Spring has well and truly sprung at Tir Coed and they’ve been enjoying an incredibly busy start to 2022.

Their 12-week winter Sustainable Woodland Management courses all came to a successful conclusion in recent weeks with 26 trainees completing the courses and 25 of them gaining accreditation across the four counties.

A further 16 participants completed Welcome Week courses in woodlands in Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion and Pembrokeshire.

Tir Coed are now in the full throes of delivering their AnTir Feasibility Project in Ceredigion. The enthusiasm with which AnTir activities have been greeted underlines a real appetite amongst the public for help in learning how to produce their own fresh food while also gaining skills to fill local vacancies. It also further illustrates the importance of the work Tir Coed is doing to tackle food poverty and address health and wealth inequalities across west and mid Wales.

Thanks to a successful Community Lottery Fund Awards for All bid, they will now also be moving forward with a pilot growing project in Pembrokeshire, where they hope to replicate the successes of the Antir pilots in Ceredigion.

The pilot will see them working in partnership with Pembrokeshire Foodbank and other local referral partners on a 12-week growing course at Cilrath Farm, Narberth.

It will enable them to grow fresh food for local people and local food projects, and with two enthusiastic local tutors already recruited, they will be supporting 12 people to acquire the growing skills needed to grow food for themselves and their communities from the end of May.

Tir Coed is keen to hear from food banks, food projects, land owners and community groups who would like to work collaboratively to boost local food production and land-based skills. Contact Teresa at [email protected].