M&S Frome

Paulton Larder is a volunteer-led community project supporting our neighbours in Paulton and the surrounding area. We rescue good surplus food and share it with local people who could use a little extra help—no judgement, just practical support. By keeping quality food out of the bin, we cut waste and stretch household budgets at the same time. We rely on community donations and the generosity of local partners, and we’re always grateful for volunteers. Every pound, product, and hour given helps us support more families close to home.

The Caenhill Countryside Centre is set in mid Wiltshire on a 70 acre farm which is run as a rural learning centre. It delivers courses and workshops to involve children and young people in rural outside learning, the rural food chain, countryside crafts and skills. We are supported by a team of volunteers willing to develop the farm into a suitable environment for learning and pass on skills to young people. We are helped by help for heroes and groups that use the farm to improve their members well-being. Our motto touching hearts and living souls sums up the special atmosphere at the farm . We recycle materials for building, feed for animals and the volunteers and forage for items that will benefit the young people and the animals. We are developing links with as many local interest groups and skills providers as we can to enable the Centre to be a thriving and useful hub. Our courses so far have included, agriculture, horticulture, bee keeping, the local food chain, animal management, rural foods, field detectives, foraging, puddling and more. Our latest work is around renovate buildings, repairing workspaces, building rescue animal area, a craft studio, developing a memory woodland, planting crop areas making it a sustainable and usable project.

In partnership with Frome Town Council, Edventure: Frome – a school for community enterprise – challenged its students to help tackle the problem of Food Waste in Frome. A team of 10 students organised pop-up events feeding over 200 people from gleaned and surplus food, ran a workshop at Frome Community college and began looking into the logistics of setting up a Community Fridge – inspired by other similar projects from around the world. Edventure: Frome and Frome Town Council have then supported Project Coordinator Esther Deeks to take this project to fruition. This community fridge is the first of its kind in the UK and a pilot project.