Bentley is a former coal mining town situated just north of Doncaster. Since the pit closures we have been amongst the top 10% most deprived regions in the UK. As such, the mortality rate is well above the national average, with people dying from preventable diseases well before their allotted three score years and ten. Food poverty, obesity and poor nutrition play a significant role. Bentley High Street is made up, unfortunately, of mostly fast food outlets. A staggering 94% of residents live within walking distance of a takeaway, but there is not a single greengrocer in the town. Bentley is a typical food desert, where it is easier to buy kebabs than kale.
The saddest thing about our situation is that Bentley is surrounded by arable farmland. In fact, Doncaster has one of the best microclimates in the north of England and, according to the Soil Association, we have one of the most interesting and diverse soil maps in the UK. The one thing Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council (DMBC) is not short of is land and buildings which can be used for urban and periurban food production. Bentley should be awash with fresh, healthy, locally grown food. A boost in local food production would not only help counter nutritional ill-health, it would also help boost employment and the local economy. It’s something which our social enterprise, Permafuture Agroecology Limited, has been advocating for years.
It was actually our sister project, Doncopolitan, that finally got us access to a small, but rather lovely plot of land in Bentley. Doncopolitan is a free arts and culture magazine for Doncaster which my long-term art and business partner, Rachel Horne, and I created to prove that there is no such thing as a ‘cultural desert’ – a slur often aimed at Doncaster. Since its launch in 2014, Doncopolitan has presented a new, more positive narrative for Doncaster and put forward our creative vision for the town.
The leader of the DMBC, Jo Miller, who has been named the third most influential person in UK local government, became a subscriber and asked to meet with us. Jo told us that she was using the term ‘Doncopolitanism’ in council meetings to describe anyone with a forward-thinking, positive, can-do attitude. Rachel took the opportunity to pitch our plans for a disused former horticultural training centre in Bentley, and a few months later Bentley Urban Farm (BUF) was born.
The site we inherited hadn’t been used for years and was in a very bad state of repair. Fortunately for us, our vision involved creating an ‘upcycled market garden’ which used reclaimed materials to repair and maintain the crumbling workshop, greenhouse and polytunnel which sat on just under an acre of land. Reclaimed materials drastically reduced our overheads, so we were able to run the scheme for quite some time on an initial grant awarded by the Doncaster Elected Mayor’s department.
One of our original team members, John Briggs, convinced a local vinegar importer to donate their disused IBC containers so we could build an off-grid water supply. Water is the only utility we have on site, so becoming completely independent of all services would save us more money. Each IBC had around five litres of vinegar left in the bottom, which we used as weed-killer for the paths. The only downside being that when we used red-wine vinegar it looked like a massacre had taken place.
The first winter was pretty much constant hard labour as we brought the site back into use, so we didn’t really encourage too much voluntary involvement as we thought it would put people off. Our main crops at that time were kale and radishes which loved the leaky greenhouse. Rachel used these to invent her ‘Donco Detox Salad’. It wasn’t until the spring of 2017 that things really began to get interesting.
Before: An abandoned glasshouse and an overgrown plot
Before: A lot of work to do before volunteers could arrive
Permaculture principles inform everything we do. We had brought Graham Burnett (permaculture teacher and author) to Doncaster a few years earlier and his workshop had a huge influence on us as we built Bentley Urban Farm. Whenever we plant we plan mutually-beneficial ecologies, as opposed to monocrops.
In our first season in the polytunnel, we created a multi-canopy ‘jungle’ where plants like squashes, tomatoes, strawberries, cut-and-come-again leaves and okra created their own self-regulated environment. This was something which was essential as we had no power to artificially regulate the temperature of the tunnel. This year we did similar in the greenhouse, but used old scaffold boards donated by a local building firm to create multi-tier raised beds to assist the creation of the canopy.
As for the crops themselves, we tend to experiment with more unusual plants and varieties. We’ve found that when our produce has an interesting story, people are more inclined to give it a try. And once they’ve tried our fresh produce they get more interested in fresh food and how to grow it.
We grow things like oca, yacon, sea kale, five-leaf ginseng and our ever-popular electric daisies (a South American flower which some say is like eating popping candy, but I personally feel is more like licking a battery). One of our most popular tomatoes is the pocketbook or ‘reisetomate’; tiny plum tomatoes which fuse together as they grow so that the unripe ones look like brains on stems. Pocketbook is an old German variety which was once used by travellers. They would keep a clump in their pocket, so that they could pull a piece off at a time and the rest would stay fresh throughout their journey.
Electric daisies
Pocketbook tomatoes
Interesting food is one thing, but it is interesting people that makes Bentley Urban Farm such an amazing place to work. As soon as the site was safe, we began to invite volunteers to get involved. One of the first groups to work on the site was the Primary Learning Centre. These are 8-12 year olds who are, for various reasons, in danger of being permanently excluded from school.
When they first came, only one child was allowed as the rest would not stop swearing. But once he told the others what he had been doing (digging a pond), they all became regular visitors to the site (and to our compost toilet, which they insist on using every time they visit); spending their Thursday mornings either here or just down the road at Bentley Park, where they found a much-needed inspirational role-model in the local park keeper.
Other regular groups have included the 71st Hunafa Muslim Scout group and the Ridge Employability College, 16-18 year olds who are being prepared for a work environment. The Ridge students love coming to the farm so much that a few months ago, Sophie, usually one of the quieter ones, staged a mini-uprising when they were told that the weather was too bad for them to come down. Sophie stood up and declared: “I’m going. It’s only rain.” Some of the other students joined in, so the supervisors brought them down. Sophie couldn’t stop laughing when she told us all about this.
71st Hunafa Muslim Scouts
We came to understand that people make the place, and that the place makes the people. With this in mind, we developed our ‘gathering circle’, a fire pit surrounded by planter-cum-benches made out of old filing cabinets (I have to thank Dave Pearson for this inspiring design) which we use for education, entertainment and socialising. What started as an anti-food poverty project has evolved to become a space where we can (re)build community. Our events, such as the wonderful ‘Mini Wormery Workshop’ presented by Nottingham’s The Urban Worm, now seem to be as much about bringing people together as imparting knowledge – which I guess is how all education should be.
Last year, with help from Locality’s Bright Ideas fund, we developed our affordable ‘BUF Box’ veg box scheme and we turned our social enterprise into a co-operative. Our co-op has an intentional 50/50 gender split and is made up of a rather diverse selection of people, so that our company’s perspectives are as diverse as the plants we grow.
In 2018 Big Lottery funding has allowed us to develop our SEED & SAV£ project, where individuals, groups and families can adopt a bed and learn to grow their own food. If they get good at it, we then invite them to grow their own food at home and we even offer to buy some of their produce for our BUF Box scheme.
The future is very exciting. We’re currently developing a new project which we believe could be a world first. It is very hush, hush at the moment, but I promise to tell PM readers all about it once it is under way. And if you’re ever in the area, feel free to pop down for a cup of (homegrown English peppermint and lemon verbena) tea and an electric daisy.
For more information on Bentley Urban Farm visit: www.bentleyurbanfarm.com
Warren Draper is a writer, photographer, artist and lifelong ecological activist from Doncaster, South Yorkshire; one of the poorest regions of the UK. In collaboration with his long-term art and business partner, Rachel Horne, he is using the permaculture principles of Earth Care, People Care and Future Care to help build a braver, brighter future for his hometown. Warren’s motto is: If it can be made, it can be made beautiful.
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