SweetPea Smallholdings

Think we are going to need bigger scales! Over 20kg harvested and donated this week. Thanks to everyone for your support.

It's been a busy day harvesting, weighing and creating donation boxes, as always a big thank you to our volunteers. Without you this wouldn’t be possible.

Over 50 onions lifted today and placed in the polytunnel for drying. A big thank you to our great helper, Maeve.

We would like to say a massive thank you to Chestnut trees and fencing, tree surgeons for kindly donating woodchip to help use create mobility friendly pathways at our smallholding.

A huge thank you to the team at Hays Recruitment who kindly gave up their time to help out on our Smallholding. Such an enthusiastic and hard working team, we are so grateful for the amazing support.

As I am sure you are all aware we are completely ran by volunteers and without our fantastic volunteers we would not be able to do what we do for our community.

We have just received confirmation that Hays will kindly be providing 8 volunteers from their team to help for a full morning next month.

We are so thrilled and thankful to Hays for your kindness and support.

Another incredibly generous donation. I could not get everything in the picture! A rake, membrane, a spade, 30 packets of seeds, a bird box, a foldable chair (this sounds like the generation game) a fork, a potting tray and a water butt. Generation game jokes aside we are so grateful and these items will make a huge difference, thank you.

Thank you to Catherine and Kate who kindly replied to our freecycle post requesting any spare seeds, tools and garden equipment. We really appreciate this donation of seeds. Kind donations like this enable us to operate. Thank you so much.

Thank you to The Exeter Daily for a lovely article and thank-you to The Co Operative for the kind donation that is making a big difference to our community interest company.

Devon community groups receive funding boost Three community groups across Devon* have received over £2,700 from The Co-operative Bank in the latest round of grants from its Customer Donation Fund. Among the recipients was Exeter-based Sweetpea Smallholdings, a community interest company (CIC) that aims to reduce social isolation by bringing ...

A big thank you to Megan and the team at B&Q Exeter for kindly donating 5 tins of exterior paint for our raised beds. As always we are so grateful to everyone, individuals and organisations who support us. Without you we would not be able to do the work we do! Thank you so much.

A fantastic start to the new year! A huge thank you to Taylor Woodrow for this incredibly kind donation. We have used this to purchase a van. This will help to increase out produce and deliveries. Thank you so much.

A busy day turning over beds and covering for the winter. Always nice to spend time at our oldest and first ever site.

We received great news this week.... we have been awarded a grant from the Co Operative Customer Donations fund! With this funding we will be able to add a new disability friendly growing zone to our smallholding. This will enable us to attract more volunteers from the disabled community, grow more organic produce and make more food donations. A huge thank you to Co Operative Bank and to everyone that supports us.

A warm (wet) hello to everyone.
We just wanted to share that our crowdfunding project is live. We are hoping to generate enough money to complete the next stage/s of our smallholding to include wildlife areas, education zone, more disabled friendly growing spaces, fruit cages and a disabled friendly workshop..... yes very ambitious! All of this will increase our food production (ALL donated to families experiencing food poverty) and enable us to engage with more volunteers and facilitate more school visits. Thanks, as always for your support.

Sweetpea Smallholdings CIC With the help of our fantastic volunteers, we grow fruit, vegetables, herbs and salads which we donate to foodbanks.

A really good potatoe harvest this week. 62KG produced and donated (we deducted 3KG off the final total to factor in excess soil).

Another 29KG harvested and distributed today. Thanks to everyone for your amazing support. (Pictures of 1 parcel).

We are pleased to say that we have been accepted as a registered community interest company with easy fundraising. This means you can raise FREE donations for Sweetpea Smallholdings EVERY time you shop online. Just use ! Over 7,000 brands will donate, including all the big names like John Lewis & Partners, BT, Expedia, Argos, ASOS, Just Eat, Uswitch and many more! Please support us: https://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/causes/sweetpea-smallholdings/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=pmc&utm_content=fb-1
Thanks, as always for your amazing support.

A couple of months ago we received some help planting wildflower seeds from the amazing pupils at Clyst St Mary School. As a result we planted out 36 metres squared of wild flowers across our growing sites. A huge thank you to our new friends.

Another rewarding day harvesting and donating food parcels. Thank you to our fantastic volunteers and supporters that make this possible.

We are really excited to now be working with The Exeter Library Community Fridge. We made a small donation of 7KG today which included potatoes, runner beans and courgettes all picked fresh this morning. We are looking forward to this new partnership and lots more donations!

Calling for support! Hello friends, we have the option of acquiring a large wooden building for our smallholding for free. Is there a team/business out there that could dismantle and collect (van) from Newton Abbott for us and deliver to Woodbury? We do not have much but would certainly pay for the fuel. Thank you so much, Mike and the team.

We received a call from ASDA today informing us that our application for the 'connect together" funding has been....... approved. Thank you so much ASDA, this will make a huge difference and will really speed up our effort to complete our new additional 1.5 acre smallholding.

GREAT NEWS!! Every ticket purchased using this link - https://www.exetercommunitylottery.co.uk/support/sweetpea-smallholdings-cic we receive 50% of the funds. As always thank you to you all for supporting us.

My favourite time of the year. All our hard work producing great produce. This is the 74th food parcel donation of the year so far! As always thank you to everyone that supports us, without you, this would not happen.

6 food deliveries made today 😊. Strawberries particularly were a big hit! As always, thank you to everyone that supports us. Without our dedicated volunteers and kind donations from people and businesses we could not do what we do.

*Week 1 progress at the new smallholding*

Polytunnel trenches have been dug, wooden raised beds have been built and painted and we have made a great start back filling the trenches.

Are target for June is to complete the polytunnel build, build and sow/plant 12 disabled friendly raised beds, build an irrigation system in the polytunnel, lay hardcore for disabled friendly paths and connect toilets for visitors and volunteers.

Thank you so much for the support.

We can now share with you some exciting news. An extremely kind family have leased us 1.5 acres of land. We are so thrilled. This will enable us to participate in and complete more community based projects and grow and donate more fresh produce for people in our community experiencing food hardship. *Notice our first volunteers in the pictures...My son (plays in the long grass) and Gordon the Donkey (eats the grass).

We would like to announce some fantastic news...... The Gibbons Trust has very kindly awarded us a £3000 grant! We are so thrilled and so very grateful. This will enable us to create more user friendly equipment for new and existing volunteers which will result in more produce to donate to people who need a little food support. Thank you Gibbons Trust. http://www.gibbonstrusts.org.uk/😁

Various potted plants for sale. All pots are ceramic (not plastic) starting price £3.00 can do bundle offers with free delivery in Exeter.

Due to our successful partnership with Sylvania Community Stores, we are seeking other independent shops, cafes and restaurants to partner with.

We would love the opportunity to sell our potted plants, a percentage of the sales to go to the kind business displaying our produce and all the remainder to go directly back into our community interest company.

We will exchange the plants every week to provide a variety for your business and complete maintenance to ensure healthy, happy plants.

If you would like to know more, please do get in touch!