2012 Dates for your Diary (updated)!

Please note that the First Fruits summer community celebration has been reset for 9 June to coincide with this year’s Get Growing Trail. More details coming soon!

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):

Get Growing Garden Trail 9-10 June 2012!

Sims Hill Shared Harvest will be taking part in the Get Growing Garden Trail in 2012! In addition to opening our gates to the outside world on Saturday 9 June, we will also be holding our summer community celebration that day, so you can count on good food and drink, farm tours, children’s activities, and more! Keep checking back here for timings and what exactly will be happening on the day.

Get Growing Garden Trail: Saturday 9 & Sunday 10 June

Bristol’s secret vegetable growers are opening their garden gates and community plots for the 2nd Get Growing Garden Trail. Come and see what lies behind the garden walls and get inspired to get growing too.

Over 30 sites will be open at various times over the weekend, showcasing a diverse range of growing projects. Each group has different ways of organising the work, cultivating the land, and sharing the harvest – come and find out what would fit best for you.

Types of project showcased include: community allotments, veg growing in urban spaces, community supported agriculture schemes, smallholdings, community orchards, permaculture plots, and ‘meanwhile’ temporary use of land.

Activities on offer include: workshops, walks, garden tours, tastings, seed sowing and planting sessions. Of course, there will be plenty of plants and home-grown produce for sale, and garden cafés will be springing up over the weekend to fortify you on your tour.

We hope to have minibus transport to some of the further-flung sites. Please check back for the latest information.

bristolfoodnetwork@gmail.com
0117 966 1639

Download the Trail leaflet here:

Get Growing Garden Trail leaflet 2012

News from the Hill

A quick update from the plot!

James is back to work after the birth of his wee boy, hurray (x2).

The pond is dug and the water mains is in (but not yet connected), Jay and his team did a fantastic job of it!

The right hand side of the field now has hedge planted all the way round (ok, we are a few short of the required 1,200 whips). Thanks to those who helped.

We are preparing some of the large glasshouses on AWT’s site on the otherside of the motorway for growing early crops and summer salad. Big Thanks to our new neighbours!

We haven’t got much crops left from 2011 now (due to wireworm and waterlogging) so the share will contain a fair bit of bought in veg now (from as local as possible).

Tractor David has been able to get in and start cultivating the ground for this years crops. With the help of David’s trailer and Steve and his Landie we have got four tonnes of local manure to the field, another four to go!

This year’s workshares have been having their trial sessions. It looks like we might have a good mix of men and women this year, last year was all blokes.

 

 

Next community celebration 24 March!

Sims Hill CSA will hold its Community Celebration of Spring on March 24, as a joint do with the Barton Hill Community Walled Garden crew, at the Walled Garden.

Venue: the Walled Garden, 60 Barton Hill Rd, BS5 0AW

Date: Saturday 24 March 2012

Time: 11am -3pm

Hedge planting this Saturday 3 March 10 to 1!

There will be a hedge planting workday on the plot this Saturday 3 March from 10 to 1.

Please bring spades.

Hedge: crab apple, hazel, dog rose, hawthorn. We have 800 whips to plant with 20 permaculture students.

We hope to see you there!

Making Local Food our Future Conference in London 20 March (free!)

The Mermaid Conference and Events Centre
Puddle Dock
Blackfriars
EC4V 3DB London
United Kingdom

Tuesday, 20 March 2012 from 09:30 to 16:45

*FINAL PROGRAMME ANNOUNCED! Download here!*

Tim Lang, Professor of Food Policy at City University has added his name to a roll call of top names at a landmark event that will debate the future of the community food sector.

A different way to spend – CSA style

Even if we buy certified organic or fair trade marked products it is still very hard to avoid long and large retail chains which contribute to the pressure to industrialise and exploit human and non-human alike somewhere along the line. The idea of fair trade products in a supermarket is somewhat of a contradiction in terms, as is buying organic from argentina…… Yet most local production succumbed to the pressure to industrialise and exploit human and non-human alike a long time ago. Local production round my way is largely involved in defense (an offensive misnomer!) and the arms trade…..

How can we combine local, fair or ethical, and organic together in a way that at least has half a chance of caring more for human and non-human alike?

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

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