Mole Valley Farmers support Live Below the Line

Mole Valley Farmers’ (www.molevalleyfarmers.com) Head of Retail Marketing Andy Skarzynski has successfully taken (and survived!) the Live Below The Line’s five day challenge, subsisting on no more than 50p’s worth of food and drink a day. 

The £250 raised by Andy will go to the Save A Cow (www.sendacow.org) charity which Mole Valley Farmers have supported from its inception, 27 years ago.

Live Below the Line usually involves a budget of £1 per day, but Andy explains: “As my colleague was unable to share the challenge due to illness, I maxed the spending cap and did it on 50p a day.  This made less difference than you’d think, once you have your two ‘value range’ groceries. My diet consisted of nothing more than 1.5 kg Value Range Pasta and 1kg Frozen peas for the 5 days, which makes a big pot of very boring, but ultimately OK, sustenance. I actually found the lack of choice was as much an issue as the lack of volume of very repetitive food. The real problem was trying to survive with no real coffee!

However, the experience did drive home the message of how, in our affluent society, we take for granted the incredible amount of choice, freedom and ultimately wealth with regard to food and daily spending. I would certainly recommend the experience to others, as a quick and easy way of ‘resetting the dial’”.

The sponsor money raised will go directly to communities in Burundi and, within months, will help them grow food to feed their families. This fulfills Mole Valley Farmers’ first pledge in support of Send A Cow’s Planting Hope Appeal 2015.

Send a Cow was set up by a group of Christian dairy farmers from the UK in 1988. Outraged at EU milk quotas which were forcing them to slaughter healthy dairy cows, and in response to an appeal from Uganda for milk, they embarked on a project which was set to become an innovative and practical charity. Uganda was just emerging from a long civil war, communities and their farmland had been destroyed and much of the country’s livestock wiped out.

Send a Cow is now a very different organization, but remains true to its roots, as it is still about farmers working with farmers, learning how to make a living from the land. 

Mole Valley Farmers will support Send A Cow charity, when they once again share the show stand at the North Devon Show, Umberleigh on Wednesday 5 August.
Also during October, Mole Valley Farmers will be hosting three special Keyhole Gardens at it South Molton, Holsworthy and Yeovil branches.  These will be created by Send a Cow workers at special African Garden Days; see local press, www.molevalleyfarmers.com and social media for further details and forthcoming dates.