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Tuesday May 15, 2012

Really Wild Food

The project I work on, Stirley Community Farm, aims to connect people, food and nature. One of the most straight forward ways of doing this is eating wild food!

On Saturday I led a Wild Food Foray at the Farm. We foraged through the fields for dandelions, nettles, chickweed, willow herb, sorrel, cleavers, and more, and looked at common edible weeds in the garden. Then we cooked up a feast with our wild harvest making a wild salad, nettle soup, sauted willow herb, nettle pesto and sampling rose syrup cordial and candied wildflowers.

As well as being free, wild food is good for you and brings you into close contact with nature and the seasons. I'd recommend to anyone to give it a try, and to get you started, here's my recipe for nettle pesto (better than regular pesto according to someone at the event!):

Really Wild Pesto

40g Hazel nuts

30g Parmesan cheese

10 Wild Garlic leaves chopped

2 large (gloved!) handfuls of nettles, blanched and then patted dry

10g sea salt flakes

Olive Oil

For a very smooth pesto put all the ingredients apart from the oil into a food processor and blend briefly. Now with the motor running add enough oil to make a paste consistency. Put into jars and store in the fridge for up to 10 days.

For a more course textured pesto, use a pestle and mortar. Start by pounding the hazel nuts, then add the leaves, then the cheese and lastly add the oil to get a good sauce consistency.

Thanks to Chris Bax from Taste the Wild for the inspiration for this recipe

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 12:51 PM )
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Sunday Apr 15, 2012

Want to be toned, tanned and feel great about yourself? Try volunteering in conservation!

I have friends who swear by army fitness training. They wax lyrical about how great the outdoor workouts are, with activities such as working in teams to move heavy logs. I can see why this is more appealing than subscribing to a gym, but I've got a tip about an even better way to keep fit and active, for free and with much less army-style shouting! Working as a conservation volunteer is a great way to keep yourself fit, whilst enjoying being outdoors and working with others. Conservation group BTCV have even capitalised on this idea by running a programme called Green Gym!

Here's a little run down of just some of the “fitness training” I've done this week:

• Seed sowing in the garden: working out arms and legs by digging and raking to prepare the soil; squats and stretching through weeding and seed planting.

• Doing a bird survey and a guided woodland walk : walking at a reasonable pace over several kilometres (that's not including the normal distance I cover throughout the day and walking to the farm on days when I don't get a lift)

• Fixing an area of fence: aerobic and core fitness training by carrying heavy posts up a steep hill (several times); working out my arms by sawing wooden rails down to size and hammering nails into fence post (generally one arm gets more of a work out than the other, unless you're ambidextrous); Along with team work and satisfaction of getting the job done!

So next time you're considering joining or renewing your gym subscription think about an alternative way fit, whilst at the same time keeping your tan topped up and your social life active, all for free and helping a good cause!

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 8:36 PM )
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Friday Mar 30, 2012

The Perils of a Sunny Day

When you're a volunteer, sometime you feel like you're a superhero – working for the benefit of others, making the world a better place. It's important to remember though that while you might be pretty super, you are not, in fact, super human. This is something that you particularly need to keep check of at this time of year, in the first bursts of spring, as an active outdoor volunteer.

I have a theory that the human memory lasts approximately the length of a season, so that by the time the next one arrives you have completely forgotten that the world had ever been any other way. This always happens to me in the transition from Winter to Spring. As snow drops push through, then daffodils, then bluebells, and leaves and blossom appear on the trees, and the whole world seems to wake up again, every year feels like the first time I've seen it and I still experience the same shock and awe. The days get longer and warmer and I think to myself “How did I survive the Winter??” But the truth is I felt the same way when Winter arrived, scarcely remembering that less than a year before I had seen snow and frost, and jumped in frozen puddles... Having enjoyed cozy evenings in front of the fire for just the right amount of time to erase my memory of light evenings spent outside, it's very easy to get carried away when Spring gets here, especially when we've had weather this March that seems more like June! When the sun is shining, I'm desperate to be outside which is why over the last week or so my days at the farm have been extra busy, packing so much more in one day than we have over the Winter months. When I get home from a days work and the sun is still out, there's no way I can stay indoors. My bike has done more miles in the two weeks than it had in the previous two months! I've explored woods and visited pubs, once more thinking to myself “How did I spend so many evenings locked up indoors??” As soon as the sun goes down, that's when the tiredness strikes and I realise that this morning feels like a very long time ago... And I haven't been able to bring myself to sit at my computer to check my emails, work on the presentation I need to do, do some coursework that is due in at the end of the week, do a job application and prepare for an interview, write my next article for do-it... This is when I realise that I'm not super human, there's no way that I can spend every daylight hour outdoors and still have time to do all the other things I need to do and I have to remind myself not to get over excited. It's only the first week of Spring! The days will continue to get longer, there will be plenty more sunny days, and before you know it Summer will be here. But of course I've forgotten what Summer is like – although this week has been a reminder! - so until then I'll try to get my fill of sunshine, as well as making sure I don't forget about the real world. Who knows, it might rain all next week, which would be great to water our vegetables, top up the ponds so that the tadpoles have got a bit more space and so I can get all my work done. I'm still hoping for sun though!

PS. Oh, and remember to wear suncream...

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 8:12 PM )
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Wednesday Mar 14, 2012

Another First, and Surely Not The Last!

It's now over a year since the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust took over Stirley Community Farm, a 240 acre site just South of Huddersfield, with the aim of making it a demonstration of low impact farming and local food production. We saw many "firsts" in the very early days: first seeds planted, first harvest, the first of the Beef Shorthorn herd arriving... But just because we're into our second year, doesn't mean that we've stopped having "firsts"!

Today was perhaps the most surreal day I've had since starting as a volunteer at Stirley Community Farm. Shortly after arriving, having had a quick check of emails and a cup of tea, I left the unusually quiet office to check that the cows had enough to eat. I was lost in my thoughts as I approached the feed barrier when I did a double take. Sitting in the hay which we feed the cows on was a perfect, beautiful little calf. The first calf to be born on Stirley Farm since we took over the site and launched the project. Having decided that we weren't due to have any calves until April, you might say I was more than a little surprised! Immediately, before my brain had even begun to work properly, I turned on my heels and sprinted back to the office to tell Toby, the only other person on site, and to call the Farm Manager. As we dashed back to the feed barrier, I was half wondering if I'd hallucinated the whole thing! But there she was, happily sitting in the hay, until we disturbed her and she jumped back through the feed barrier to be with her mother. She's sprightly, if a little unsure on her legs just yet, and she spent the day lounging in the sun recovering from her journey into the world and drinking milk.

Days like this are a reminder of why I'm glad to be a volunteer and lucky to be involved at the early stages of such a great project. I'm sure this won't be the last of our "firsts" as we press on with this ambitious project, but I'm really pleased I was there to see it!

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 10:13 PM )
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Monday Mar 05, 2012

Happy Potato Day!

In these days where it seems greetings cards companies have hijacked every single holiday, from Valentines Day to Grandparent's day (which seems superfluous to me when you've got both mother's day and father's day) , you'll be wondering why you haven't seen any cards for Potato Day... Perhaps you'll see one soon (maybe I'll start the craze) because Potato Days and Seed Swaps in general seem to be getting more and more popular. Last weekend Growing Newsome held a Potato Day at the Scout Hut and I went along representing Stirley Farm, doing some activities from my own personal project. In preparation for the day, we bought many different varieties of seed potato which people can buy for only 10p a tuber. So rather than buying a whole bag of potatoes, people could buy as many or as few as the like, choosing from 24 different varieties. I bought 5 different kinds for my mum, including some purple ones and some pink knobbly ones called pink fir apples! There were also cheap fruit trees, seed swap and plants for sale. The idea behind the day was to bring people together by uniting them through food, and to make it easier too for people to grow their own food.

I had a stall doing potato printing with kids onto fabric which will be sewn together to make bunting and to make a banner for Growing Newsome, which can both be used at future events. The kids loved doing the printing as did many of the adults – myself included! For the week previous to the event, I'd been preparing fabric, doing test prints and sewing together a demo strand of bunting... And I'm pretty pleased with the results, even if I do say so myself! The banner that the kids made on the day looks fantastic and I'm sure it will get lots of outings.

My craft and fabric based activities are all a part of my own project, funded by O2's Think Big funding stream. Funding is available for young people between 13 and 25 to apply to run their own project. I applied to run a project to help young people learn about food and nature through art and play, and I was awarded £300 to help me. You can find out more about my project by looking at my project cloud. If you've got an idea, I'd recommend applying, especially if you're already involved in a project as it'll give you a chance to do your own thing but contributing to a much bigger aim, and you'll get lots of support and advice too. After finishing you're first project, you could have a chance to apply for a much bigger amount of money. After I'm done potato printing, who knows what's next...!

 

 

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 11:27 PM )
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Tuesday Feb 28, 2012

Growing Communties

Being a dedicated volunteer on a busy community project sometimes means working weekends and evenings... but these "overtime" duties are normally some of the most rewarding activities, and, in my experience, more often than not you get fed too! A recent weekend event I attended was called Growing Communities which provided an opportunity for the established and successful groups involved in food growing in our area to share their knowledge, wisdom and past mistakes with other groups or individuals who are thinking of or in the process of starting similar ventures into food growing.

Many communities and groups are looking to grow their own food, with many diverse motivations. It seems to me that the Kirklees area is very progressive when it comes to this kind of project, and the stories of food growing in Newsome in particular are worth sharing. Through a series of workshops, people who had been involved from the very start of the venture spoke about how they initially found out what people wanted and expected from a community food growing project (if indeed they wanted one at all!), the early days of Growing Newsome (as the project came to be named) and how the project progressed and defined itself. An important milestone was when the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust finally took on Stirley Community Farm. This couldn't have happened without all the research having been done first and without a receptive and enthusiastic community. So several years down the line, this is where I become involved... It's wonderful being a part of a project like Stirley Community Farm in the early stages of development but it's amazing to look back at all the hard work and effort that went into working with the community to make sure that the farm really fit the bill. Putting in the groundwork means that now it's the kind of project which is truly a pleasure to work on when the community as delighted with the project as we are.

It was great to find out more about the roots of community growing in Newsome and I know that most people who attended got lots of ideas and inspiration. At lunchtime we feasted on soup made from locally grown ingredients, including leeks from the farm, and bread from the Handmade Bakery in Transition Town Slaithwaite, who make all their bread in traditional ways using ingredients from Yorkshire. What better way to really bring home the power of local food than tucking into some?

I always enjoy meeting new people working on similar projects and to see familiar faces from other projects in Kirklees to compare notes with. There are a number of food growing projects in the area but one of the things I think works particularly well is that they all have slightly different aims and perspectives, and in that way, each project compliments one another perfectly. At Stirley Community Farm we're looking at food growing from an environmental perspective with a big focus on providing skills and education through volunteering, whereas other groups prioritise community cohesion, health, and wellbeing as their main reason for being. Because of this, we can all work together and share what we learn along the way...

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 7:47 PM )
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Sunday Feb 12, 2012

A Day Off Well Spent

Guess how I spent my day off from Stirley Farm this week? Volunteering somewhere else! Since September last year, I've been getting increasingly involved with Oxfam and last Monday I went to tell a group of 16 year olds in Barnsley what Oxfam is all about. I've always thought Oxfam was a great organisation, but my interest in them was reignited after hearing about their current campaign – GROW – which is all about making the global food system fairer. As I was getting more involved with local food, it seemed relevant and interesting to also be thinking globally at the same time.

I applied to take part in Oxfam's Change training programme for campaigners, and I was lucky enough to get a place. Before the training, my first campaigning experience on GROW was at RHS at Tatton Park, where Oxfam had a "climate change garden" called When the Waters Rise which won a gold medal and was really imaginative and inspiring. When the time came around for the training weekend, I was a little nervous. I thought that everyone else would have a lot more experience of campaigning, activism and working with Oxfam than me. Soon after I arrived I realised that my worries were unfounded, levels of experience and involvement were varied but we all had lots in common – bags of energy, enthusiasm and plenty to learn from each other! After spending four days in an "alan partridge-esque" roadside motel in Loughborough, we all left with 30 new friends, oodles of passion and a head full of ideas. The first thing I did when I got home was to start a blog and set up an appointment to visit my MP. I had so many ideas about what I wanted to do, but I had to take a measured approach and think about what I could fit in around my existing commitments with Stirley Farm. I used my blog to campaign during GROW week, where I kept a food diary and spoke about various issues surrounding the different food I was eating. I spent a couple of evenings campaigning at Oxjam festivals in Huddersfield and Leeds - speaking to hundreds of people about the GROW campaign left me a little horse! After meeting with my MP, he invited me to shadow him in Westminster for a week which was incredible. I also did training to become a school speaker which is how I ended up speaking at Wellbeing Week at Barnsley College. Hopefully the students left the room knowing a little bit more about the work that Oxfam do internationally and in the UK, and maybe even got a bit of inspiration about how they could get involved.

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 3:39 PM )
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Friday Feb 03, 2012

Getting a Buzz from Training

Working as a volunteer is a good way of getting on the job experience, but if you're lucky enough then you might get to do some training and qualifications as well. Through volunteering I've gained First Aid and Brushcutter qualifications and learnt about many interesting things from Forest Gardening to how to make yurt wheel. This week I went on a course about Bee Keeping specifically designed for community volunteers. The course was at Trafford Hall. which is the home of the National Communities Resource Centre. Having won some funding from the Tudor Trust, they are offering bargain courses for community volunteers, which include food and accommodation, and have a linked small grants scheme where volunteers can apply for up to £500 towards their project. The whole programme seems like an excellent way to give volunteers more skills and greater ownership over the projects they are involved in. It was also a great way to get well fed for a couple of days! I've got another course in March and I can't wait to have another volunteer's "mini-break"! 

The course itself was very interesting and informative, and extremely thorough! We had two days of learning the theory behind bee keeping, from the biology to the practicalities, and in May we will return to have a practical session, although I'm hoping that I'll have a chance to put some of the things I've learned into practice before then. We are due to have some hives on Stirley Farm, and following the course I feel much better equipped to get involved and hopefully if we get the grant we will literally be much better equipped too! Doing the course actually made me feel very nostalgic about university. I studied biology and on my year abroad I did a research project on ants, which have a very similar social structure to bees. It felt great to get back to the classroom! I'd love to do a Masters degree but I know that it would be mostly for my own enjoyment, and that volunteering is the best thing that I can do for my career at the moment. Whilst my training allowance won't get me through a MSc, I'm very happy to be learning about bees and meeting lots of other people working on community projects.

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 9:51 PM )
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Friday Jan 27, 2012

Learning to grow

A little over a year ago, I decided to take the plunge into full-time volunteering. I had dabbled in work days, but I knew that if I really wanted to work in conservation I needed to be brave and throw myself into it completely. Last January I was lucky enough to get a place on a brilliant project down in Devon which involved living in a yurt for three months whilst working on a country estate. Finally I was able to focus my efforts completely on developing my skills and experience in the conservation sector, and even more importantly, find out what my main interests and motivations were. As well as the obvious benefits for my CV, working as a volunteer is a great way to try your hand at lots of different things and find out more about yourself, as well as about the job. I discovered that I really wanted to be involved in education and engaging people with food and farming. And fortunately for me, the perfect project was just around the corner...

Since June I have been a trainee on a community farm project with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust. We're at the early stages of the project and it's all very new and exciting! The Trust took over a farm with derelict buildings and 240 acres of poorly managed land just over a year ago, and now the project boasts a successful half-acre vegetable training area for people to come and learn to grow their own food, a herd of 14 beef shorthorn cattle which will graze the fields extensively to encourage biodiversity and increase wildlife value, and a team of dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers and local supporters. I have been working on the project for six months now, and the pace has never let up! We have been very busy getting the farm buildings and boundaries ready for the cattle, maintaining and extending the food growing area to include an orchard and a forest garden, and organising and running events. I've learned lots and my self confidence has rocketed, but at the halfway point of my placement I still feel like I've got so much more to learn! 

After I've finished my placement, I'm hoping that I'll be able to get paid work on a similar kind of project, but volunteering means so much more to me than CV building. I've met lots of amazing people and had some incredible experiences, and I get a lot of personal satisfaction from knowing that I'm doing something really worthwhile. Food is something that unites us all, but we seem to have got worryingly disconnected from it. Talking about food is a way to engage people with all kinds of issues, from health to the environment. Lots of people are puzzled when they hear that the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has taken the leap into farming, but really it's a very logical step, and one that many conservation organisations are now taking. Cattle and sheep are often the best way to manage nature reserves, with the resulting meat being a bonus by-product. Not everyone can have livestock in their back yard, but anyone can have a delicious, low-carbon, wildlife garden – even if it's just a window box!

I'll be sharing my volunteering experiences here with you, so expect to hear a lot more about food, farming, and plenty more about other projects I'm involved in too!

 

Posted by Charlotte Holgate ( 12:25 PM )
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Wednesday Mar 24, 2010

Boldly going where no wheelbarrow has gone for a while

'This is a bicycle shop'. That was the puzzled response from the man behind the counter as I came in, knee-deep in wellies pushing a wheelbarrow, wearing gardening gloves. One thing it clearly wasn't, was a wheelbarrow shop. I'd arrived at the North London shop via Finsbury Park's most congested road looking like I belonged far, far away in the countryside. This was a high point of the weekend, and had me giggling like a child.

 

Working in community gardening projects, I have found to my amusement, often requires some imaginative thinking, and with a flat-tyred wheelbarrow and ten tonnes of soil to shift, there was only one option.

 

Two men had arrived shortly after we started ploughing into the improbable twin peaks of topsoil and dark, steaming (yes, hot and steaming) compost lying on the grass beside the children's nursery. These two brought fresh muscles and the wheelbarrow in question, but after several backbreaking barrowloads, driving the heavy earth up the plank ramp into the planters, enough was enough. After a few gentle pleas for anyone with a pump, I decided to put one of my special skills to use.

 

Heading from the safe confines of the park, I trundled out in mud-streaked jeans to the busy Saturday streets of Seven Sisters Road. I truly felt, passing the tube station and walking under the railway bridges amid the roar of noisy traffic that I had been transported inexplicably from a day on the farm straight into the heart of London.

 

Being a cyclist, and being woefully inadequate with any form of pump I have become expert at asking bicycle shops very nicely for all sorts of advice and use of their pumps, and to their credit they always come up trumps, and often do it for me if I do the job badly enough. Today, however, after some advice on the optimal tyre pressure for a wheelbarrow I took the barrow onto the street and carried out the operation myself.

 

To my surprise not only did the air go into the tyre, it stayed in there and I got it to the correct pressure, removing the pump to find everything was still in tact. Returning triumphantly along the busy streets we dug like crazy with a full complement of wheelbarrows.

Several hours later, exhausted and well into the drizzling afternoon we had filled eight large planters with soil and compost, and all the fruit shrubs and herbs were planted.

 

Standing back and admiring our work, the last few tired gardeners contempleted what they will look like as they grow, covering the fence, and sheilding the children from the distant but ever-present road. It is such an excellent, big space, tucked away in a corner of the park, shaded by huge London Planes with so much potential, it was really satisfying to nudge it from a two-dimensional grassy area to something which nurtures the growth of some beautiful, edible plants.

 

Hopefully generations of toddlers and their parents will be able to tend the trees and bushes as they grow, enjoying the fruit, and taking an important step to understanding their food and how easily they can grow it themselves.

Perhaps they'll even be driving their own wheelbarrows soon.

Posted by Laura ( 4:50 PM )
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Wednesday Feb 17, 2010

We came, we dug, we conquered

Weilding a mattock like a lame but determined workman wasn't the obvious choice of activity for this year's Valentine's day, but I embraced it nonetheless. Waking up grumpy from a long week involving too much work and not enough sleep, I arrived with trepidation at the portacabin of choice. Not for the first time the kindly and ever-inviting host/station supervisor made cups of tea, coaxing my sleepy head to life.

We chatted for a while until a few more people arrived, and eventually we poured out of the cabin like clowns out of a mini, to get to work. We unloaded Jo's granny trolley with spades, forks, lopping shears and the mighty mattock, all kindly loaned from BTCV (the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers). The only man among us went at a Mallow stump with the kind of gusto you can't help but admire, especially as he had not had much sleep either. There was no stopping him after that.

I started more slowly at one of the buddleias with a fork, trying to lever it straight out of the ground, and soon realised the only thing likely to give was the fork. Then I was introduced to the mattock. Essentially a sculpted post with a double-edged and fairly blunt axe on one end, it's amazing for rattling through unsuspecting soil at a rate of knots. In the right hands. In my hands it smacked into the ground with surprisingly little effect for quite a bit of effort. While I was a sorry excuse for a digger, Jo, a lot smaller in frame than me, was an impressive excavating machine. I thought I'd make up for my lack of mattock prowess by murmuring enthusiastic approval at her efforts. Yes, I was the cheerleading party.

As the land had been abandoned for so long the plants which had taken root there made it abundantly clear they weren't about to give up without a fight. Many had roots like the trunk of a small tree, and pulling them up was like an archaeological dig teamed with a war of wills. Digging down, you work out which direction the root goes, and start chopping off the underground branches. Then when it's all wobbly you heave and twist and hack (and maybe curse a little), and I even jumped up and down on one, while holding onto a nearby lamp post to stop myself breaking an ankle, before finally holding up the slain shrub like a victorious warrior. At least I hoisted it as far as my shoulder, it was extremely heavy.

The land cleared, we tied back a bramble we're hoping to cultivate for blackberries, we swept away litter to discover an old path and before long the space looked about twice its original size. With rainclouds looming we went off for a big lunch at a local cafe, and next week we hope to finally plant our trees.

After all the preparation, endless email strings and general co-ordination of efforts it seems like the end of a little era is approaching, but I feel really proud to have championed an idea that became something tangible, and that hopefully a lot of people will enjoy in the years to come.

Posted by Laura ( 12:00 PM )
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Tuesday Feb 02, 2010

Finding my career through volunteering

I lost count of the times people told me: 'Journalism is so competitive.' 'You'll never make it,' they might as well have said.

This week I'm glad I followed my heart, because I've just been given two more commissions to write articles for a national publication about what I love: the environment and green food production.

It's interesting at the turn of a new decade to look back and see how the decisions I've made carved a path to where I am today. I decided in 2005 after years of doing jobs where I felt unmotivated, that I needed do what I felt passionate about if I wanted to be happy. I decided journalism was for me: I love writing and I love to learn and to share my knowledge with others.

After finishing my degree and a journalism course I worked unpaid in various publications for almost a year, filling in the gaps with part-time temping jobs. Although the hours were changeable and pay varied from month to month, I decided it was worth it to pursue my dream - this was now the only thing I was willing to settle for.

Trying out things that I was interested in gave me invaluable experience, and contacts. Even in 12 months volunteering has focused my career ambitions.

Last January I applied for an internship at The Ecologist magazine. I wasn't sure, when they finally called me up with a month-long full-time slot, whether I wanted this. Luckily friends told me just go for it, I hadn't done environmental stuff before and it would show I'm adaptable. After all, my degree was in nutrition. Good advice, I thought.

During that month I uploaded archive articles on The Ecologist's website about anything from deep sea fishing methods and their impact on fish stocks, to the often toxic chemicals used in furniture and textiles production. I was hooked. What these people were writing about felt like what I wanted from life, it felt like by highlighting these issues these writers were really making a difference. After that there was no turning back.

After I'd finished there an old journalism lecturer sent out an email about a communications internship with the London Cycling Campaign. I'd done some work for them a year or two before, and liked what they did so I called them up and went along for an interview. I spent the next six months working one day a week as their newsletter editor interviewing people, writing news stories and uploading articles on the website. It was great experience, with amazing people. Through this work I made a contact at the Guardian and ended up writing a piece for their Bike Blog. After 11 months of working for free this was my first paid article.

I loved the idea of writing freelance: the fact you can choose what to write about, and for whom. I had been pitching story ideas at various publications for months, without success. It was really daunting and the 'Thanks but no thanks' weren't easy to deal with. Finally, last month I pitched a couple to The Ecologist, and they were accepted. It finally started to feel like all that work was paying off.

If I hadn't developed such a passion for the environment through my volunteer work I wouldn't have found out about the events and projects I am now writing about (I won't give the game away until they're finished, though). The various groups and events I have got involved in have made for good writing practice, even if no-one accepted the articles!

I remember thinking towards the end of last year: wouldn't it be amazing if I could be paid to write about all these amazing projects, and suddenly, it's happening. I know it's early days still and there's a long way to go, but it feels like a really good start.

The same people who said: 'You'll never make it' will probably say: 'You're lucky.' After all that hard work, though, I know different.

Posted by Laura ( 10:00 AM )
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Monday Dec 14, 2009

A land of random vegetables

I don't mean heart-shaped lettuces or carrots with two legs and a head, though I am tempted to attend the Feeding the 5000 event in Trafalgar Square on Wednesday, a free food event featuring odd-shaped veg that would otherwise been thrown away for not being a uniform size/shape. 

No, Transport for London (TfL) is joining the Capital Growth scheme, providing more land for food growing projects like mine across London (and hopefully a new era for amusingly-shaped veg!). The scheme's aim is to provide 2012 food growing spaces by 2012, all run by enthusiastic community gardeners (like me).

Reading into it a bit more I was surprised at just how much land TfL has in London. It's like a wealthy old aunt who's been sitting on a neat and not insignificant pile of cash all these years and you never had any idea. But when you add it up it makes sense.

TfL owns an estimated 10% of wildlife habitat in London. If you don't live in London you may not realise but further out of the city where floor space isn't so scarce the tube lines emerge from their claustrophobic pipes and and some points during the day you get sunlight and such surprising joys as the odd pigeon boarding the train. They waddle on to savour morsels of left-over snacks before hopping out again before the doors shut.

The other joy for a daydreamer like me is that you get to gaze out of the tube windows and marvel at various green bits of London, my favourite being on the District line to Kew Gardens where you actually cross the river. It's beyond exciting, I can tell you. When you think about it though, the green spaces that straddle the tracks are a perfect wildlife corridor, a network of greenery across London.

Thanks to TfL joining Capital Growth there is now a fruit and veg growing plot above Southwark station, which will be tended by locals in a nearby block of flats. Capital Growth is offering funds to support people who have such food growing schemes. I love the idea of growing your veg in unlikely places, it's a little bit anarchic, like saying "people live here and care about this place." Maybe more wealthy aunts will come forward and decide to get their hands dirty, too.

The thought that you could just come across a rogue cucumber or patch of radishes when out walking the dog or going about your daily commute is brilliant!

Posted by Laura ( 12:29 PM )
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Thursday Dec 10, 2009

Making the environment profitable

The way to get the environment to figure in the minds of society is to make it profitable. This is the important lesson I learned today in a meeting with Hackney council.

Hackney is a very young borough. Great, you may think: more vibrant...that's what I thought. Right but wrong.

Due to a massive migrant influx in the last ten years, 29% of Hackney's population is now under 19. That means almost 1/3 of Hackney's residents are in education, which needs funding. If this isn't adequately funded, young people have poor job prospects, which leads to unemployment, which leads to crime. In my borough, youth crime and worklessness are the key council spending priorities, due to Hackney's demographic.

It is hugely important that young people have a chance to make something of themselves, as joblessness in young adults can leave lasting scars and end up costing society, too. This really drove home to me how and why the environment can get sidelined.

But then I thought: this could be a great opportunity for the environment, too.

I felt frustrated that the government bailed out the car industry when they should have taken the brave step of investing in green technologies. Why not help the clean industry of the future, not the dirty ones which use too many resources and frankly haven't made much of an effort to move with the times. The new VW Beetle, for example, does the same miles per gallon as the original model, made in 1945. That's the car industry's progress for you.

What we should be doing is putting our money where our mouth is and saying: 'Goodbye old dirty industry, hello new greener, cleaner, happier way of living.' Kapow. And why shouldn't we? It's our planet, after all, and as far as I can judge, the self-interested big business of the past should have no part in that.

Why not use all those young people needing work to provide a workforce to get a new green scheme off the ground? We need to start our green economy now, if it's going to work.

I attended this meeting out of sheer speculative interest, after the council advertised for community representatives from the voluntary sector.

This was a training day on how to successfully lobby the council to forward the interest of community groups. When I look around Hackney, I see a lot of dirty streets clogged with dirty traffic, but that also means there's a lot of room for improvement. The environment here does need a voice. It's just a case of whether it can be made profitable on a community scale.

Hackney wasn't prepared for the sudden influx of a young population,. This caused a massive spending deficit which the borough is only just recovering from. If we can be prepared and use this demographic to our advantage somehow, we would be laughing.

Posted by Laura ( 4:46 PM )
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Thursday Nov 19, 2009

Pioneering and squishing apples

Groups of rosy-faced people tramping round up to their calves in apples in a giant wooden vat. A pastoral scene from the middle ages? No, my fantasy image of our local train station come Autumn next year.

OK, you can't press apples by foot, maybe I was thinking of grapes. Either way, I'm excited as we've just been given the go-ahead to use a large section of unused land down the side of my old train station to grow apple trees.

After weeks of arranging and rearranging, with everyone being too busy I finally met with Sarah, the station delivery manager for North London Lines. She's not only agreed to turn over a patch of land to us for the project, her company will pay for the trees! We're awaiting risk assessments and are making estimates on how much they will cost, and if all goes well we should be digging the place up by the end of December!

It turns out we're pioneers. Although the company has wanted to get involved in community projects for months we are their first success story. Already Sarah's telling us about other stations with even more space which need a similar group with some ideas. It's really exciting that other people may be encouraged to follow in our footsteps.

Anyway, having handed over the original greenhouses project to a more experienced group member it's nice to be barking up a different fruit tree, and having some success. After all these months of community involvement my life just wouldn't be the same without it.

I've mentioned the idea of planting fruit trees at rail stations as a good way of exposing people to theidea of producing their own food. I really want to keep nurturing this idea, to show people where our food comes from and that the environment we live in should be one that is healthy enough for us to grow the food we eat.

I can't wait to get down there with spades and gloves and actually plant some trees! Now we just have to think of what we can do with the apples once they're harvested. Obviously we want them to go back to the community, so apple pressing is a distinct possibility, then we would give out the juice to the neighbourhood.

I expect people are more likely to turn up with empty bottles than bare feet and rosy cheeks, though.

Posted by Laura ( 3:34 PM )
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