail - It's an initiative I deeply believe in that showcases the impact of local food systems and offers inspiration for action for more resilient people, communities, and landscapes. The work we do matters: it ripples outward from each of us - So imagine those ripples, amplified out and overlapping across the county from over 150 venues, markets, farms, community gardens, shops, cafes, restaurants, food hubs.... What we're doing here is making a difference. Join us, and let's keep doing it!