William meets locals and samples fruit on visit to regenerative farm

HE Prince of Wales met a pig called Ginger Spice and taste-tested a strawberry on a visit to a regenerative farm in South Devon last week.

- by ZOE HEAD-THOMAS

William toured the Apricot Centre in Dartington, which combines food growing with education and wellbeing programmes grounded in nature.

The heir to the throne was taken round the 120-acre farm on Thursday, June 18, starting with the food packaging section of the site, where lettuce was being added to bundles of fresh produce destined for direct customers, market sales and local foodbanks.

The prince also headed to the strawberry patch, where he sampled one of the fruit, after admitting he had already been ‘eyeing up’ the strawberries and raspberries in the packaging area.

He came across one of the resident farm animals, surveying a large ginger pig with black spots, named Ginger Spice, who lives with fellow pigs named after the other Spice Girls.

Farmer Marina O’Connell and her psychotherapist husband Mark O’Connell set up the centre in 2015 by transforming a disused dairy farm using an organic and regenerative approach while also offering wellbeing therapies.