Sims Hill Spring Party 4 February at the Walled Garden!

at the Walled Garden, 60 Barton Hill Rd, BS5 0AW

Saturday 4th February 2012

11am -3pm

• Tours of the walled garden
• Bring and share food in the courtyard
• Competition : “most unusual use of your veg share?”
• Sims Hill in pictures – the story so far – what’s next?
• Seed stories – from the seed to your plate
• Co-operative games – for bigs and little ones …
• Music – bring instruments
• Good company, good food, lots of fun and opportunities to have your say in what happens up at Sims Hill! See you there!

Getting there:
Bus number 36, also buses 6, 7, 40, 43, 44 & 45 stop at Lawrence Hill, a few minutes walk away

Please don’t park on Barton Hill Rd, we have to keep the neighbours sweet!

More information from Tim 07973 256572

Please click here for a map to the site.

Photo credit: flickr/freefromkatia

News from the Hill!

We are just coming to the end of our first year at Sims Hill Shared Harvest. It has been a challenging year, yet we now have nearly fifty households getting vegetables grown just up the road. We have only a few harvest shares left available.

There will be a few more difficult months to come in the new year but we are excited about 2012. We should see a polytunnel, mains water and a pond being put in the field in the first quarter, which should give production a boost. We will be growing for 60 harvest shares from next month, so there will be more shares available in 2012, the harvest increasing in July. Ten of these shares will be workshares. We are also planning to run more community veg growing trainings, after this years’ successful pilot.

A combination of four community celebration days and weekend workdays will also make us more accessible to our members and the wider community.

Thanks to all of our members and volunteers for helping us through our first successful year on the plot. We couldn’t have done it without you!

Picture credit: the Eden Project

2012 Dates for your Diary!

After our last members’ meeting we have confirmed several dates for the Sims Hill Shared Harvest diary, including Board meeting dates, Members meeting dates, and dates for our 2012 Community Celebrations.

Hopefully a very sophisticated calendar type widget will be appearing on the site soon, but in the meantime, please take note of the following dates (should any dates need to change, members will be notified by email and this will also be noted on the blog):

Cabbage and caraway soup!

Another tasty soup recipe (this time from member Kate Whittle):

I bought some caraway seeds yesterday for a herbal tea mixture I’m experimenting with (mint, fennel seeds, chamomile & caraway seeds – good after dinner drink) so when I saw Hugh Fearlessly’s recipe for cabbage and caraway seed soup in Saturday’s grauniad I thought I’d have a go.

I’ve omitted the bacon and the butter, and added turmeric, so the ingredients are:

1 half cabbage (not muddy is best)
1 large onion
2 large potatoes
3 cloves of garlic (or less if you don’t like it as much as I do)
teaspoon of turmeric
quite a few grinds of black pepper
generous pinch of sea salt
olive oil

Sims Hill apple and autumn veg stew

From Sims Hill member Carla Denyer, who says:
Confronted with huge numbers of carrots and cooking apples from Sims Hill recently, I made an autumn stew last night which was a massive hit.

Serves 5 on its own, or 8 with side dishes of mashed potato (skins on) and steamed kale.

Community Day Photos

Here are a few pictures from our apple pressing at the Community Day on 8 October. Enjoy!

Sims Hill Shared Harvest Community Day 8 October!

Please also bring bowls, cutlery, and mugs!

‘Nuff said! See you there!

Green tomatoes for chutney!

Unfortunately our lovely tomatoes which many of you will of sampled have succumbed to a fungal disease know as blight. This is very common when growing them outside but it was a risk we decided to take because tomatoes are just so yummy! All is not lost however as Ollie and myself managed to rescue many kg of green tomatoes today which will be included in this weeks share. (They needed to be picked today and when green as if we left them for a few more days they would become brown and skanky.) Although they haven’t been weighed as yet a full share should receive about 1.5 – 2 kg. The best use for green tomatoes is to make chutney out of them (don’t eat them raw.)

Heres a link to a good recipe.

2kg of green tomatoes should make up to 10 jars of chutney and be ready around Christmas time. Please respond to the member’s email that we are sending out today if you don’t want the tomatoes in your share.

Photo credit: BBC Good Food.

Vegetarian borscht recipe

For those of you who may be wondering how to fix all of those carrots, beets, cabbages and whatnot you are getting in your veg box, here is one idea from Mostly Soup…. (I should be able to give a review on this dish very soon!)

Vegetarian Borscht
serves about 6

INGREDIENTS
1/2 large or 1 small yellow onion, sliced into half moons
2 cloves of garlic
1 pound beets, shredded with a food processor or peeled and cut into matchsticks
2 medium red potatoes, shredded with a food processor or cut into matchsticks
1/2 pound of carrots (about 2 large), shredded with a food processor or peeled and cut into matchsticks
2 T olive oil
1/2 head cabbage (red or white), sliced into small pieces
4 cups vegetable stock
juice of 1 and a half lemons
salt
coarsely ground black pepper
sour cream (use vegan sour cream for vegan soup)

PROCEDURE
1. Sauté onions and garlic in olive oil with a pinch of salt in a large soup pot for 1-2 minutes. Add beets, carrots, and potato, and another pinch of salt, and stir.
2. In the meantime, bring the vegetable stock to a boil. When the vegetables are soft (about 5 minutes), add the cabbage and the hot stock. Bring to a boil and then simmer, covered, for 20-30 minutes.
3. Season to taste with salt and pepper, and then add the lemon juice. Serve hot or cold with additional grated black pepper and a swirl of sour cream.

Photo credit: Foodologie

Latest news from the Hill!

What is happening on the Hill?

Our Harvest Share scheme has been running successfully since July, and we will still have space for more members for this year, so please continue to help spread the word!

All the veg is growing well, with the exception of those affected by the return of the wireworm! The weeds are also growing beautifully which means our hoes are busy and are we have our hands full. We are still waiting for Avon Wildlife Trust to get access to their site, so we can start preparing for sowing winter salads in one of their greenhouses.

Our big new is that we are currently running a pilot Community Veg Growing Training programme as part of our commitment to be a place for learning, and including people who are socially or economically marginalised.