They say it takes a village to bring up a child.
We agree- but we also think it takes a village to bring up a vegetable garden and to bring together a community. This winter season there has been no shortage of caring and nurturing in our little lottie. We have had art, craft and cooking sessions with plenty of little helpers. We have had roaring fires to cook soup. We have built many raised beds with the help of some diggers from The Co-Op. We have had celebrations and we have worked hard capturing all of the flavours of our produce in little jars before the season passes.
The next task of this inner city village is to build a children’s garden fit for the many families and school groups that visit our site, encountering the wonders of nature. Our aim is to create a site that is as playful as it is educational (as if the two are distinct!) with little hidden spaces and opportunities for growth. Come and help us weekends between 10am and 12pm or join the fun on Saturday 17th December where we will have a bring and share tree dressing day.
Seed touches soil, touches water. Seedling emerges. Leaves unfurl, then flowers, then fruit. The entire process is beautiful but autumn is the climax of this epic adventure because now we are in the time of the harvest when the fruits of all of our hard work roll around in our mouths, nourishing us all in preparation for the restful winter months.
And in these past couple of months we’ve had no shortage of feasts; a visit from a celebrity chef, birthday parties, the inauguration of the clay oven, eating because it’s summer, eating just because.
What we savour the most in all of our feasts is the pastiche of flavours coming together from every corner of our beautifully diverse community in Moss Side. Every forkful is a symbol of hope for a more peaceful world because what could be more unifying than the love of food and life and nature…….?
Yesterday we finally got round to opening the creaky doors of our little shop. A ramshackle edifice made of old mango wood pallets with a corrugated roof- it might not be big and mighty but it allows us to open our squeaky doors even wider to the community which surrounds us.
Here we will delight in sharing our harvest with others in exchange for donations and we hope that other members of the community will see it as a space where they can share their produce too.
In our Aladin’s cave you can find jams, pickles, fresh produce, vinegars, eggs, herbs and with much more to come as others bring more to the table.
To celebrate this grand occasion we brought food to the table to be shared by all and we had a good laugh in the garden, dreaming of all the delights we could offer there. If you’d like to visit our little shop we will be open Saturdays and Sundays 11am-2pm and we will give notice of any times during the week we will be open too.
Spring has surprised us this year. It crept in on it’s tiptoes, painted the buds green and the tulips red and suddenly it was just there, in a whisper, and we’re certainly glad to see the last of the winter behind us.
The diggers have been up to all sorts these last few weeks- the hub has had a make-over and we’ve gone all posh, we’ve been learning about beekeeping to prepare ourselves for an exciting future project, we’ve been sowing, planting out, digging and yesterday we even had our annual “Big Dig” event where we open our doors to the wider community for them to come and learn about the space. Today the Little Diggers got down to business; picking out the worms from the worm poo, planting potatoes and painting tones. We are a busy bunch.
Anyway, no time to natter, there’s work to be done…..
The story began two and a half years ago with a patch of waste land and a pile of wood. Add to that a band of passionate people and quite literally sweat, blood and tears over time we have built our lovely hub.
It has been a place of shelter, a social gathering space, a work space, a dining room, a birdwatcher’s hut, wedding reception venue, performance venue, a cafe, a hiding place, a store room, a home, an artist’s studio, a therapist’s surgery, a kitchen, a school, a nursery.
Held together by nails and passion, it’s foundations have been rocked but in one piece it remains. But there’s always room for improvement. To see out the winter we are working on some hub improvements before we get cracking on the growing side of things; we are insulating the ceiling to stop warmth from escaping out the top of our heads, we are putting down a lino tiled floor with tiles donated from Adactus Housing Association, we are adding some more shelving and just giving it a general pre-spring clean to make it more user friendly.
If you’d like to make your mark on the hub space we will be open Saturday and Sunday 10am-2pm and sometimes during the week (receive more regular updates on our Facebook page).
Slowly but pretty damn surely, the days are lengthening and after months of darkness, the light is creeping in. Winter might not be over, but there’s some light at the end of the tunnel and things that were for a time dry and brittle are regaining some semblance of their former suppleness.
At the very least now we can start to dream of the spring to come, which is exactly what we are doing, because we are planning what we are going to plant. This Saturday (and continuously over Facebook) we gathered together all of the seeds we saved last year which have been drying out over the winter and we made a wish list of the seeds we would like for next year. Not only that but we made a map of the site to help us build a shared point of communication as to what has been planted when and where and what we are to plant so that we can work more effectively as a team and communicate our plans.
If you would like to contribute, come dream with us and let us know what you would like to see growing on the allotment, add something to the list by commenting on our Facebook post or email firstname.lastname@example.org with your suggestions.
Last week we found ourselves beside the sea. Not ones to go an autumn getaway, we went on a trip to Southport for the RHS [Royal Horticultural Society] award ceremony. Bellies full with roast dinner, surrounded by hundreds of other North West community growing projects (who we had to fight over gravy and the last roast potatoes with) we waited nervously as the judges read out the lists of many different awards. Much to our delight, this year we took away the cup for the Best Small Neighbourhood project in the North West and we went away with another Level 5 Outstanding certificate.
A great big high five to everybody who has contributed and participated in any way in the allotment- this is a marvellous achievement and us diggers are P.R.O.U.D. (and we especially enjoyed the chocolate mints for dessert).
Earlier in the month we sent out a request for the community to share what they had with others in the community whose basic needs are not being met. You came and you shared and as our photo shows, together we will help many families, even in the smallest of ways.
Throughout the year, we have been monitoring our harvest and keeping an eye on our impact with the help of Sow the City. This year we have produced 212.72 kg of organically grown veg and fruit equivalent to a £1106.52 saving compared to supermarket organically grown food. This equates to a CO2 saving of 394.848 or 3077.5 food kilometres. Overall,this is an incredible achievement from a bunch of urban farmers.
This is not the product of sweat, blood and tears, but the product of sharing and kindness and that in our essence is how we roll.
The mornings are getting crisper, the long winter nights are slowly uncurling and the leaves are falling from the trees…..it’s that time of year again. Whilst we must take a moment to delight in the change of season, we must also take a moment to support others in our community as the pressure of an ever-increasing gas and electricity bill creates a financial squeeze.
Earlier this year, people in the Moss Side community shared food with people in our community by working with local organisations who work directly with local families. This allowed us to meet some basic needs in our communities by allowing those with more to share with those with less.
This autumn we are doing the same thing again and we are asking for offerings of non-perishable food goods to be brought to the Moss Side Community Allotment, where we will pass them on, as a community, to an organisation which works with families in primary schools in our community, along with some of our homegrown produce.
We are open every Saturday and Sunday 10am-2pm and we are around most week days (pop down or check our Facebook page for some more regular updates).
Thanks for sharing.