FARMStart: How to Earn from Growing Food

About This Event

At a Glance
6 teaching days across 3 weekends (16/17 May / 20/21 June / 18/19 July)
10am–3pm each day
Hosted at a demonstration Market Garden in Monmouthshire, with a bespoke educational facility and wide reaching views across the rewilding project.
All refreshments provided during the day
Free camping available or optional cabin accommodation (please contact us to discuss availability and for discounted rates)
Certificates awarded for full attendance (Includes a LANTRA-certified SOILstart day)

Who Is This Course For?

FARMStart is designed for:
People who already enjoy growing food
Career-changers considering becoming growers
Those wanting to set up a market garden or small food enterprise
Individuals seeking practical, realistic routes to earning from land

What This Course Will Enable You to Do

By the end of FARMStart, you will have the knowledge and confidence to:
Design a viable food-growing enterprise suited to the UK climate
Select crops and systems that balance productivity with labour
Understand soil, fertility and regenerative management
Navigate compliance, pricing and routes to market
Begin earning from growing food – at a scale that works for you
This course is explicitly about what is possible, what is profitable, and what is realistic.

What We Will Cover (Across the Programme)

Commercially viable edible crops for the UK climate
Growing systems and how to choose between them
Soil preparation and fertility management
Organic production and regenerative principles
Integrated pest management
Low-labour management and closed-loop systems
Irrigation and water management
Packaging, pricing and reaching customers
Legal compliance, health & safety and food hygiene

Programme Breakdown

Day 1 – Crops & Context
Overview of commercial crops
Tour of the market garden
Tasting crops
Sowing and planting out
Fruit production
Further edible and market garden crops

Day 2 – Business, Compliance & Viability
Health & safety
Food hygiene
Insurance
Compliance and regulation
Pricing, packaging and labelling
Vegetable production per m²
Setting up finances and business models

Day 3 - SOILstat (LANTRA Certified)
What soil is and what it needs
Composting techniques
No-dig systems
Polycultures
Fertility plantings

Day 4 - Systems, Design & Water
Edible mushroom production
Site design
Landscape features
Water management in landscapes

Day 5 - Perennial & Agroforestry Systems
Agroforestry systems
Forest gardens
Syntropic systems
Unusual edibles and perennial vegetables
Compost teas and Bokashi

Day 6 - Income, Flow & Scaling
Year-round salad and leaf production
Premium products and earning per m²
Veg box schemes
Example cash flows and business plans
Expected income
Closed-loop systems

Practical Learning

This is a hands-on course, with much of the learning taking place outdoors in the market garden.

You will take part in:
Sowing and planting
Maintenance and crop care
Harvesting
Packing and pricing
Tasting a wide range of edible plants
Learning happens as work is done, embedding skills rather than just concepts.

What’s Included
6 full days of teaching, delivered over 3 weekends
Refreshments each day (including lunch with as much produce from the market garden as possible)
Detailed handouts and planning tools
Certificates for full attendance
LANTRA-certified SOILstart workshop
Free on-site camping
Access to showers, kitchen and communal spaces in the Grange Hub
Optional cabin accommodation (bookable separately)

What You Will Leave With
A clear understanding of how to earn from growing food
Practical knowledge of crops, systems and soil
Planning tools for production and income
A realistic sense of scale, labour and return
A firm idea of what you want to grow, how, and where you can sell it

What You Will Be Able To Do Afterwards
You should leave FARMStart ready to:
Begin your own food enterprise
Seek or secure access to land
Start producing for sale
Continue learning with focused support

Course Facilitator
Rachel Hammond is an experienced grower and educator specialising in regenerative, perennial-led and agroforestry market garden systems. She has developed and demonstrated a 75% perennial, climate-resilient and commercially viable market garden model, designed to balance productivity, biodiversity and profitability.

Rachel’s teaching is practical, honest and grounded in lived experience. She is particularly skilled at helping people understand what works in reality – including labour, margins, and long-term sustainability – rather than idealised growing models.

Her approach combines ecological thinking with commercial clarity, making FARMStart especially valuable for those serious about turning growing into a livelihood.

Course Setting
You’ll be learning within:
A working market garden, designed around permaculture principles
The Grange Hub, a purpose-built education and community space
Wide, open views across the rewilding site

The setting supports learning that is grounded, practical and unhurried, with time to ask questions, share experiences and connect skills to a wider ecological context.