Outcome of the AGM
The TCF Board
The 2026 AGM was held on April 12th at Tyninghame Village hall. This is both a legal obligation but also a chance for us to connect with the community for whom the farm exists, and with whose help it functions.
On the legal side, we confirmed our two new directors, Pete Felton and David Pencheon. We also presented our accounts. We like to be transparent about our business so we can share that we recorded a surplus last year. However, as an agricultural business, we need to go into each calendar year with enough money to pay wages, buy seeds and equipment, for around 5 months as harvests don’t become available for us to sell until May. Our finances are solid for the moment, but we will need to acquire more land in the next year in order to remain viable for the long term. This is because more land will allow us to deliver boxes year-round instead of for just 6 months, which will make our operations more efficient. As a non-profit, once we reach the point that the farm begins generating a surplus, this money will be put back into our mission of promoting community-supported agriculture in East Lothian and Scotland more broadly.
David Barfoot, head grower, also presented a summary of 2025 - “the best growing year I’ve ever experienced”. 2025 also saw us recruit two new growers, Ernest and Mari, grow our wholesale business substantially, and engage with more volunteers than ever before.
Finally we ran a consultation with the attendees - a varied group of regular volunteers, box customers and donors. It was a lively discussion with many points raised. Topics of discussion were our plans, and what we might do better.
There was a great deal of enthusiasm for our weekly recipes. We’ve agreed to build on this by creating a page on the website that will hold recipes for all the crops we grow in a year, and these will continue to feature in our weekly customer emails as well.
There was also a lot of discussion about market stalls. We know people would welcome more ways to buy our veg, but running stalls is labour-intensive. We’ve agreed to look into this, and are investigating staffing market stalls with volunteers. If this is of interest to you, let us know! And, in general, if you’ve got skills you’d like to contribute or a project you’d like to advance, do let us know. We have limited money and manpower, but will do our best to support anything that aligns with our mission and that helps our business or community.
In a similar vein there was much discussion of social media. We’d love to be able to record life on the farm for platforms like TikTok and Instagram, but lack the manpower and skills to do so. If you know someone who’d be keen to help out with this, send them our way!
Following support for the idea we’ve agreed to work towards running a supper club at some point in the year. As above, any offers of help are much appreciated!
Some volunteers said they’d welcome more opportunities to learn when attending volunteer sessions. We will therefore commit to making sure that all volunteer tasks are placed in context and that we include some informal sharing sessions (perhaps over tea) on particular aspects of organic growing. We’ll be trialling this out this Sunday 10th May if you’d like to come along.
Finally we’re going to look into some way to provide more limited boxes (e.g. salad only) over the winter months, however the economics of this are likely to be difficult as our growers mostly don’t work over the winter season.
