Meet the team - part 2

Meet the team - part 2

Jan 23, 2025Calixta Killander

Greetings from what feels like the longest January in memory. We’ve been absolutely slammed this week and short-staffed for various reasons, but the team that has been here have really pulled together. With a big storm on the way, we’re very worried about our polytunnels because we’re still midway through repairing the damage from the wind a few weeks ago. Right now, the focus is battening down the hatches to minimise further damage, and the team has done an incredible job of getting the most urgent jobs done.

Regarding seeding for the upcoming season, things are slowly kicking off in the greenhouse. We are still waiting for quite a few seeds to arrive, but we've got our first onions sown, and our first salads are going in the polytunnels, which is exciting. We're also adding extra insulation inside our propagation house to try to keep it toasty and reduce our energy costs.

And now....we continue our “Meet the growing team” series, with an introduction to three more of our growers seeding, growing and harvesting your crops this year.

Meet the amazing Paul. Aside from Calixta and the horses, he’s been at Flourish the longest. He’s got his own fleet of tractors, including an enormous blue Landini (that always breaks down and needs very expensive repairs), a very small nifty Massey Ferguson that we all adore and a lovely little blue tractor called Little Blue (or Bluebell) who does a lot of our polytunnel work because it’s so small and nifty. Paul basically taught Calixta how to drive a tractor and helps with loads of our tractor maintenance and troubleshooting all season long. 

He's local, growing up on a farm just down the road and is so knowledgeable and experienced as well as a wealth of entertainment. In the winters when we’re not doing loads of tractor work, he advises us on building projects including polytunnel construction. He is also a really skilled carpenter and helped build out the Flourish Farm Shop. We've got lots of cool things in the pipeline with Paul this spring in terms of building and then he’ll be back on the tractors all summer long which we’re really excited about. Favourite crop? Brussels sprouts.

Katie came to us last year with a background in bakeries and cafés. Developing an interest in produce, Katie started to build relationships with the local farmers that supplied the places she worked and, moving down from Manchester, she was looking for a new adventure linked to food and produce, and landed on our doorstep where she’s now bossing harvesting and packing and handling relationships with lots of our lovely chef customers. Favourite crop? Fidalgo Roxa chillies.

Josh also joined us last year. Originally from Newcastle, he worked developing local energy projects but got sick of writing reports and sitting in meetings so went WWOOFING, working on farms in Devon, Gloucestershire, Oxford, France and Italy, then spent some time on a farm up in Northumblerland that bred rare breed livestock alongside a market garden before deciding to make the move and join us here at Flourish. Favourite crop? Black Magic kale.

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