Teign Greens CIC came about during the Coronavirus pandemic, when supermarket shelves were bare, and people were wondering what they were going to eat! Overnight, Oxen Park Farm, was flooded with interest from local people who needed vegetables. We decided what better time to set up an exciting community veg box scheme!

We make our small scale, not-for-profit model work by using a Community Supported Agriculture (or CSA) scheme. This means our veg box customers (we like to call them members!) “pledge to eat our veg”, committing to a full year’s supply of weekly vegetables from our organic farm. Members share the risks, rewards and joy of small-scale ecological farming, reducing the cost to members and helping us all towards a real local food revolution! Each week we give our members a share of our harvest, in times of plenty - we share the abundance, and in times of scarcity, we top up our harvest from other local organic growers. You can read more about Community Supported Agriculture here.

Another key aspect of CSA is the community getting involved, and every year, generous local volunteers, or visiting residential volunteers offer thousands of hours of their time to lend a hand. Volunteers get involved with all aspects of the growing, from harvesting crops, sowing seeds, weeding beds and packing veg bags. As passionate growers, we want to include as many local people in the production of their food.

We’re based about four acres of land at Oxen Park Farm, an organic and biodynamic farm owned by Jo and Tina in Lower Ashton, which is home to On The Hill, a land-based learning social enterprise. We grow our veg using human-scale, better-than-organic methods, with agroforestry rows, wildflower strips and no monocultures or chemical nasties getting anywhere near your veg!

Teign Greens was founded by Holly Budgen and Tim Dickens, in partnership with Oxen Park Farm. It’s set up as a Community Interest Company. This means, in effect, that it is owned by you, the community! Any surplus or profit that we may make in the future is reinvested into the scheme, or directly into the Teign Valley community. By reducing food miles, and our reliance on supermarket food systems and factory farming, we hope to produce better, more tasty food with a positive impact on our fragile environment, leading to a happier, healthier community here in the Teign Valley and surrounding area.