Vegetables at sustainable shop
Vegetables at sustainable shop

Devon’s first sustainable, local food-centred community space of its kind, Natural Worx, is coming to Seaton early next year. Its innovative, ecological, welcoming and affordable vibe will draw vitality and community into the town centre from early morning to late evening. Four locals – Penny Davis, Grace Haggert, Karen Howarth, and Angela Willes – have launched the project as a Community Interest Company, united in a passion for sourcing supplies ethically and locally, and passing them on to customers at an affordable price.

Large windows in the planned friendly, caring, community cafe upstairs frame the clock tower at the elegantly municipal Seafield gardens, placing it solidly in the centre of Seaton and telling the time on both the towns’ heritage and its future. The new Feast street food cafe opposite is doing a brisk lunchtime trade. It’s rumoured the Hook and Parrott has been bought by the owners of a Lyme hotspot and will be giving the seafront a facelift.

Natural Worx CIC co-founder Karen tells me “Because of COVID it might take us longer to open than we’d hoped, but eventually we’ll get there.” The first £20k phase of the refit is being crowdfunded, with match funding from East Devon and other grants. Volunteers at Beer’s Men’s Shed are fabricating a station for shoppers to fill their own containers, from oats to laundry liquid, at weigh stations. Other volunteers are contributing skills and graft on a rota.

Affordability is a watchword, and one of the core missions will be offering a daily, free of charge community meal made from ingredients sourced from surplus retail food. This is sourced by Seaton’s SAVE Food Hub, which plans to use the location, including a community freezer and fridge, as its main distribution point for the food it rescues from supermarkets. Aileen Heal from the SAVE Food Hub says the new arrangement will help get the food where it’s needed next year, and prevent it being wasted. Meanwhile SAVE will continue to operate the Olio App including as an essential “click and collect” / delivery service during the latest lockdown.

At the current Natural Worx location, tucked away at the edge of the town, locals are already bringing their own produce such as marrows, tomatillos, apples as a donation, or to swap or sell. Natural Worx also stocks local farm suppliers and makers’ produce. Nearby Colyton producers supply the Blackbury Farm honey and the Kombucha soft drinks. Fresh vegetables come from Elbow Farm in Beer and Trill Farm in Musbury. Hand to Mouth Bread comes from Axmouth.

The shop also operates a click and collect service for local producers’ collective In My Back Yard which acts as a hub giving consumers cheap access to local farm produce, and suppliers a better deal than wholesale price. Founder Laura Williams says, “It’s interesting how people turned to local food during the last lockdown. It did drop down afterwards but is already picking up again ahead of the new lockdown. It would be lovely if people would maintain that connection to the local economy and its producers to support resilience of the supply.” IMBY will be providing home lockdown deliveries from Saturday 7th with ordering online and by phone

As a not for profit, Natural Worx partners are paid only for the hours they work. Penny, who worked at the Library opposite for 15 years is serving behind the counter. She thinks “we can’t wholesale change how we do things and throw everything out. We want people to think about small ways they might reuse stuff, so instead of buying a new shampoo bottle come and refill your old one, or instead of having an avocado, pumpkins are seasonal so can we make some kind of dip out of that.” The new community space aims to educate the community how to do those things more easily and sustainably.

https://www.facebook.com/Naturalworxforlife/

https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/natural-worx-cic-for-a-sustainable-seaton

https://openfoodnetwork.org.uk/inmybackyard/shop

https://www.facebook.com/SeatonCommunityFoodHub/

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