Grow to Eat is a new local food project in Camuscross and Duisdale, two small crofting townships in Sleat, on the Isle of Skye.It aims to encourage local people to grow food for their own consumption to benefit the environment, household finances as well as general health and fitness.The community has no shop of its own and the purchase of even basic groceries requires an average round-trip of 18 miles which, with rising fuel prices, are impacting heavily on household finances. The idea, therefore, is to encourage people to ‘grow local’ and reduce the number of trips to the shops for fresh produce. Any surplus produce can be traded or sold in honesty boxes and at our Crofters’ Markets.

The project is centred around a wide-ranging series of workshops including gardening skills, crofting skills, food preparation and cookery demonstrations which are delivered by a team of experts and professionals – many of them local people. Additionally, croft land has been made available to the group with a number of individual plots on offer to members with limited space at home who wish to establish a vegetable plot. A larger, communal patch is also being worked with the spoils being shared and used to provide for the planned Harvest Meal in the autumn.

So far we have successfully run introduction to gardening workshops, a tractors skills workshop, a family pick ‘n’ make picnic and a day visit to four horticultural enterprises in another community in North Skye – and we only started in May!

Visit our website here for more details.