Annual Report 2017/18 - Oxford City Farm · Annual Report 2017/18 Oxford City Farm is a charity (charity number 1144439 registered 26th October 2011) and company limited by guarantee

Oxford City Farm Annual Report Page 1

Annual Report 2017/18Oxford City Farm is a charity (charity number 1144439 registered 26th October 2011) and company limited by guarantee (company number 7239285 – incorporated 29th April 2010).

The organisation has been set up by members of the East Oxford community with the aim of establishing a City Farm in Oxford. Seven trustees (Lucie Mayer, Nick Rose, Geraldine Beekmeyer, Ben Stringer, Phil Pritchard, Tom Carman and Brian Snelling) have been in post during the reporting period.

Celebrating our successes

The Trustees are delighted to report great progress towards our aim of setting up a city farm in Oxford over the last year.

Thanks to our very successful crowdfunder and our fantastic October festival hundreds more people are engaged with the project, through donating or having visited and enjoyed the site. Both these endeavours also raised significant funds to support the farm’s development.

We are really proud of the partnerships that we continue to develop to bring Oxford City Farm into being. Bringing Statutory Organisations, local businesses and the community together for mutual benefit is a successful key strategy. With support from the Logan Foundation this is an area of work that we are able to take further in 18/19.

Volunteering is the heart of our organisation. We calculate that over 3000 volunteer hours have been given over the course of the reporting period. Volunteers and Trustees have worked behind the scenes in fundraising and communications, volunteer management, policy and process development, planning and design and other strategic roles.

Many more have worked on site. We continue to be really proud of the large number of new volunteers we have been welcoming on site at our monthly work parties. Braving both summer heat and arctic conditions our volunteers have turned out to weed, dig and water our veg beds, look after pigs, erect our first polytunnel, harvest great quantities of produce, clear rubbish as well as have fun, learn new skills, connect socially and eat plenty of cake!

We have also greatly benefitted from the links we have made with the Oxfordshire Probation service who have brought teams to the farm and who have played a very significant role in developing and maintainingthe site.


Taking the farm forward:

Capital and revenue income generation continue to be essential elements of our work. Sound financial planning and processes and developing an income generation strategy that enables us to meet both expected as well as unexpected costs in a difficult financial climate are key to our progress.

Developing a robust business plan is an essential element of this and we are grateful to the Federation of City Farm’s Growing Together project and the Power to Change Bright Ideas fund who are supporting this work which is close to completion. We are looking forward to the coming year which will enable us to test some of our assumptions through further research and delivery of various pilot projects.

Capacity in the trustee team and amongst key volunteers working on business development fundraising communications and strategy remains a challenge as the work of making the farm a reality grows.

As such we are thrilled that we have now recruited to two short term part-time roles, a development worker and community grower/infrastructure delivery lead.

We are also in the process of developing a number of new volunteer roles that we hope to recruit to in 18/19 and after a recent trustee skills audit will be seeking to recruit trustees with skills in a number of key new areas.

Review and focus of work - April 2017–March 2018

Finalising lease costs:

We are very grateful to Nick Graham of Oxfordshire County Council who after some support from Ian Hudspeth (leader of the County Council) and Helen Evans (local labour county councillor) who have both been fantastic champions of the farm proposed to halve the fees charged by the County Council. This meant we e were happily able to settle our outstanding legal/surveying fees (a total of £2,244.50) using self-generated income.

Licence for works:

We are now in the final stages of the drafting of a licence for works to get water and electricity connected on site. We agreed the costs for this in advance and have allocated funds in the Bright Ideas bid to pay these. This will enable further onsite development including irrigation, drinking water, and mains connected toilet and kitchen facilities.

PermacultureDevelopment

Model

Bio-diverse

plantings HolisticAnimal

Management

Completingthe

hydrologicalCycle

IntegrativeAppropriateTechnology

EcologicalDesignCreative

HumanInteraction

Natural andcooperative

living

Socialinclusion

Fair ShareEconomics

ConciousConsumption

CyclicalEconomy

Regenerativeeducationaloutlets and

models

Low impactInfrastructureand dwellingdevelopment

Soil foodweb repair

Site planning:

Being on the site more often means we are able to take time to observe and investigate it. Everything from the shadows cast by buildings and trees to the quality of the soil, wetter and drier areas and even where certain plants thrive are helping to inform the layout of the farm. This fits with a permaculture approach that we are trying to take to guide the Farm’s development.


We continue to use our growing knowledge of the site to refine our plans for growing and paddock areas as well as finalising where our planned outdoor kitchen and toilet block will go.

By devising a fairly definitive overall plan for the site, informed by our observations, as well as the restrictions placed upon us by the site’s flood plain designation, we can work towards achieving it, safe in the knowledge that any early infrastructure work we undertake going forward will be “future proof” and so effective in terms of cost and effort expended.

We will have our planning application submitted by the end of March 2018 to enable spring community builds of the outdoor kitchen and an accessible toilet block.

This will coincide with the connection of water and electricity on site.

Site development:Growing areas

Our regular work parties have gone from strength to strength and we thank everyone who has done such great work to maintain and develop the plot of raised beds and the linear orchard.

Volunteers sweated it out in the heat or early May digging the trench and erecting the polytunnel which produced a bumper harvest of cucumbers and herbs this year, despite the limited supply of water on site.

The pumpkin patch created out of the “mothballed” land on the southern side of the site was prolific – producing over 150 pumpkins and squash – many of which we sold at our Autumn festival.

We were donated a large quantity of see potatoes at the beginning of the growing season and have harvested at least 200kg of potatoes.

We also harvested plentiful beetroot, apples, garlic, leeks, broccoli, kale, spinach and chard from the site this year. Some we cooked on site to feed hungry volunteers at our work parties. Some we made into delicious jellies and chutney to sell at fundraising events and more we gave away to local people and volunteers to enjoy at home. We also sold some via our friends at Cultivate and Wild Honey.


A fantastically productive growing season which we are hoping to better this year with more focussed planning and piloting of more income generation aimed growing: some high value crops to market to local retailers and restaurants, plugs or seedlings of popular grow-at-home plants such as herbs and tomatoes. We will of course also be growing some prolific favourites to share with our volunteers and the community.

Ensuring that we develop systems to consistently get the food we grow onto local people’s plates will also be a focus for the community grower going forward.

Pigs and other animals

We enjoyed caring for 5 beautiful rare breed Oxford Sandy and Black pigs thanks to the support of Mark and Jane Cooper of Cooper’s Oxford pork. We had them on the land between May and July 2017. We moved their paddock up the field over this time and they did a fantastic job of turning over the land and digging out bramble roots.

A team of dedicated volunteers from the local community made twice daily visits to check their wellbeing, feed and water them and enjoy their presence on the land.

We involved a wider number of people in their care during our work parties, school visits and at open afternoons which were very popular.

Borrowing animals for limited periods of time is a pragmatic way of introducing farm animals on to the site and to our visitors whilst enabling us to care for them with the current limited volunteer capacity. We hope to borrow some sheep this year to support the creation of pasture on the land and reduce the costly need to mow the grass on site.. We are currently considering introducing chickens onto the site this year and are exploring ways of having them as part of our grazing system. We are also supporting Larkrise Primary school to incubate hen’s eggs in school.

Bees

Our two bee hives and their thousands of occupants have also been thriving this year. Despite unwelcome attention from intruders on site, we had our second honey harvest, and sold over 30 jars of delicious fragrant honey – and could have sold many more such was the demand! These beautiful, if feisty creatures are certainly earning their keep. Thanks to Elly Patullo for all her support of our own Phil Pritchard in their care.

Our Meet the Bees day where local people paid a small amount to learn about bees and investigate the hives was a great success and raised valuable funds to support the apiaries. More are planned for this year.


Site clearance

Site clearance continues, we have cleared 2 skips worth of rubbish over the year and another 2 grab lorries full of rubble and debris.

Thanks to work with Community Payback teams we uncovered the old wildlife pond (which formed part of one of the first wildlife areas created in an Oxfordshire school). We plan to reinstate the pond this year and are exploring possible funding sources.

Fencing

Repairing the boundary fences remains a priority. We have had a number of malicious incursions on site resulting in minor vandalism including interference with beehives and damage to the polytunnel. Thanks to a donation of palings from Warefence we have plugged many of the gaps in the Northern boundary fence (the cost of fully replacing the fence is prohibitive for the near future), but further work is required. Repairs to our western boundary fence may also need to be made in the coming year. This is something we are budgeting for.

Shipping Container

Thanks to our friends at Sandford Hydro who donated a pre-used shipping container to us in the summer – thanks also to Bill Frizzell who co-ordinated its slightly complicated journey to us. We now have more secure storage for our tools and other farm equipment.

Corporate Social Responsibility

Having been involved in some really positive CSR partnerships with local companies this year, we will be prioritising engaging with more local businesses moving forward. We are aiming to build long term mutually beneficial partnerships.

This is an area of work with significant potential for us to generate untied income. In 2017 we received payments of £450 and work in kind totalling at least £3,000.

We are regularising our processes, developing an information and evaluation pack and website page specifically related to this aspect of our work so that we can respond effectively to the increasing number of enquiries.


Oxfam We worked with 2 separate groups from Oxfam this year who broke new ground to create a whole new series growing beds, planted broad beans, harvested pumpkins, decorated bed markers and generally had a great time.

Southern Gas Networks

A team of over 30 spent a summer day at the farm creating a new path around the edge of the paddock, this involved bringing diggers, dumpers and rollers on site and 20 tons of aggregate to form the paths. An amazing event that transformed large areas of the site. We are looking forward to further visits in 2018.

Apprentices from CCFE

A small group of apprentices from Culham Centre for Fusion Energy took up our Build a Bog challenge. They designed and built a “luxury” compost toilet on site. As third year engineering apprentices they considered the finer points of design to ensure a quality experience when using the Bog.

The toilet has greatly improved the volunteer and visitor experience at the farm.We have had expressions of interest in CSR days from Skanska and asset management company Brewin Dolphin.

Policy, Governance and Strategy

Further work continues reviewing our current structure, decision making processes and accountability to ensure that the organisation is fit for purpose as we move towards fully establishing the city farm. We are grateful to Angela Cristofoli of OCVA for her support of this work.

Trustees continue to meet on a monthly basis outside the steering group which meets every other month, working to meet the targets set out in our delivery plan.

We are continuing to review the capacity and focus of our successful sub groups – the groups meet outside the steering groups to progress work in various areas including planning and design, fundraising, events, policy and governance, PR and media and site development.

We have worked to produce a strategy document which guides our work and allows us to measure our progress against strategic objectives each month.


Business planning:We have been successful in receiving business planning support from 2 key partners.

Growing Together a Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens project funded 5 days of support from the highly experienced Sam Smith ex of Sutton Community farm. He has provided practical knowledge and expertise as well as producing spreadsheet templates for cash flow forecasting and business set up costs. As well as templates to help streamline our volunteer systems.

We also received an initial 8 days of business planning support through the Power to Change Bright Ideas fund. Philip Tulba from Locality has been working alongside Sam and key trustees and volunteers to build Sam’s work.

The Bright Ideas work involved scoping two income generation ideas. The first was a small, temporary food business hub on site based on 4 containerised work spaces. However initial work on this suggested that although there was need and interest , the burden of work and cost involved in setting up the hub meant it was not viable either financially or in terms of people hours for the farm in the short term.

Extensive work has also been put into researching the creation of a community kitchen on site. This work has been collated into a pre-feasibility study. Although the trustees are keen to develop this idea in the future, it is a complicated and costly venture and one that will need significant ongoing management to ensure its success. As such the trustees took a decision to put further work on the community kitchen on hold for the time being. (Meanwhile the outdoor kitchen will be used to pilot work around community growing cooking and eating and build a local evidence base around the health and wellbeing improvements this can provide)

Going forward, our focus will be on developing the core work of the farm and our ongoing business development work will reflect this while we continue to develop and enhance our site.

Thanks to Sally Mullard who has worked so hard in the short term development worker role. Her work has been and continues to be central to the farm’s development.

Volunteering

With an increase in interest and enquiries related to volunteering and an increase in need for volunteers on the farm the trustees recognised the need for a volunteer co-ordinator role.

A volunteer role description and person specification was drawn up and the post recruited to in October 17. LilyHowells is creating database and electronic enquiry form templates and standard response procedures to ensure that our systems are efficient and we are able to appropriately process and signpost potential volunteers.

She will also ensure that the data we hold and the way we process it is GDPR compliant.

She will manage these initiatives before moving to start a new role outside Oxford, so will be looking to re-recruit to this important volunteer role in the near future.

Thanks to another volunteer Sally Brooking we now log all our volunteering hours on a database , which is helping us to keep track of our project specific outputs and our community impact.


Educational Outreach

Farm site visits

A number of groups of children from Larkrise Primary school have been on visits to the Farm site over the summer term, to look after the pigs. They also tended and harvested produce which they then took back to school to eat.

We look forward to our increased capacity to work with more schools and groups on site in the coming year through the employment of our part time community grower and site development lead.

We also have made links with a guide pack and cubs group who are keen to make regular visits to the farm.

Fund and Profile raising events:

Flo Fest

We had a stall at Flo Fest again in 2017. This was a well-attended event and enabled us to talk to people about the work we have undertaken over the year as well as publicising the Crowdfunder. We raised over £200 selling plants and jams and chutneys and engaging children with a game of “Feed the Pig”.

Jo Cox The Great Get Together

As part of a nationwide weekend of events we held a community tea party on site on a sweltering afternoon in June. The event in memory of Jo Cox, helps us acknowledge and enjoy the fact that that in diverse communities we have more in common than that which separates us.

Thanks to Sophia Swithen and James Terry for organising the wonderful event.

This summer, on the weekend of 16-18 June, across the country there are going to be the biggest neighbourhood celebrations since the Jubilee - its part of the Great Get Together and Florence Park is getting involved!

These nationwide gatherings are inspired by Jo Cox, and her belief that we have more in common than that which divides us. Up and down the country there will be thousands of locally organised events.

So what’s happening in our neighbourhood?

a plate On : Saturday 17th June, from 2-5pm

We’ll be holding a: Great Farm Tea Party

At: Oxford City Farm site on Cornwallis RoadBring: a cake or other goodies to share,

a mug and of course your friends and neighbours

other goodies

cake

friends

a mug

Everyone welcome!

Crowdfunder

In July and August we ran our highly successful crowdfunder The aim was to raise £12,000 to contribute towards the cost of getting water and electricity on site. We had some fantastic incentives to donate including branded merchandise, limited edition prints, experiences and donations of goods from local retailers and producers.

As well as raising vital funds the campaign brought the farm into the public domain with lots of print media coverage and an interview on BBC Radio Oxford.


The success of the crowdfunder depended on robust planning, generating and sustaining conventional and social media interest in the campaign and focussed follow up. It was an intensive period of work and one that has taught us much. Thanks to all in the fundraising team who supported the campaign, especially Laura and Luke Jostins-Dean and Sally Mullard. Our thanks also go to Zoe Warwick and her crew from Film Oxford who filmed and edited a first take of our crowd funder video as well as Jim Hobson of Hobson Curtis films who created a wonderful final edit.

In total after deducting fundraising costs and claiming gift aid we raised an amazing total of £14,200.

October Festival

Our amazing festival ran on Saturday the 7th October. (financially supported by the National Lottery Celebrate England Fund) the festival was a culmination of months of work brought together by sessional event co-ordinator Jade Neville and supported by a determined and conscientious group of volunteers. All worked tirelessly both on site behind the scenes to get the farm festival ready. A whole raft of new volunteers also supported on the day.

We were overwhelmed by the success of the event with over 1,300 visitors to the site over the course of the day.

We had a petting farm animals, pony rides, apple pressing, face painting, straw bale play the “mini sty of sound” kids disco, main stage music and acts, food stalls, a beer tent run by our friends at The Jolly Postboys and an information/merchandise/produce stall and tea tent.

It was great to see so many people on the farm site enjoying all that was on offer. The event felt like it really put the farm on the map and was a great celebration of all that we have achieved and hope to achieve going forward.

Although fund raising was not the main aim of the day we raised approximately £1,700 through sales of tea and cake and contributions from stall holders. Thanks to The Pizza Midwife and Jacket potato

people for lovely food!


Larkrise School and Florence Park Community centre’s winter fairs

We were again grateful for the opportunity to spread the word about the farm and raise funds from selling our wares at two great local winter fairs.

Special thanks to Yvonne Mayer who worked so hard to make a gorgeous selection of knitted animals which have proved so popular at sales and significantly contributed to income generation. And also to Diane Finch for her wonderful Christmas card designs

Between the two events we raised over £350.

Thanks again to all the volunteers involved in putting on our outreach and fundraising events – It takes an enormous amount of effort and co-ordination to make them as successful as they are. The benefits to the Farm both in terms of profile raising and fundraising really are fantastically significant.

Web site development IT, branding, communications and social media:

Web Site

Adrian Potter, continued to support the City Farm project by working on improving the website and updating as required. Many pages have been overhauled, and we continue to work to improve the overall usability and look of the site.

IT

Google not for profit is working well for us in terms of helping to professionalise and streamline our IT systems. This means that key volunteers at the farm have @Oxfordcityfarm.org.uk email addresses and access to comprehensive file sharing which is improving the efficiency of our work.

Domain name based emails also promote a professional image when communicating with outside professionals.


Branding

Alice Claydon who supported with the logo redesign last year has now moved away from the area, but we were lucky enough to have the support of Sam Egarr who has created a number of new produce labels based on the original design. Although based in London Sam is keen to continue to support us at OCF, welcome and thanks Sam. The new labels for honey and jams and chutneys which have given our produce a very professional finish. This along with the quality of the produce itself has meant we have developed a keen local market generating in the region of £700 over the year.

Communications:

We continue to work with mailshot provider – Mail chimp, to improve our capacity for sending out group email updates and establishing quarterly newsletters to our supporters.

We are currently developing a volunteer database to support the effective management of volunteers and reviewing our processes of communication and data storage in the light of upcoming General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation.

Steve Dawe continues to support our conventional media coverage by formatting and sending out press releases for the farm. This approach has seen our print media profile raised significantly. This in turn has led to a number of new very skilled and enthusiastic volunteers coming on board as well as an increase in turn out at our work parties.

PR and Communication role

June Graham- Payne was recruited to the PR and Communications volunteer role in the late spring of 2016.Her lead and the greater engagement with social media by other volunteers means we now manage a steady stream of posts to our social media platform and have almost 1200 followers on Facebook and over 620 followers on Twitter and new Instagram account which is steadily gaining followers too.June is planning to step down from this role in April 18, we thank her for all that she has done for the farm and look forward to recruiting a successor in this role as well as a trustee who can lead on PR and communications.

Accounts and fundraising overview

The Trustees and steering group continue to be committed to principles of good governance and responsible financial stewardship. Where possible services are procured on an “in Kind” basis and best value in terms of cost and sustainability is sought when sourcing materials etc.

The trustees wish to thank all those who have supported the farm this year by offering their time energy and expertise free of charge in order to help us meet our aims.

Accounts for the financial year 2016/2017 were prepared and submitted to the Companies House pro bono by our generous supporters at Critchleys Accountants (Available separately). The accounts have been prepared in a format which is acceptable to the Charity Commission although due to our low level of financial activity audited accounts are not required to be submitted to them at this point. Thankyou to Brian Snelling and Luke Atkin and Robert Kirtland at Critchleys.

(Accounts available separately)The City Farm is registered for gift aid and corporation tax exemption with the Inland Revenue.


Fundraising sub group

The fundraising sub group has met regularly during the reporting period and has developed a fundraising strategy, researched costs and grant making bodies and applied to a number of trusts.

The group benefited from increased capacity due to new members with significant skills and experience in the field coming on board during the reporting period, however due to changing circumstances a number of core members have now had to step away from the team. As such we are currently recruiting for new members of the fundraising sub group.

Fundraising successes during the reporting period:

Tesco bags of help: £5,000 towards community build of outdoor kitchen

Awards for All: £9,800 towards the cost of putting on skills development workshops for

Bernard Sunley: £5,000 towards general site development costs

Logan Foundation: £15,600 to fund partnerships worker role for 6 months and community grower for 6 months

Oxford Round Tablel £1,000 towards the community kitchen outdoor toilet build

The Co-op have chosen Oxford City Farm to be one of the 3 charities they support this year.We are working to raise awareness of this to maximise the income generated by this nomination

Grant funding priorities going forward:

• CEO/ business development worker role: looking for funding for an initially part time role –similar jobs have been benchmarked and we are looking to raise in the region of £80,000 over 3 years.

• 3 year funding for community grower and apprentice grower.

• Stage 2 site and infrastructure development

Broad fundraising priorities for the coming year

• Further developing partnerships with local business and other organisations, focussing on the possibility of joint fundraising bids for collaborative work, CSR opportunities and in-kind donations

• Developing a regular giving (direct debit) supporter base

• Establishing a fundraising/profile raising events programme for the year including a second October festival.


Plans for the Future:

The Trustees and steering group have identified the following priorities for 2017/18:

• Regular site development volunteer days • Wider opportunities for volunteer involvement including new dedicated volunteer roles • Increased awareness of the project through improved media profile • Developing links with potential partner organisations • Strengthening the trustee board • Business planning and prioritising of the Farm’s development beyond the phase 1 infrastructure costs. • Develop effective financial reporting and forecasting systems

The trustees and Steering Group would like to thank all our volunteers, funders, and supporters who are helping us to take the Oxford City Farm project forward.

5

Animalslooked after

20,000 innumerable

pigs bees worms

CSR hoursgiven 430

(approx)

Foodharvested

450kgVolunteerhours given3000 (approx)

Funding Income

Crowd funder £14,200Grants £42,480Individual donations £6,000Self generated income(sales & CSR) £2400

Documents

Annual Report 2017/18 - Oxford City Farm · Annual Report 2017/18 Oxford City Farm is a charity (charity number 1144439 registered 26th October 2011) and company limited by guarantee