The Summer Berry Company is a leading grower of premium berries, dedicated to sustainable farming and innovation. With farms in the UK and Portugal, they produce fresh, high-quality strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, and blackberries, all nurtured with care for people and the planet.
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A year and a half ago I took 4.5 acres of depleted pasture via the Ecological Land Cooperative and have since been working very hard to turn this into a space teeming with life. Besides establishing a small no- dig market garden, which now supplies my local community with fresh, chemical free veg, I am dedicating areas to nature and encouraging biodiversity back to the land here. A living hedgerow here connecting my newly established woodland would be an extremely positive addition and I am very pleased that the process of doing so can be shared and enjoyed by groups of people for whom this will bring new skills and experiences. offgridorganics
The Baddaford Farm Collective consists of six independent enterprises; Vital Seeds, Incredible Vegetables, Green Ginger Organics, Red Earth Herbs, Pigment Plants Dyes and Baddaford Farm Partnership. The aim of the Baddaford Farm Collective is to make a small part of the world more like the world we want to live in and to promote beauty, sustainability and social justice within an economically viable farm. The Farm consists of 154 acres of a rolling Devon valley. Around 80 acres of the farm is managed by Guy, Milan and the team under Baddaford Farm Partnership, which specialises in growing organic perennial fruit and vegetable crops. These crops are almost entirely supplied to Riverford Organic Farmers and The Bull Organic Inn.
I have farmed here at Llangwendr for over 20 years and care deeply about the environment, flora and wildlife. The farm is worked organically and I keep sheep, horses and honeybees which, as well as producing natural raw honey, also provide a marked increase in pollination on the farm and beyond. This gives a huge boost to the insects and birds living in the area. I also feel that urban and country communities would benefit from more collaboration so that a deeper understanding of the practicalities of farming and the environment can be achieved.
Willowbrook Farm was established in 2002 by Dr. Lufti Radwan and his wife Ruby Radwan, who left their conventional academic careers, with their young family in tow, to pursue a lifestyle of harmony with nature. The farm produces ethical and sustainable food and is the first Halal and Tayyib farm in the UK, meaning that the animals are reared naturally and humanely in accordance with Islamic principles of stewardship of nature. The farm aims to minimise its environmental impact by using renewable energy, recycling waste, preserving biodiversity, and building with natural materials. The farm also hosts weekend visits, eco-camping, and educational events for the public. The farm has been praised for its resilience and innovation and strong community links.
Lifelines for me is like a beautiful intricate tapestry, where the warps are community building, solidarity amongst various groups, strengthening one's spiritual foundations; and the wefts are building resilience for the land, safeguarding biodiversity, mitigating soil health issues and positive climate actions. Just like different interactions of the warp and weft create different designs, these different designs are the unique experiences that every heart holds that got involved in this project. I chose to lead our team of volunteers from the Brahma Kumaris because I wanted to learn from my group’s rich experience of meditation and karmayoga, as well as learning from other groups to enrich my spiritual study. It helped me to learn more about myself and provided me with an opportunity to be a better friend to the Earth."
We did a Lifelines weekend together and it was lovely in unexpected ways. It was a way to explore and reconfigure our mother-daughter connection and it felt particularly profound to be doing this in the context of creation and creating that came with the hedgerow planting. We decided that we’d like to co-lead a group together, with the idea of offering other mothers and daughters that experience. Our womens’ weekend had a deep sense of shared connection and intimacy. We softly sang to our little saplings, a hedge-love song we had learned together, as we left them.
I had a rewarding and inspiring time on the Lifelines project with volunteers from my Sufi community. We seek closeness to God through silent meditation. We also look for ways we can get out to support the natural world. So Lifelines was a perfect fit for us. We worked with a group of students from King’s College London led by Sarah, the college chaplain. Halfway through our weekend, we had to abandon planting due to Storm Darrah. But the resilience and adaptability of the trees and birds in the aftermath of the storm inspired us. So, we resolved to return to complete the hedgerow a few weeks later. During the project we saw the beauty of creation and learnt a lot through observing nature at close hand. We saw parallels between our inner spiritual work at night and our outer work planting in the fields by day. Overcoming the obstacles we faced to complete our hedgerow brought our groups together and also drew us closer to our Creator.
Being a Lifelines Leader was an amazing opportunity. In between the planting, playing games and sharing our stories with each other, we could see that our groups were slowly starting to embody the hedgerows we were planting. Hedgerows start as these tiny shoots, rooted in the ground and slowly grow and start to connect with what has been planted around them until they create this interwoven tangle that provides shelter and safe homes for wildlife. We, as 20 individuals, strongly rooted in our different faith traditions and beliefs, were starting to become an intertwined community, creating a new safe space to share of ourselves. To see so many people taking the time to care for nature and one another was amazing – and resulted in us planting the roots of a new community through this shared experience.
Becoming a Lifelines Leader allowed me to both disconnect from city life and connect with nature, whilst also being able to share this opportunity with a group of people who I felt would benefit from the same experience. My volunteers were Iraqis of different backgrounds. From welcoming dawn with a stretch on frosty mornings to getting my hands in the soil and planting new hedgerow and trees, I found a new appreciation for things we often take for granted. Whilst meaningful and moving on an individual level, it was also a particularly poignant time to think about the connections to and care for land that we belong to or visit. I learnt a lot from the challenges of being a leader, and hope to have the opportunity to do it all over again.
Being a lifelines leader was indescribable. The amount of connection, peace and fulfilment that I gained from leading a weekend was much more than I could have expected and has stuck with me ever since. It would be such an honour to not only serve again, but to spread this joy and opportunity for respite and service.
Taking part in Lifelines has been a highlight of the year the last two years. It's such a privilege to build alliances with so many different communities and faith groups, each exploring and sharing our unique ways of being in service to life.
Are you part of a faith or community group that cares about the environment or do you have a farm that would benefit from a new hedgerow?
Lifelines connects faith and non-faith groups from all traditions with farmers, helping to plant a network of hedgerows and wildlife corridors across the country.