A North Somerset farmer is setting up a new "grow your own" arm to his business to help struggling families beat the credit crunch.

Richard Sibley, 62, is opening up parts of his Village Farm in Cleeve to people who want to grow their own vegetables in an attempt to reduce their food bills as family finances tighten.

Mr Sibley, who has been a pig farmer for three years, is planning to plough five acres of pasture land at his farm for local people to grow their own food.

Crops are likely to include vegetables such as carrots, potatoes and cabbage and fruits including as apples, rhubarb pears and strawberries. People will also be able to keep animals, such as chickens, goats and bees at the farm as part of the project.

Besides encouraging people to grow their own, Mr Sibley is hoping the project will help his pig farming business.

He will be asking people who join the group, called customer-growers, to pay an agreed amount each month by standing order which will be offset against the cost of buying meat produced at the farm.

In return they will be able to take any vegetables and fruits they cultivate home free to the dinner table.

Any surplus crops will go on sale at the farm gate, with the funds being ploughed back into the running costs of the project to buy seeds and other equipment.

Mr Sibley said: "Allotments are in very short supply and many councils do not have the funds to buy more land for that purpose.

"More and more people want to grow their own vegetables and live a more organic lifestyle on the back of programmes such as River Cottage and I thought that by setting up a project like this it would allow them to do so.

"Village Farm is a two-pronged approach to supporting farming, because as well as encouraging people to buy my meat and ensure my business is sustainable, it also offers people the opportunity to grow their own vegetables."

Mr Sibley, who started off his farming career with just four weaning pigs, said that so far more than 50 people had expressed interest in becoming members of the customer-grower group.

Work to cultivate the crops will be shared among the members, with Mr Sibley taking overall responsibility for the project.

He said: "It may be that a handful of people want to keep chickens here, so they would be responsible for sharing the job of looking after them. Others may be more interested in growing just vegetables.

"They estimate that an allotment takes 30 minutes a day to keep up together and the idea of people sharing responsibility for the land and crop is an ideal way of growing, especially these days when people are working and busy and cannot always allocate time each day to a project. By getting a group of people to work together on the project, we will be able to grow crops efficiently.

"There has been a lot of interest in the Village Farm locally which just proves that people want to grow their own food, not only for health reasons, but also to keep costs down.

"It is also a wholesome activity which the entire family can get involved in and children can learn about where food comes from and what goes into it."

He hoped Village Farm would inspire similar projects elsewhere.

For more information contact Mr Sibley on 01934 838709.