Let's get British nuts back on the menu!

We want to establish a nut-processing hub at Glastonbury Nut Farm, starting with a cracking machine for our own harvests and working towards making processing facilities accessible to other growers too.

Why are you raising money?

You see that bag of nuts Laurie is holding? That took 4 hours of hand-cracking....and don't get us wrong, we love cracking nuts by hand, but in order to grow the British nut industry we need to be able to produce affordable cracked nuts, and this means we need some help from a machine. The nut cracker we need can crack 300kg of walnuts per hour - meaning that we could make this facility accessible to other nut growers across the UK!

Why do we need a British nut movement?

It's estimated that around 99% of the nuts we eat in Britain are imported. Which seems kind of nuts, doesn't it?

We believe British-grown nuts could play a much bigger role in our food system, supporting food security, human health, biodiversity and more climate-resilient farming. Indeed we've been eating hazelnuts in the UK for over 10,000years. But there's a problem: even when we manage to grow them, we don't have enough of the infrastructure needed to process them.

That's why we're raising £30,000 for a nutcracker, to help get British-grown nuts out of their shells and into our bakeries, restaurants, shops and kitchens.

Our story

We're Glastonbury Nut Farm, a 45-hectare farm in Somerset where we've spent the last few years exploring how growing food and restoring nature can go hand in hand.

Through agroforestry, we're bringing trees back into farmland, growing hazelnuts, walnuts and other perennials alongside some annual crops, whilst creating space for wildlife, restoring soil health and building a more diverse farming system.

It's been an extraordinary journey, with some real successes and some fairly humbling failures along the way.

This summer's drought has been particularly challenging. Despite planting perennial crops partly for their long-term resilience, we've had to install irrigation to keep our young trees alive through their most vulnerable years. Our trees are still some way from producing the quantities of nuts we need to make the business viable.

But even with the nuts we do produce, there's another challenge.

At present, we're largely limited to selling nuts in their shells. Without the machinery to crack and process them, we're missing out on opportunities to supply local food businesses, add value to our harvests and make British nuts more widely available.

We're far from the only growers facing this problem.

A nutcracker for a bigger British nut industry

We increasingly realise that one nut farm in Somerset isn't enough.

If British nuts are going to become a meaningful part of our food system, we need growers to work together, share what works (and what doesn't), and develop the infrastructure needed to get nuts from our fields onto people's plates.

On November 26th, we're launching The Big British Nut Project at Ladbroke Hall in London, alongside a screening of our documentary 'The Nut Farmer of Glastonbury.'

It's the beginning of what we hope will become a thriving community of British nut growers, researchers, food businesses and enthusiasts, all working together to build the sector.

Our next big challenge? Cracking the nuts!

We want to establish a nut-processing hub at Glastonbury Nut Farm, starting with a cracking machine for our own harvests and working towards making processing facilities accessible to other growers too.

It would help us make our farm more financially resilient as our trees mature, whilst laying the foundations for something much bigger: a network of growers with the knowledge, infrastructure and markets to make growing nuts a viable option for more British farms.

Will you help us crack it?

We're raising £30,000 to purchase a nutcracker for our processing line, and we'd love your support.

Whether you're a farmer, a food business, a chef, an environmentalist or simply someone who loves nuts, every contribution will help us take a practical step towards getting more British-grown nuts onto the menu.

We have big ambitions, but we're starting with something wonderfully simple: a machine to crack nuts.

Thank you for helping us build a future where more of the nuts we eat are grown, processed and enjoyed here in Britain.

With immense gratitude,

The Glastonbury Nut Farm team