Seedy Saturday, 2012 edition

We attended our second Seedy Saturday in Totnes today. It was great. There was a friendly vibe, the seeds were well laid out and organised and I had a great time. There was a bit of confusion about the entry fee, the stuff I'd read online said one thing and the person on the door said another, which tripped me up a little but we got in. We also managed to make some excellent swaps.

Debating over lettuce seeds while Stephen takes secret pictures of my back

We took with us some of our leftover seeds. As balcony gardener's we have lots of leftovers, a full seed packet is hardly ever going to be used up in such a small space. I decanted them into origami seed packets made from the instructions that can be found in the preview for Gayla Trail's new book over here. They are really fun to make. I used some scrap book paper I'd bought for... well I have no idea, I'm not a scrapbooker... and I love the way they turned out. Someone else at the seed swap had made the same packets and I did a little cheer, knowing I had a seed packet sister or brother out there.

Our Seeds, packaged up and ready to swap

So what did we get? There whre some lovlies this year. I spotted an asparagus pea, although we just ordered our own so we didn't take it home, and there where plenty of interesting varieties about. I got some Oakleaf lettuce which I love for it's crisp texture and good flavour. It's a great sandwich lettuce.I picked up choy sum, some lemon balm and feverfew, none of which I've grown before. A red-cored chanternay carrot came home with us. Leef Beat, Vulkan, is red too which was developed for baby leaves but is 'also excellent' when grown on. A packet of peas which I'll probably grow for tendrils was too hard to resist but the one I'm most excited about is a Broad Bean. Grando Violetto which is listed on Otter Farm as 'unusual heritage variety - the beans turn purple when mature or when cooked although the pods remain green while they grow' Purple? Awesome.

Choices, choices.

They also sold seed potatoes at the event, per kg naturally. After we explained that we are balcony growers and only need one they sold us a single seed potato. Awwww. It's Orla which has a good flavour and is loved by organic growers as it's unfussy. We have plenty of lovely things to grow this year. I'm very excited.

Local Loves: Apple Day

Apple Day was started in 1990 to celebrate apples and orchards and the local food landscape. It falls on 21st October and this year Cockington held their festivities on the 16th. Yesterday. And we loved it. Apple Day is one of our favourite days of the year. Better than Christmas in my opinion. Cockington court is turned over to local craft people, food producers and cider... it's a great atmosphere with everyone sharing the food, drinks and fun. We've blogged about it before  (go check out that post for pictures of the rangers working the amazing Victorian apple press) but every year is different and we managed to stuff ourselves with different foods. Onward to Apple Day!

"Boyfriend! Stop taking pictures and hurry up!"

Blog Action Day: Sharing Our Food Knowledge

In this post I'll be combining Vegan Mofo and Blog Action Day. Blog action Day this year is about food so it's not that hard to combine the two. That hardest part is picking a topic. Food seems to be the most simple and the most complicated thing in our lives. I've picked a topic that is very close to my heart. I want to talk about sharing. Not just sharing food but sharing the knowledge that goes with it.

Everyone is saying it. Days barley pass before another newspaper complains about it. Kids today have lost touch with were there food comes from. I think that's wrong. Young people haven't lost knowledge. They aren't born knowing everything and then forget it just to annoy us. It's our fault. We've failed them. We haven't been passing knowledge down. In some cases we've been failed too. Nobody gave us the knowledge, nobody certainly gave us any confidence, or money for ingredients, or time to cook, or decent kitchens. We're in a mess.

One of the ways I try to dig myself, and my community, out of it is to teach young people how to cook. I've held impromptu lessons with my brothers, roped kids walking through Occombe farm into a quick lesson on herbs and vegetables, I've helped at cookery classes for young people and grown-ups alike. One of the best things in my life is volunteering for Girlguiding UK. And you can be sure I've slipped some food into that.

Actually it's not all that hard to combine food and Guiding. It's one of the things we're famous for. Most, if not all of our planning also comes from suggestions from the girls and they suggest eating an awful lot. It's almost always the first thing mentioned when asking my Brownie unit what they want to do this term. We're always happy to oblige.

Food Issues: Tomatoes and Slavery

When I started out writing about this topic I knew I was in over my head. Like way over my head. I wondered if I could do justice to the subject. I'm still not sure. But I don't just want to sit on the idea of perhaps one day writing this post. So I'm going to recommend you read this.

It's the old story happening again and again around the world. Gangmasters supply workers, who are often indebted to them and/or sigh up under false pretences, to farmers. And every one up the supply chain has no idea (honestly) what the people bellow them are doing. From the conditions the workers are forced to work in

"he expects to spend between ten and twelve hours a day in the exposed tomato fields, picking by hand; bending, plucking and carrying the filled crates. The work is arduous, repetitive and hot. The temperature can reach 40C degrees."

Recycling in The Garden

Our first year growing we bought some small pots. Being on a balcony and starting from scratch we've needed to buy a lot of things in: endless amount of compost and the big tubs for outside, seeds, plug plants, bare root plants and impulse buys. But since that first year I've never bought another little pot. I just wash out my previous year's pots and hope my plant buying habit would also supply my pot needs.

Tomatoes Latah and Koralik Bask in Their Reused Pots

Pea Tendrils

Peas are such epic germinators that it's wise to start a load off every time you sow something you're feeling anxious about like a new tomato variety or your first cucumber ever. Rather than raising the lid to see if your more delicate specimens have popped their head up you can be distracted by the fierce colour and frantic activity of the peas.

We grew and ate pea tendrils last spring and summer but we didn't keep up with sowing to have a winter supply. Now I'm trying to get back into the habit. Considering how easy it is to start some off - take peas, sow in small pot of compost - and how quick it is to see results I imagine I'll grow quite a lot this year. Plus you get a nice smug glow from growing a posh veg for practically nothing!

I'm not giving anything away, except chocolates

As we're all about sustainability and spreading the hippy love a lot of gifts we're giving this Christmas are hand made. There isn't much I can reveal right now, Stephen is getting some hand knit socks and the more traditional family members have stylish cards from Jessica Gully Design. The rest is though is a bit of a surprise.

Volunteer Party with Spinach and Pine Nut Parcels Recipe

Another impressive spread was put on last night this time by the One Planet Food team at Occombe Farm. Plenty of snacks where provided along with two soups from the garden - spiced squash and leek and potato - and plenty of fabulous hand made breads. The table was even more impressive as far as we were concerned because every vegetable used, except for the carrots, came straight from the garden that we've been working on all year.

We watched a slide show towards the end of the evening that brought across just how much work was done. Was saw the year in 5 minutes and it made us appreciate just how much has been done, this year, to get the pig field into a functioning vegetable garden. There's now a clay oven, two poly tunnels and god knows how many plants. It's very, very cool.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

It's the end of my second Vegan MoFo and while I won't have enough brain power left to analyse how this month has effected me for a few days yet there is absolutely one thing that is beyond doubt. None of this I could have done alone. My occasionally blogging but mostly silent partner Stephen.

One Planet Stir-fry

I'm just going to open this post with one thing: no Dad, we didn't get snow today.

Did that stop if from being cold, however? No it did not. It was so cold we couldn't mark out the new forest garden at Occombe at today's volunteer day. Instead it was tidying up. One of the things that isn't particularly pleasant to tidy up are the perfectly edible, yet odd looking leaves out of the polly tunnel.

Chard and oriental greens: if they have holes in them people won't buy. So we had to go through the rows picking out the imperfect giving the young, new growth chance to thrive. Of course neither the volunteers nor the gardeners like waste so it got given to anyone with a bag and a desire to eat a lot of greens.

Harvest time: drying things out

Our balcony isn't know for how spacious it is. Especially not with all the plant pots. And it's especially cramped at the moment being cut across with a row of beautiful golden shallots. Briefly they lived in out living room, out of sunlight on baking parchment, a talking point for anyone who dropped by. Then in march they went in to one of our medium sized pots, 34" diameter, in spot that receives partial shade. With a little water and absolutely no fuss each bulb broke into a cluster of stunning autumn coloured gems, growing up and then fattening out. Now they are grown and drying across the balcony to be stored for later use. And that isn't all we are drying out right now.

One Planet Food Pizza Party!

It was incredible to see. Not only had the garden grown, the raised beds we sowed in March overflowing with produce, more volenteers than we knew existed turned up. We'd all arrived for the celebratory meal. We'd pick produce, prepare food in the new kitchen and fire the clay oven (for the first time!) to get perfect pizzas.

The Sweet Taste of Summer

So what have I been up to while Stephen has baked roll after roll after roll? Well eating rolls for one thing, also pizza. But I've also been experimenting with foraging and with preserving. Our flat has been filled with the most amazing smells. The nectary sweetness of elderflower and the pure sauciness of the Great British Strawberry.

The elderflower we've been picking up from walks around Cockington. The last two weekends we managed to get a bottle a time. This weekend should be much more productive, every elder in Torquay seems to be in flower. Even walking to my doctors this morning I saw rows of the buggers. And the first batch was so hard to find...

Aside from smelling delicious they make an excellent cordial for no more than the price of a couple of lemons and some sugar. The past two weekends have made me a complete convert to cordial making. It's a really easy method of preserving and there is nothing like a glass of fruity, sugary water to wake you up in the morning or if you are feeling a bit wobbly. It can even be used to make ice lollies.

A couple of punnets of Strawberries were then turned into a sugary treat, this time with all the water removed. I made a delicious fruit leather. Making fruit leathers is easy and charming, you end up with something far more beautiful than a stained glass window. Not to mention an easily packable fruity hit. I think I'm going to have to try taking some of this on every hike, canoe trip and camp I do this summer. Perfect portable energy.

I'm going to carry on making cordials and leathers out of every fruit I can find or buy cheaply. It's so much fun and so satisfying to put things up for those sugar deprivation moments.

The Last Of Springtime Foraging

The nettles are breaking into flower and the leaves of the wild garlic are looking wilted. The fantastic foraging of springtime greenery is nearly over for the year, at least around Torquay, but there is still a couple of weeks or so to enjoy pickings.


The first thing I've preserved this year is Wild Garlic Oil. A book I was flicking through and have since forgotten mentioned it (along with putting wild garlic in tomato sauce which was yum... I wish I could remember that books!) no recipe but not that hard to cobble together. I roughly chopped some wild garlic leaves and covered them with oil in a jar. Left in the pantry for two weeks it came out yesterday for a good strain, bottle and labelling.


Wild garlic flowers are out right now and they have a pleasant garlic taste and a show stopping look. Especially if you take more care with your salads than I do! Also in my salads are foraged garlic mustard leaves. Other offenders in that salad are home-grown rocket, oak leaf, salad bowl and baby chard leaves, croutons and some west country blue cheese that we picked up at a food fair.


And, of course, wild garlic (yes, it is rather a theme isn't it) makes an incredible garlic bread made with one of my home made baguettes. The sauce on the pasta is a basic tomato sauce with nettle leaves thrown in at the end until they are just wilted. And no, not stinging.

The Birthday Books

I love my Boyfriend. He bought me books. Well not just because he bought me books but we all know I'm rather obsessed with books so... No, really I do love him for many other reasons. Like how he manages to look prettiest first thing in the morning when I'm at my grumpiest and other things you will no doubt find nauseating. However this post is about the books he (lovingly) bought me for my Birthday and which I've spent all weekend practising with.

First up is the one that's actually about cooking. This was my surprise book. I mentioned that I'd like a bread making book that was a little more advanced, a little more artisan breads and a little less 'see how quick and easy it is to make your own bread at home'. Frankly I wanted beyond quick and easy. I wanted more kinds of bread. I wanted something that saw bread as serious.

I didn't quite want as much detail as there is in Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes at least I wouldn't have chosen it for myself (Stephens belief in my intelligence is reassuring, if misguided) but reading it (much in the same way as Joyce, ploughing through with the faith that I could go back on my confusion later, although with Joyce I never did, see the last lot of parenthesis) and working with it I've come too a truce with it's depth. Or perhaps it's more Stockholm syndrome; I love it for it.

Well not all of it. Granted it's a bit Western-centric - there is an Aloo Paratha as a nod to bread culture elsewhere - but then books like this generally will be. And as an American book all the home baking measurements are given in imperial. Which confuses me only in that they have points of ounces and we have fractions (and if you have point something why not have metric? Metric is nice, metric is easy. Honest!) and confuses Stephen because the scales are being left on imperial.

For my fist experiment I went for Baguettes with Poolish. They aren't anywhere near perfect. The scoring looks like the diagram of 'improper scoring techniques', the crust is cracked and the crumb is a bit too uniform. But I love them. Almost as much as Stephen.


On to the gardening books then! No surprises here, he bought me The Edible Garden. We kind of adore Alys Fowler. There is the red hair, the quirky dress sense, the enthusiasm and that is without coming to the bits where she is interested in skip diving, foraging and other things we find super exciting. In fact it's kind of a running joke in this flat that if Alys says so, we have to do it.

With The Edible Garden she is after our own hearts mixing attractive edibles and the purely decorative to get a productive garden that looks good. Also foraging, skip diving, preserving, baking and having a quirky dress sense and red hair. It adds up to a book that you can simultaneously open up and loose yourself in and get fantastic practical information from. No easy feat looking at the rest of my bookshelf.

As a nice bonus it has an (all too short!) recipe section. So I had Chard, Garlic and Hot Pepper with Instant Noodles with my own home grown chard for that extra smug taste. It was delicious.


Finally Grow Your Own Drugs: A Year With James Wong, also not terribly surprising. We love Grow Your Own Drugs, okay me quite a bit more than Stephen, for the sheer ingenuity and horticultural geekery. And how cool is it to have a book that discusses natural remedies and skin care stuff by bragging about the chemical contents in plants rather than knocking modern medicine and claiming to be chemical free. Very cool, that's how.

For a test drive I went for the Oats and Chamomile Bath Bag. Both precious emollients that hopefully would let me have a bath that benefits my eczema rather than irritating it (if you're wondering 'why have a bath at all then?' my eczema gets irritated then too. My skin is in a constant state of loose-loose.)

I suffer from eczema on my lower legs and occasionally -though rarely - higher up. It's manly a problem in summer (heat) and winter (dry) letting me be in spring and autumn. Although the prolonged winter weather gave me no respite this year. I manly let it be, treating with emollient cream and avoiding anything likely to cause agony, like scratching.

I only seek medical attention if it's particularly bad. Although a dose of topical steroids can clear it up rather quickly applying it is irritating and uncomfortable. I know. It sucks. So I only show my legs off to the doctor when they are over run or infected, and yes they are rather hairy. I'd rather be a laughing stock than in constant pain.

Anyway, that's my medical history. Back to the bath bag. It was luscious. It felt lovely in the bath and not only didn't it irritate my legs any further but it reduced the existing irritation, the itchiness and the pain. Cool.

Gardening with piggies

It's that time of the month again! The worn out one. But nice worn out. The worn out that means you have done something. On saturday we were back at Occombe for the One Planet Food Project volunteer day.

We have fewer pictures this month. Most of our jobs were of the necessary but unglamorous variety: mucking, weeding, mulching.

Our first job was in the herb plots. We all got together sorting and laying out the herbs ready to go into the soil. We met two new volunteers and chatted with them about the herbs. In Torbay on placements they are from Colombia and Germany. So we had some explaining to do about herbs in British food and swapped some tips. Thyme tea, for instance, to ward off a cold.

After the herbs Stephen and I broke off to fetch wheel barrow after wheel barrow full of poop. It was time to muck the fruit. On the fresh mulch we sowed some poached egg plants which will hopefully look lovely up between the blackcurrants and strawberries. Good for bees too.

Then it was all together again for the weeding. Lots of weeding. By the beds, by the willow, every place there were weeds. We didn't waste them though. The pigs at the top of the field where getting fat off our hard work. And I got very excited because I got to feed the piggies.


After we weeded we put down another layer of mulch, wood chips in this case, to suppress anything we may have missed or anything that thinks they can make a go of it now. I practised my raking around the willow. On the other side of the living fence though a wild flower bed was being prepared.

After the fresh compost was put down we walked over it to pat it down and then chucked on some wild flower seeds mixed with sand. It will be fun to see what pops up.

Flower Power

The Forage

I've foraged for dandelion flowers before. Last year I made a fowl tasting sore throat remedy to help me get through my endless colds. I put it in green tea to hide the taste. Eventually my taste buds must have told my throat to knock it off already. And that's how you cure the common cold. Revulsion.

So boiled to death and sugared up they taste awful but there is a well-known fact in our flat. If Alys Fowler says so we have to try it. So after watching her make dandelion fritters of this week's episode of The Edible Garden we really did have to.

Hers were dipped in pancake batter and fried so we did a twist on the traditional and used the (American style) pancake batter from Vegan with a Vengeance adapted slightly. The recipe is enough for around 15 dandelion heads which is a perfect for two people as a snack. Any leftovers can be used to make a tiny pancake.

Dandelion Fritters

For the batter:

• 40g plain flour
• 2 teaspoons vegetable oil
• 3 tablespoons water
• 75 ml soy milk
• a drop of vanilla extract
  

And:

• 15 dandelion heads
• icing sugar, for dusting

1. Whisk together the batter ingredients. Try to get it as thin as humanly possible. Or cheat. We use the whisk attachment on our mini blender.

2. Heat the pan with a little oil test that it is warm enough by dropping a bit of batter in. It should sizzle.

3. Holding the flower by the green back dunk it in the batter and splat it into the frying pan, yellow down. Do about half the flowers at once.

4. Once the bottom is browned, which should take no more than two minutes, flip over. You may need to push it down a bit with the spatula to cook evenly.

5. Once the other side of the fritter is browned remove from the pan and cook the other half in the same way.

6. Dust with icing sugar and eat.


The Pansy Problem

This pansy was supposed to a violet. I went shopping for violets. We walked up to the local B&Q and Focus. We comparison shopped for violets. I decided on the basic violets being cheaper and a mix of colours. I came home with pansies placed on the wrong shelf. Oz. I planted them anyway, fully prepared to resent them. But I love the colour of this one, and it's velvet soft petals. So perhaps pansies aren't so bad. Violets next year though.


The Promise

But by far the most exciting flowers we get are the ones that turn into food. There are a few strawberry flowers poking up right now and masses of black current. I know food plants aren't supposed to be beautiful and you are supposed to hide them away in a plot or patch rather than a garden proper but come on... who can look at this and not be excited. And who can say it isn't beautiful.

Grow Box

Around here exciting things come in boxes. Today especially. Our Box To Grow came. It was packed with all these goodies

"Lettuce Eluarde (Red Oakleaf) x 3
Lettuce Hardy (Green Oakleaf) x 3
Rocket x 2 Mustard x 3
Rainbow chard x 3
Swiss chard x 3
Spring Onion x 3
Beetroot x 4
Parsley x 2
Mint x 2
Coriander x 2
Parsley (Pot) x 1
Mint (Pot) x 1
Coriander (Pot) x 1
Peas (Packet of seeds) x 1
Radish (Packet of seeds) x 1"

I have some space in some pots going free and I went out to buy one more. But I knew it was going to be a squeeze. I didn't know it was going to be this much of a squeeze though! I sat there, the plants and myself wilting in the April sun trying desperately to invent room. Here is what I went for...


The Beefsteak Tomatoes where also due out today so I desperately thought what the hell can I inter crop with them. The tomatoes take up lots of vertical height but they are thin enough to have some company, at least with some fast growers. In the small pot I spread around some spring onions and beetroot. The beetroot will only end up small but I have another two varieties elsewhere so I'm not loosing anything to produce jewel like little ones.

The large pot has one of the Beefsteaks towards the camera. Again it's the idea of tall and thin. Surrounding it, again quick croppers, are spring onions in a rough semi circle. Beyond that, on the side with the sea, I went for fat but short as not to overshadow the toms. I put in the Chard and some Rocket which I put next to the chard and then got muddled with... oh well, it will live. With luck.
The next planting point was around the Blackcurrant. In it's first year it's going to be unproductive so some short lived Green Oak Leaf lettuce, coriander and parsley will give us something from the space while hopefully keeping weeds down and reminding us to water.

Then I really was just inventing space. I filled up one of the boxes it came in with the mint, and one of ours from last year. It may get a more permanent home. We'll see!


Then with some of my perennial herbs went the mustard and the rocket. The space was kindly vacated by the mint above and a rosemary that we have stripped this winter. I think I'll have to get a bigger one this year. But for now I'm glad of the space. Another box I sowed peas for pea tendrils. Yes we did watch The Edible Garden last night and I am wondering what the chances of an non-alcoholic peatini. Again, as for it's longevity we'll just have to see.

Okay now everyone, group shot!

Everyday Stuff

Gardening, unlike blogging in some respects, isn't just about the exciting first steps, the big project and the grand finale. Especially at this time of year it's more to do with the little steps. The unglamorous jobs. So in that vein here is half an hour in the life of me and my plants.


The Preparation

It's the start of April so I pull my lists down off the wall, unearth all the seeds that I'll need for the coming month. I do my daily task of putting out the babies in their little cloches. I pick jobs for the day. I need to sow beetroot later this month in my salad trugs so the winter salad needs to go. My butterfly annuals also need to go in so I'll manage some nice, nectary colour later in the year.The Legacy of Winter
Butterfly annuals sown it's time to take up the winter rocket. Now is a good time to take stock of the winter crops. My insurance policy of kale failed. Most likey drowned out by the spinach beet and chard who have grown vigorously in November then steadily over the cold season. I've been eating the chard over winter. It's livened up my plate to no end this week. And the spinach made a special appearance at Christmas.

The salads where less successful. Mainly through neglect. I never did get that jumper for them. The lettuces survived until, as I mentioned, they where snowed on. The onions came to nothing. The rocket on the other hand could not be stopped. Until it bolted that is. I left the flowers untill I needed the pot for something else and pulled them up today.
The Appreciation

No trip onto the balcony is complete without an appreciation of all the wonderful things growing out there. For special mention I selected this Snake's Head Fritillary which was planted from Sainsbury's own bulbs. Looks good enough to be made into a handbag. Between this and the crocus I think I did well with my bargain basement bulbs.

Coming into The Warmth

The newly sown babies and indoor plants needed a good water. Can you tell what this one is? It's a peanut, just opening. There are two others in the pot and they make attractive plants. And good conversation pieces. You know, if we weren't antisocial and had people over.

One Planet Food Project, One Exhausted Blogger

Yesterday was the One Planet Food Project volunteer day at Occombe Farm. Stephen used to volunteer for the Coast and Countryside Trust over at Cockington so when we heard about this project that involved weekend volunteer days and the chance to take part in a community growing project we knew we had to get involved.

We arrived apologetic and late after walking the four very hilly miles between our flat and Occombe. Before I moved here It was hard to imagine how far four miles really could be... not any more.

As we arrived jobs were being given out. The beautiful onion sets, shallots and Jerusalem artichokes pictured above were all to go out yesterday. And yes, that is some oca nestling amongst them.


Our first job was a decorative one though. One that my balcony only experience had actually trained me for. We washed (yes the inside and the bottom too, despite Stephen's objections) this wonderful tub. It's a reclaimed mixer bowl. And yes, we drooled thinking about how much bread we could get in that.


We put in some rocks for drainage (although at the time we couldn't find many. Later when digging a bed over we wondered were they had been) followed by some grit and lovely Devon mud. The soil here is very much clay. And red. The idea is that a layer will help retain water in the pot and, unlike the rocks, there was plenty of soil knocking around. Although it was mainly stuck to our tools, clothes and wellies.

Then it was time for the compost and the lilies. We covered it with grit and stuck in some twigs to remind us where the plants are going to appear. So at the moment it just looks like we are growing baby willow. But wait.


Our next job was to dig over bed number 14 ready for the shallots. This is were we found all the stones. We also found out that Stephen is a natural with a folk and I am useless with a spade. After digging over we topped off the bed with a bit more compost and buried the shallots up to their necks. It would have been much easier if we weren't being watched...


By these cuties! Some very, very, very mucky pigs. They were a major distraction. At least halving productivity, especially when they were being fed. After the pig watching we teased a baby bay tree into one of the beds.


So on to the job that took most of our day and our strength. We planted a Victoria plum. As far as we're concerned planting a tree is incredibly exciting. Like weekend in Paris exciting. We found out that it's also very exhausting. Like weekend up Everest exhausting.

Our first job was to fill the raised bed. On top of the soil we put in manure and compost, mixing it all together. Then we got to the fun bit. Digging the hole. We took turn at digging, dislodging stones, digging again, dislodging yet more stones. Okay, perhaps there wasn't even enough to build a very small rockery but it was still tiring. The last four or so inches we needed help. A man with better tools, not to mention body strength.

At last the tree was ready to go in. Add a stake (and later a bunny guard) some protective fencing and some mulch and we were done.


While we were planting the tree the whistle blew for lunch. We snacked outside with our picnic box full of yum. Including banana cookies from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar.



Of course lunch didn't go uninterrupted either these chickens legged it over to our bench. They had been comically running about the farm all day and we where more than happy for them to join us.


After the tree we needed something with a little less sediment so we helped one of the young volunteers sow the salad bed. Lettuce, radishes and spring onion. Afterwards we covered them in a blanket of fleece to protect them from the birds and give them a little boost.


I feel a bit bad. This is a very one sided account of what was done yesterday. We couldn't have done half of what we did with the help of all the other volunteers never mind all the incredible stuff they did. It's amazing to be part of a project like this, we'll definitely be going back to watch it grow up and, of course, to do some more digging. But like any volunteer effort what we did as individuals was just a drop in the ocean. It's when you see what we accomplished together that you get a sense of how incredible it is.