Women and girls getting back to rural land thanks to city charity's Northumberland farm project

As part of the wide range of projects that it undertakes, West End Women and Girls Centre acquired a long-term lease on a National Trustsmallholding near Scots Gap in rural Northumberland.

It includes a farmhouse, a barn, a number of outbuildings, a 30 metre polytunnel and two large fields.

Since then, the Elswick-based charity has taken groups of women from their local community up to the site twice a week to plant and growtheir own crops, share their skills and look after the animals that live on the farm.

Groups of girls aged from five to 19 years old also visit during their school holidays for day trips and residential visits.

A £3,000 grant from the Newcastle Building Society Community Fund at the Community Foundation Tyne & Wear and Northumberland is now helping tocover the charity’s increasing transport costs, as well as assisting with the expansion of the farm’s growing area.

The project was set up to give the charity’s members the chance to reconnect with the land in ways that they cannot do within their localurban area and to use the farming skills and experience that they gained in their different homelands.

Jill Heslop, farm development manager at West End Women and Girls Centre, said: “We’ve had women and girls aged from just five up to 83 years oldvisiting the farm, with everyone doing what they can to help out.”