Vandals broke onto an allotment where a volunteer was growing food to give to people struggling with the cost of living – and poured salt over the land to stop anything being cultivated there.
Carly Burd wept as she explained how she was heartbroken by what had been done, saying she estimated 5kg of salt had been used.
She had transformed her garden in Harlow, Essex, into an allotment to provide free organic fruit and vegetables to those on benefits, pensioners people on low incomes.
But Ms Burd said someone had jumped over the wall in the night and poured salt over the soil.
“It means everything I’ve planted won’t grow,” she said through her tears. “And I can’t replant on it because it won’t grow.
“So all the hours and hours and hours of work we’ve put in is now dead. And they’ve done it everywhere.”
In video footage of the allotment, salt can be seen in lines across the surface.
Ms Burd, who has multiple sclerosis and lupus and is herself on disability benefit, said she had fed 1,613 people during the cost-of-living crisis. She makes food boxes comprising homegrown fruit and veg, as well as staples such as rice and pasta.
She made all the planters from old wood and grows everything from seed in her allotment.
Addressing the vandals who sabotaged it, she said: “How could you do that - literally? I hope it makes you happy, I really do. Top person.
“But you know what? You won’t stop me,” she vowed. “Because I’ll just pick it all up and carry on.
“OK I can’t plant in this section, but you won’t stop me whatsoever.”
After Ms Burd’s video went viral on TikTok, donations to her online fundraising page for her project, called A Meal on Me, began pouring in, and reached about seven times her initial target of £4,000.
In a video published hours later, she thanked wellwishers for the donations, saying she was overwhelmed by the supportive comments, but said she was still “absolutely heartbroken”.
She had revisited the allotment, she said, and all she could taste was salt in the air.
She was in tears again as she recalled how children had helped her plant onions for 300 families and had been excited to learn that the veg were destined for people in need.
The vandals also targeted five rows of potatoes, ruining that crop too.
“The amount of work that’s gone into that allotment - I can’t even begin to tell you - is unbelievable,” she said. “I don’t benefit from this.
“And it’s not just me - it’s volunteers loving what I do and wanting to join in, which is what I wanted - to bring the community closer.”
Commenters online said police should try to trace people who had bought a large quantity of salt locally.
Ms Burd pledged: “It won’t stop me, I’ll carry on. I’m just very heartbroken at the moment.
“I just think it’s cruel. It’s so wicked. Why? Literally, why would you do that?”
She said the culprit must be a grower themself to know that salt kills everything in the land.
“It was over 5kg worth of salt. It wasn’t a child going through his mum’s kitchen cupboard and doing it just for fun.”
With helpers, she had managed to dig up a lot of the salt poured on the ground, she said, thanking volunteers who had helped.
Covering the salt with topsoil should neutralise it somewhat to possibly grow something in future, Ms Burden said.
But she hoped to turn the area into a seating area for the elderly, where they could gather for tea, cake and chats, as well as a cooking station so people from various ethnic groups could take turns at cooking meals.
