Bridie’s Farm went through the local authority Planning Portal recently, leaving us with a few more hurdles to complete before the application for an educational community farm in Glastonbury can be fully approved and the appropriate works commence. The best estimate on a completion date for this is sometime in August/September. A successful application will be quite significant in terms of approvals for change of use of the site from simply Agricultural to include Educational and Agricultural. Anyone attending the Town Hall Peoples’ Assembly in March this year would have experienced the
high numbers of local people calling for more access to educational opportunities in natural agriculture. We expect that the need and local support for this key objective of the farm is loud and clear.
Our team are now responding to the queries raised from the Portal. Namely the proximity of the chosen site to landfill on neighbouring land and a call for an archaeological evaluation; Bridie’s Farm is close to the chapel site of Saint
Bride, requiring both contamination and archaeology surveys to be carried out. As soon as we get all our green lights, we will let out a huge WoooHoo 🙂 before hosting the first on-site open day with opportunities to connect with course
leaders and focus groups and find out about the various educational workshops, forest school events and volunteering activities that are in the pipelines. We will of course let you know if any interesting artifacts are unearthed. When
the last archaeological evaluation was carried out in 1996, part of a bracelet was uncovered alongside what was the old path of the Brue, located at the south edge of the site. We are seeing many opportunities in telling the story of this land as part of an ongoing Heritage exploration.
Facebook Page
Many of you will already be
connected to our Facebook profile.
By popular request, we have now
added a Bridie’s Farm Page where
we will be posting our events, news
and updates so please migrate to
stay up-to-date and like and share if
you haven’t already.
Workshop Leaders
We are currently looking for applications from
anyone interested in running one-day
workshops and will be supporting people in
how to design and host a short class or
workshop so even if you haven’t done this
before and have an applicable skill that you
think would be suitable to the activities on the
farm, please get in touch: community@bridiesfarm.org.uk
Farm Forum
And finally, a huge thank you to
everyone who took part in our Forum in May.
A small number of invites went out to our active groups
and we had a productive and insightful day.
The information gathered was
extremely timely and relevant and has
since percolated into the plans,
leading to many new forks of
inspiration and connection. Looking
forward to activating it with you all in
real time on the ground.