We are incredibly proud to have been named this year’s winner of the Farming and Wildlife Advisory Group Cornwall Otter Award!
For us, this award feels particularly special because it recognises not just what we produce, but the way we have chosen to farm. As new entrants, we have spent the past ten years building Real Food Garden from the ground up, shaping the farm around our values and learning as we go. The FWAG Cornwall Otter Award celebrates ‘farms that have combined food production with sustainability, environmental protection and wildlife gains‘ and many exceptional farms have been crowned previously. It is an honour to now be amongst them!
From the beginning, our aim has been to create a productive farm where environmental needs and commercial realities sit alongside one another, and it means a great deal to have that approach recognised in this way by such a prestigious organisation.
When we started Real Food Garden ten years ago, we built the business around a simple mission: to nourish people and place through truly sustainable food production. From the outset, we wanted environmental needs and productivity to sit alongside one another rather than having to choose between them.
Today that means a low input, regenerative mixed farming system where vegetables, livestock, trees, habitats and people all have a role to play.
Our market garden operates without synthetic fertilisers, fungicides or pesticides. Instead we rely on compost, green manures, diverse rotations and careful soil management to build fertility and support soil life. We have been monitoring soil health and soil carbon since 2017, continually using what we learn to refine the way we farm.
The judges commented on how healthy the growing crops looked and highlighted the farm’s ability to produce a strong output from a low input system after just ten years of operation.
Livestock are another important part of that system. Our sheep and pigs help us make use of crop residues and vegetables that cannot be sold, turning what could otherwise become waste back into fertility for the farm. Pigs are also used as active land managers, disturbing ground and creating opportunities to establish pollinator plants, cornfield annuals and winter bird seed mixes.
That approach extends beyond our own holding too. Our English Longhorn cattle are used for conservation grazing for Cornwall Wildlife Trust, where their careful grazing helps maintain habitats for species including marsh fritillary butterflies, emperor moths, cuckoos and orchids.
The judges particularly praised this integration of livestock into the wider farm system, including the use of unsaleable vegetables as feed.
The award also recognised the work that happens beyond food production.
Training and education have always been an important part of Real Food Garden. Through our traineeships, courses, tours and talks we try to share practical knowledge about agroecology and regenerative farming, while also giving people the opportunity to experience a working mixed farm first hand. Over the years we have welcomed community groups, agricultural students, university researchers, Women’s Institutes and visitors from across Cornwall and beyond.
We were especially pleased that the judges highlighted the training of our team and our engagement with the public and wider community as one of the strengths of the farm.
Across the farm, we also try to create space for wildlife wherever we can. Hedgerows, uncropped margins, wildlife ponds, orchards, shelter belts and agroforestry are all managed as part of the productive landscape rather than separately from it. More than 500 trees have now been planted across the farm, helping connect existing woodland with the farmed landscape while providing habitat, shelter and future crops.
Our no dig market garden itself is also an important habitat, supporting fungi, ground beetles, soil organisms, pollinators and farmland birds amongst the crops.
As new entrants to farming, we have had to build Real Food Garden from the ground up. We did not arrive with inherited land, farming infrastructure or generations of experience behind us, and some of the approaches we have taken have not always been conventional.
That has made this recognition particularly meaningful.
The judges described the farm as a productive regenerative system with strong soil building, well integrated livestock and exemplary staff training and community engagement. Their final words were simply that they were “very impressed” to recommend Real Food Garden as this year’s winner.
Ten years into the journey, there is still an enormous amount we want to learn and develop. But this award has given us a rare opportunity to stop, look back at what has been created and feel proud of how far the farm has come.
A huge thank you to FWAG SouthWest, the judges, our brilliant team, our customers and everyone who has supported Real Food Garden along the way. We are already looking forward to heading to the Royal Cornwall Show next year to receive the award properly! No doubt by then we will be brimming with new projects and innovations to continue to support the evolution in agroecological farming!