Conservation, history, green living and local self-sufficiency are the priorities for these volunteers.

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Wednesday Aug 26, 2009

Sprucing Up The Mystery Classroom

The school holidays are upon us, and that can only mean one thing: redecorating classrooms!

After instantaneously pledging my support to this noble cause, I realised I didn’t even know Heeley farm had a classroom, so I set off to find someone who could tell me where this mystery classroom was. It turned out to be directly below the office where I spend a few hours every week performing wholesome office activities such as typing, filing, answering the telephone, drinking coffee and asking if anyone had biscuits to go with said coffee.

Upon arriving at the classroom, I was given a hammer, screwdriver and a freakishly long screw, and was put to work levering plastic tracts out of the wall, which the usual classroom paraphernalia of notice boards and posters had previously been attached to. It isn’t half as difficult as it sounds, but it does make you look like you’re a hands-on, D.I.Y expert, which is most definitely a good thing. After a few minutes, I was half-screwing in that nail and prising it out of the plaster, bringing the plastic tract with it, like a pro. As I worked, the resident teacher followed me around the room filling in the holes I'd left in my wake.

Once that was completed, it was time to scour the top layer of gloss off the room’s two bay windows, the skirting boards and the door frames. What initially seemed like a five minute job, turned out to be a task of epic proportions, as the window frame suddenly acquired more nooks and crannies than should be physically possible. The skirting board too, seemed twice as long as it had been before I started crawling around on the floor scrubbing away at it with a piece of sandpaper.

Thankfully, we weren’t alone for long, as helpers drifted in and out throughout the day. Every time I turned around, there was someone different attacking the wood with sandpaper. The classroom was also next to the farm kitchen, so every time someone went for a cup of tea or a snack, they’d pop their head around the door and ask what we were doing - “sprucing up the classroom” - then, if that someone was under ten years old, inquire “why” - “to make it look nice” - and, if they were particularly teeny, they’d then ask why we wanted to make it look nice.

So, the constant stream of helpers and lookers-on kept things interesting, and I was able to quiz the teacher on this hitherto unknown educational service Heeley farm offers. Apparently, they provide vocational training to youngsters who aren’t interested in pursuing an academic route, as well as offering support to young adults with behavioural problems. Even after six weeks, it seemed I still didn’t know half the services the farm provided. I made a mental note not to crash and bang around in the office quite so much, the next time I was tootling between the kettle and the filing cabinet.

Like any self-respecting D.I.Y project, once we started, the workload seemed to double in size, so we’d barely finished sanding, filling in holes, duct taping, and other assorted prep, before it was time to go home. With only two weeks left before the start of the new term, I promised to help paint the classroom the following week - hopefully, it’ll be finished in time for the new term!

Posted by Jessica ( 3:52 PM )
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Wednesday Aug 19, 2009

"How Do You Dig?"

Halleluiah! My second attempt at being a seven-hour archaeologist, and it came to pass that it was partly cloudy with the possibility of light precipitation in the evening (humidity at 83%).

When I arrived, I was dismayed to find I'd misjudged the "wear old clothes" advice, as everyone else seemed to have a custom-made archaeology outfit (work boots, waterproofs) while I'd just dressed in items taken from the 'okay-for-knocking-about-the-house-in' end my wardrobe. Still, mud washes off (thanks, Mum!) and so I dived straight in, determined to give the washing machine a work out (thanks, Mum!) and make some earth-shattering archaeological discovery in the process. But then it occurred to me - how was I supposed to dig? After all, it wasn't like I was digging up something in the back garden. I was poised at the edge of a half-uncovered wall, and suddenly I wasn't quite sure if there was a special knack to this digging business.

Thankfully, asking "how do you dig?" whilst sat in a hole, holding a shovel, didn't elicit the laughter I was expecting, as a very nice lady talked me through the shovel-and-bucket basics of archaeology. The point of the exercise wasn't to see how deep I could dig, but to start at the edge of the partially uncovered wall and chip away at the surrounding dirt, so the brickwork stood out more prominently. When I had a pile of loosened earth, I was to scoop it up with my hands and drop it into a bucket. Once I had a full bucket, I was to take it to the pile of discarded earth and sift through it, just to make sure nothing interesting had found its way into my bucket. I was to work my way backwards from the outer perimeter, sharpening the edges and outlines of the exposed brickwork, rather than 'digging,' as such. I was allowed to remove a few smaller stones if it would clarify the structure's outline, but was to avoid loosening the bigger bricks.

Freshly versed in how to dig, I set to work. Soon, scraps of wallpaper started turning up in the soil I was churning through, and I proudly placed these in my finds tray. It was strange to think that even after the house had been demolished, turned into a farm, and trampled all over by Elvis, bits of wallpaper were still floating around in the soil. I remembered watching a documentary on sustainable living a while back, and how it had pointed out that when you throw something away, it doesn't just disappear, because good old planet Earth is a closed system. If a crack team of a demolition crew, builders, the passage of time, and a goat, couldn't completely eradicate a bit of wallpaper, then what about the gazillions of plastic water bottles, carrier bags and pre-packaged sandwich wrappers we throw away every day? It's a bit scary, to think your rubbish could very well be picked through (and blogged about) when you're no longer around to hear about it.

My interest duly piqued, I started asking the project leaders about the site, and whether they knew anything about the people who used to live there. Apparently, a few members of the public had dropped by to share anecdotes about the street, but most were uncomfortable at the thought of something they remembered, being classed as 'archaeology.' I could completely understand.

Sadly, the day drew to a close without me making any archaeological breakthroughs (although I did end up with quite a collection of wallpaper fragments, and a shiny piece of glass to boot!) but by the end of the day I had cleaned and defined quite a stretch of the exterior wall. I could sit back and see where I'd made an impression, and that made me feel proud of what I'd achieved - even if my poor clothes will never be the same again!

Posted by Jessica ( 2:25 PM )
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Friday Aug 14, 2009

Discard after use

The news made me happy recently as it seems food wastage is finally getting a bit of airtime. The government is saying supermarkets should ban bogofs (buy-one-get-one-frees) as it encourages people to throw away food. Not only this, but they say more people should be growing their own food.

As a nation we throw away a third of the food we buy, and I have no idea how someone manages to achieve this. I feel bad enough discarding the odd errant jar of mouldering pesto from the back of the fridge.

I guess that's another good thing about growing your own food, that you realise just how much love and often frustration goes into creating the food we eat. I'll admit my own growing efforts have been fraught with errors, through being busy with jobs, and often forgetting to water the plants. Also, ironically, because I unwittingly sowed enough lettuce to make even a ravenous goat baulk.

Lettuce army

I suspected at the time that a lot of them wouldn't even germinate, let alone make it to lettuce-hood. But make it they did, and now I'm faced with the problem of how to make good use of  my lettuce army, peeking out at me in eerie formation from their ranks of pots around the back door.

I have to face it: there's too many of the blighters.

But, no sooner was I having lettuce neglect nightmares than a solution came to hand. Eagle-eyed readers may recall my jaunts on the A10 a few weeks ago, where some Transitioners and I guerrilla-planted foodstuffs into an all-but abandoned planter. Well, some little so-and-so has taken a fancy to some of the smaller edibles and made off with them.

Lettuce to the rescue?

A bit of a waste, you might think, to replant an area targeted by peckish vandals. After all, a person prefers to eat more than once a day and they're bound to get hungry again. Following some consideration, though, we thought: "Why let them win?" If the planters seem like they're being maintained, someone may think twice about pilfering the veg again.

So I'm hoping my lettuce won't go to waste: I'm about to go down there now and install them in their new home. I've become slightly attached to Geoff, Bill, Alfred, etc, so I expect I'll be down there regularly to see if they're OK, not too thirsty, etc.

Lettuce do it...(sorry)

I recently gave a friend who lives in a block of flats one of my lettuces (a pure act of kindness, of course). She was so impressed by how low-maintenance it is that she's now talking about growing more food. Hooray for her I say, as she proves that even on a small scale we can all grow something for dinner.

It would be great if more people could learn to rely more on locally-produced food; perhaps even stuff they've grown themselves. Then we could rely less on food being transported halfway across the world, only to stand a one-in-three chance of being thrown away.

Posted by Laura ( 12:00 AM )
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Sunday Aug 09, 2009

Not All Archaeologists Dig Up Dinosaurs - Some Dig Up 1960s Maltesers Packets and Bad Wallpaper

The day of the dig rolled around and I arrived at the farm all prepared, with tatty old trainers and my facebook status duly updated to 'Jessica Thornsby is off to help out on an archaeological dig! Yey!' I was ready and raring to go. And then the inevitable happened: it poured it down.

I nurtured a tiny hope that the team had laughed off the rain and the distant rumblings of thunder, and I'd find them valiantly sloshing around in the mud, just waiting for me to join them. Of course, they weren't. The field was deserted, although they'd clearly been hard at work all week. The outer perimeter of the building had been uncovered, with a thick, curved slab of wall visible in the far left-hand corner. Thankfully, before I could grow too disheartened, a member of staff informed me that the dig had been relocated indoors, where they were washing the artefacts they'd uncovered during less hostile weather. That immediately caught my attention. If I wasn't going to get the opportunity to make my own discoveries, I could at least scrub the mud off someone else's!

They'd set aside a side room for the task. True, it didn't look very Jurassic Park, with plastic washing up bowls full of muddy water, and even muddier toothbrushes apparently serving as the main tools of the archaeological trade, but as soon as I started rummaging through the 'finds' trays, I was hooked. I found a faded pink Maltesers packet with a 2p price tag, and a creased and ancient-looking crisp packet (chicken flavour) that was running a promotion where crisp-munchers could collect tokens and send off for animal badges. Apparently, some things never changed. These finds didn't take much washing, but there were plenty of bits of pottery to be washed, which proved to be just as fascinating as rifling through old junk-food wrappers.

So, I sat down, scooped up a selection of pottery, and began scrubbing away with my dirty old toothbrush. My prized discovery was a 'Made in England' stamp on the bottom of a piece of china with that classic, flowery blue pattern you always see on the Antiques Roadshow, and a bit of mug that had been broken so you could see the shape it would have originally been. I also uncovered scraps of wallpaper, and a nail that was so deformed with rust, it was almost unrecognisable.

As I enthused about my wallpaper, nail and mug discoveries, one of the archaeologists directed me to a shelf cluttered with beautiful, brightly-coloured glass bottles. Apparently, they'd been uncovered when they'd extended the farm. My mug-chip and scrap of bad-taste wallpaper suddenly didn't look quite so spectacular, and I cursed the awful weather for robbing me of the opportunity to dig up my own glass bottle to add to the Heeley farm collection.

As we continued washing the finds, I took the opportunity to talk to some of the professional archaeologists. One of the best things about volunteering, for me, is the people you meet. They always seem to be enthusiastic and passionate about something, and I have nothing but respect for people who are willing to give up their free time to help others, in one way or another. I learned that one of the professional archaeologists volunteering on the dig, had booked this week off work with the vision of going on holiday, but when she'd found out about the Heeley farm dig, had decided that the perfect way to spend her week away from paid archaeology, was doing unpaid archaeology. I couldn't help but envy her. She loved her job so much, that she'd happily do it for free - was doing it for free. Surely that's everyone's dream? I told her she was lucky. "Maybe," she replied "or maybe I'm just a bit sad."

I'd never spoken to an archaeologist before, and I doubted I'd ever get the chance again, so I took the opportunity to ask her everything I could think of about her job. I learnt that no, she didn't dig up dinosaur bones, and that the favourite thing she'd ever uncovered, had been a prehistoric spearhead at a seaside resort down South.

While I was disappointed I hadn't been able to take part in the actual dig, it was on for another week, so I'd get a second shot at being an archaeologist for a day. Besides, I'd felt rather professional, sat there scrubbing away at bits of Victorian pottery and chit-chatting with people who did this for a living. While it hadn't convinced me to jack in my dodgy old laptop, word processor and endless cups of tea, for a life of travel and uncovering prehistoric spearheads, the team's enthusiasm was infectious, and I wanted more than ever to get in the thick of it next week - fingers crossed the pesky British weather doesn't conspire against me!

Posted by Jessica ( 7:03 PM )
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Tuesday Aug 04, 2009

The art of growing your own - and managing projects

It seems you start doing something - copious amounts of gardening in my case - and suddenly you're inundated with offers to do more of it. Not only have I had soil and seedlings coming out of my ears for the last month or two (plant swap, anyone?), with both mine and my group's plants, but last week I started a new part time job where I was swiftly packed off to North Kensington to do some volunteer gardening as a team building exercise.

After disembarking the train I misdirected an old lady (having all the best intentions but - lets face it - less than perfect map reading skills) twice before abandoning my do-good quest and admitting my error(s). Never mind, I soon found the gardens, perched right alongside the Grand Union Canal in glorious sunshine.

Soon after I arrived and while organising tools I got chatting to Joey, the gardens' sole employee, about a project I've taken on in a small plot of land in North London, where I'm hoping to get people with no space and growing knowledge to learn some basic food growing skills. Smallest of small worlds, it turns out he used to work there!

Meanwhile Gardens was a haven of tranquility after the stresses of starting a new job and I soon found myself armpit deep in waders and waist deep in a pond, happy as Larry with a net and the sun warming my back. What a perfect antidote to city living, I thought.

I'm accustomed to strange gardening tasks, and I love getting my hands dirty but it seems funny that I have ended up in charge of a project myself, considering I used to have a reputation for being a hopeless daydreamer who couldn't organise anything much if her life depended on it! It's wonderful what can be achieved with a little enthusiasm, though.

The great thing about Transitions is that many are still in their infancy and there is so much opportunity to lead projects if you feel up to it. For me, it all started in one of our first meetings when we listed - or mapped - possible sites for growing food in our area (there's quite a lot of mapping and visioning, which is basically a way of putting ideas down on paper - and maps - with the aid of felt tip pens, and seeing where they could go).

It's a really exciting time, when there are boundless possibilities to what we can achieve. We're like vegetable crusaders on a mission to create a haven of growth and community; all bright-eyed and bushy tailed we came up with a number of possible growing spaces and then volunteered for whatever we thought we could achieve.

So I put my hand up for the gardens, fenced off in one corner of the park. None of us had any idea what they were used for or by whom, but I wandered in one afternoon and got chatting with some staff, who were incredibly enthusiastic about our ideas. I was really expecting a flat 'no' from them but about a month later we met again to discuss our ideas.

We toured around the space and decided on the best way to provide free courses for people in the area. I agreed to use my community contacts to find out whether we can find enough people to attend them.

I'm emailing and talking to people to try and fuel some interest, and there's been a really warm response from people in the community. It feels like baby steps but it does feel like progress - like a gift to the community, and a gift to myself: I can now say on my CV I have project managed, which looks great!

In the meantime, there's nothing like getting out there and just standing in a pond fishing for duckweed, giggling with a bunch of other people and enjoying nature, nettle stings and all, and I really hope I can be just as hands on when my own project comes to fruition.

Posted by Laura ( 6:38 PM )
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