Meet our friends at the Apricot Centre

by | Jan 28, 2022 | News & blogs: Schumacher College

Is the Apricot Centre at Dartington the perfect farm? As well as producing good food ecologically, they run community well-being projects, hold accessible courses and teach young people regenerative farming techniques. We’ve recently worked together more closely with the launch of our MSc Regenerative Farming and their Level 3 course in the same subject. Find out a bit more about this fantastic organisation below.

Drone shot of the Apricot Centre

The Apricot Centre at Huxhams Cross, Dartington. Image Credit: Christian Kay

Our corner of South Devon is home to a truly unique patchwork of small farms and food production initiatives that are take an environmentally-conscious approach to growing, whether through the broad principles of organic, biodanymic or regenerative agriculture, permaculture, agroforestry or just by trying to do small things that benefit biodiversity and nature alongside crops.

The Apricot Centre at Huxham’s Cross is a fantastic example, situated on land leased from Dartington Trust by the Biodynamic Land Trust. We are delighted to say that collaboration between the education provision Apricot Centre and our own teaching faculty at Schumacher College is beginning to blossom, in particular in the new field of regenerative farming. Through the various programmes on offer between our two organisations, it’s exciting to think that it is now possible to learn about regenerative approaches to agriculture from pre-school right through to Master’s level, at beyond.

In this podcast we talk to Rachel Phillips, Education and Well-being Manager at the Apricot Centre, to find out more about what they are doing and to talk about what regenerative farming means for them…

In the podcast Rachel mentions Marina O’Connell’s book Designing Regenerative Food Systems, which is a great place to start for anyone looking to learn more about this subject from a practical standpoint.

For anyone looking to really immerse themselves in this subject and learn about farming at Dartington check out our programmes at Schumacher College via the buttons below.