Plant Swap and Salad Day – 19th May 2012

A day of events for growing and eating local food. Everyone welcome.

Saturday 19th May 2012

Plant Swap and Salad Day
10am to 2pm
Newsome Scout Hall
Newsome Road HD4 6JJ 

Plant Swap – 100s of plants for you to choose from: vegetables, salad, herbs, fruit and flowers. You’re very welcome to bring something along to swap, or you can choose some plants in exchange for a donation.

Seed Swap – lots of vegetable seeds to swap or buy.

Windowsill herbs and salads – plant some seeds to grow on your windowsill.

Microveg – find out how to grow your own tasty microveg.

Children’s craft activities with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, including make your own seed sprouter (adults also welcome!)

Local produce on sale.

Reading Circle book stall with all sorts of books.

Tea, coffee and home made cakes available all day.

Plant pot and jam jar amnesty – please bring along your spare pots and jars.

Information about local groups, events and projects.


Local food lunch:
served from 12 noon to 1pm

Enjoy a locally grown, healthy lunch at Newsome Scout Hall. We’ll be serving a selection of tasty salads (including warm salads) from our Spring salad bar. Some of the ingredients will be supplied by Edibles in West Slaithwaite.


Event leaflet
Plant Swap and Salad Day leaflet (pdf)


Time for a visit to Stirley Farm too?

There is also a ’60 years of farming’ event at Stirley on 19th May (from 10am to 1pm) – it’s just up the hill and is a drop in event, so you’ve time to visit both venues if you’d like. If you don’t get chance to visit Stirley this time, the film about Stirley’s history will be shown again later in the year, so you won’t miss out.

Farm Education & Events Assistant – Voluntary Trainee placement

Stirley Community Farm, Huddersfield

Application deadline: 5pm, Friday 25th May 2012

Interview date: Week beginning 11th June 2012 at Stirley Farm

Do you love growing your own or want to learn? Are you friendly, approachable and fun around people. We are looking for a voluntary trainee to take up our Education and Events Assistant role at Stirley Farm. You’ll work with a wide range of people from school children to volunteers. You’ get involved in our demonstration growing beds, orchard and the wider farm which is home to a herd of Beef Shorthorn cattle.

More details about this role:

Farm Education & Events Assistant (Doc)

More details about working with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust:

Voluntary Trainee Vacancies

 

Commitment: Ideally 3 – 5 days a week

Duration: Ideally we are looking for a commitment of 6 – 12 months

Farm Conservation Assistant – Voluntary Trainee placement

Stirley Community Farm, Huddersfield

Application deadline: 5pm, Friday 25th May 2012

Interview date: Week beginning 11th June 2012 at Stirley Farm

Do you love growing your own or want to learn? Are you friendly, approachable and fun around people. We are looking for a voluntary trainee to take up our Education and Events Assistant role at Stirley Farm. You’ll work with a wide range of people from school children to volunteers. You’ get involved in our demonstration growing beds, orchard and the wider farm which is home to a herd of Beef Shorthorn cattle.

More details about this role:

Farm Education & Events Assistant (Doc)

More details about working with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust:

Voluntary Trainee Vacancies

 

Commitment: Ideally 3 – 5 days a week

Duration: Ideally we are looking for a commitment of 6 – 12 months

Training Opportunities

In April 2012 we said farewell to wonderful farm volunteer trainee, Sue Brown. Over the past year Sue has been busy at Stirley Farm, driving tractors, welding huge barn doors, leading school groups, tending the herd of cows and very patiently showing Growing Newsome participants how to weave our own baskets. Sue has found a job on a farm in Warwickshire, where she will be producing 60 veg boxes a week. We’re really going to miss her, and we wish her well in her new job.

The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust will soon be looking for new trainees to follow on from Sue and fellow trainee Charlotte.

There is also a new member of staff at the Farm, Toby Needs. Toby is training people in a host of conservation, horticultural and farming skills to NVQ Level 2 status. The scheme is open to anyone who is not currently in work – travel and training expenses are provided.

For more details about training opportunities at Stirley, please call 01484 663 185.

Growing Newsome at Stirley Farm – May to July 2012

With the growing season in full swing, we’re continuing our food growing get-togethers at  Stirley Farm, especially for residents of the Newsome Ward. These are informal practical sessions where local people can meet each other and learn something new at the same time.

Please come along to join other local food growers who are learning how to grow together. You can join in at any time. Just meet us in the farmyard at Stirley (off Ashes Lane) on the day.



Growing Newsome at Stirley Farm:

Summer sowing – Saturday 12th May, 10am to 12 noon
We’ll be sowing more seeds in the veg beds, for Summer cropping.

Growing Newsome meets Gardening Club – Thursday 7th June, 5pm to 7pm
This evening we’ll be joining in with the weekly Gardening Club at Stirley Farm.

Saturday Gardening Club – Saturday 7th July, 10am to 12 noon
There will be a variety of tasks and food for everyone to take away.

 

On foot, you can walk across the fields from the bend in Hall Bower Lane, or use any public footpath.

By bus, the 354 stops at the junction of Hall Bower Lane and Lady House Lane. The 341 stops on Ashes Lane, at the top of Cold Hill Lane.

By car, access to the farmyard is via a steep track off Ashes Lane.

Food and Flowers in the ‘Secret’ garden

Thursday 7th June
10am to 12 noon

Hall Bower Chapel Garden

One Friday morning in the Easter holidays, a group of budding gardeners came to the Chapel Garden to sow seeds in the veg patch and bee friendly flowers in the borders. The garden has been lovingly maintained by Malcolm Ford and Karina Hepworth, and flowers and foliage are often used by the flower arrangers for church. In April a new set of volunteers came in to lend a hand and learn about this beautiful ‘secret garden’.
On hand to help was Kim Warren from the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s Stirley Farm.

We hope the garden will help show us how to grow fruit and veg in our gardens, as well as helping wildlife from the surrounding fields. We would love you to come to the next planting session in this little haven (and sample some of the salads!) Tools and guidance provided – please bring stout shoes and outdoor clothes.

Wild Food Wombling

 

A few of our allotmenteers took a gentle walk on the wild side last week. On Tuesday 17th April we joined Chris and Rose Bax from Taste the Wild at their woodland in Boroughbridge, North Yorkshire. We had the great pleasure of spending the day taking part in one of their wild food foraging courses. We were excited to see what we could find.

It was a miserable-looking day when we set off from Huddersfield. We arrived in North Yorkshire slightly soggy to find Chris standing tall at the entrance to the woodland, being his own landmark. And the sun came out. So we found ourselves suddenly in a sunny, peaceful woodland full of Rose’s wonderful wood carvings and the sound of birds in the trees. Every Tuesday should be like that.

Throughout the day, Chris and Rose showed us lots of plants that are easy to find and easy to use, from thistle stems to delicate wood sorrel (both to be handled with care, although only one of them fights back). We also found out what the law says about foraging. Along public rights of way, you can forage without a problem, so long as it’s for your own use.

Theft Act 1968 Section 4(3) states that:
A person who picks mushrooms growing wild on any land, or who picks flowers, fruit or foliage from a plant growing wild on any land, does not (although not in possession of the land) steal what he picks, unless he does it for reward or for sale or other commercial purpose. For purposes of this subsection “mushroom” includes any fungus, and “plant” includes any shrub or tree.

What you shouldn’t do is dig up roots without the permission of the landowner, or deprive the owner of the whole plant by taking all the foliage. You should also pick from several different trees or shrubs if possible – and remember to leave some for the birds.

Foraging is getting quite popular (you might have noticed more funny ingredients popping up on the Great British Menu this year) and Chris thinks that there might be a backlash at some point from people who are worried about the countryside being plundered. But foraging is very much about getting to know, understand and respect the natural environment.

Many plants have only a very short time of bounty. You need to be watchful, to know the right time for harvesting, so that you can use and preserve as much of this bounty as you can. Chris told us about the first smell of the elder blossom each year and his expectation of it. For him, this is what’s magical about foraging.

Chris said that there seems to be a trend towards enjoying the countryside at breakneck speed – people want to ride through it, or run through it, or drive through it. He told us about the importance of just stopping to look at what’s there. Foraging is all about observation.

You need to know the land, to experience it, using all your senses.

We learnt about the sad affliction of ‘forager’s anxiety’, caused by people wanting to find something so much that they take leave of their senses (or rather, they forget them). Chris told us not to rely only on our eyes, because when you really want to see something, your mind can start to see what isn’t there. This causes people to identify plants incorrectly, sometimes with painful consequences.

However, forager’s anxiety is soon avoided by just stopping and thinking about it. We learnt about the importance of smell – fir smells like a citrus fruit, and if a plant doesn’t smell of garlic then it won’t be wild garlic (even if it looks like it). Places are also important. A plant that looks right but which is in completely the wrong habitat is very unlikely to be the thing that your eyes might think it is, because habitat influences what type of plants will grow.

Timing is important too. Wherever a plant is directing its energy at any given time of the year is also where the goodness is. Burdock has a two year life cycle. When it is sending up flowers to create new seeds, the plant will be using all its energy to do that, so the parsnip-like roots will no longer be good to eat.

At the end of the afternoon, we gathered a basket-full of greens to make a snack with.

Our feast included nettles, thistles, jelly ears (a type of mushroom), goosegrass (also known as stickywilly or cleavers), reed  mace and rose bay willow herb. Perhaps that might not sound too appetising, but we made some delicious Tibetan momos together and Chris fried the willow herb in butter and oil, which was another tasty revelation.

When I told Andy that I was going on this course, he described it as ‘nutritious wombling’. I’ve since discovered that the term wombling is used in statistics (thanks to statistician William H. Womble). It describes techniques for ‘identifying zones of rapid change, typically in some quantity as it varies across some geographical or Euclidean space.’ This made me think about the pace of change that some of our edible wild plants have, and how people will miss out on this fleeting bounty if they’re busy hurtling through the countryside at a rate of knots.

But the ‘real’ wombling is of course done by those little pointy-nosed creatures who potter about in green spaces and make good use of the things that they find. The Womble motto is: “Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish.” I think that cooking rose bay willow herb, scourge of our allotment boundaries, fits that description very well.

Photos of our wild food foraging day
Wild plant identification sheets (pdf)
Tibetan momos recipe

Grow Your Own course – 12th May 2012

Grow Your Own course
Saturday 12th May
11am to 3pm

Venue:
Church of God of Prophecy, Stile Common Road, Primrose Hill, Huddersfield, HD4 6DE

This is a free workshop organised by Altogether Better Kirklees (part of Kirklees Council) for anyone who is new to growing their own food.


The course is aimed at volunteers, unpaid carers and members of community organisations that work with adults and would like to become voluntary Community Health Champions.

This is a fun, practical based hands on workshop with lots of opportunities to learn more about how to grow your own fruit and vegetables. It will include things like:

• planning and starting off a small vegetable patch
• growing things undercover
• how to look after plants
• how to make good use of recycled materials
• growing in raised beds

There will also be opportunities to:

• link up with other groups and have access to a wide range of resources
• find solutions to specific project issues
• get support with applying for funding for your project
• learn about the health and safety aspect of working with groups
• find out how to adapt gardening techniques for people who have health needs or mobility restrictions.

If you would like to attend this free workshop please contact Farah Majid:

Tel: 01484 225103
email: farah.majid@kirklees.gov.uk

Grow Your Own poster 12th May (pdf)

Local Food Cafe / Kitchen Manager job

Local Food Cafe / Kitchen Manager

Hours: Full-Time (37 hours per week and may include some weekend work)

Salary: £20,000 per annum

Closing date: April 4th 2012

Paddock Community Trust require an experienced cafe / kitchen manager to lead an exciting new BIG Lottery funded project supporting local food growing and healthy eating in Paddock until 2014. The successful applicant will manage West View Cafe – a new cafe / kitchen facility at Paddock Village Hall and coordinate the work of volunteers in the effective running of the cafe and local food sales through our community shop opening in May 2012.

We are seeking an experienced manager, with appropriate qualifications and relevant commercial experience, who has the drive, enthusiasm and skills to develop the long term sustainability of West View Cafe. We believe this is a unique opportunity for an enterprising and imaginative individual with a genuine interest in the benefits of local food growing to play an important part in the Trust’s strategic development. The Cafe manager will also work with our Local food partners in Kirklees in developing the long term aims of this project beyond 2014.

The ability to communicate effectively with a range of staff, volunteers and customers is essential. Familiarity with Microsoft Office applications is highly desirable and is the ability to drive as a limited amount of travel may be required. An enhanced Criminal Records Bureau disclosure will be required at the expense of the Trust. The Cafe manager will also work with the Trust’s Training manager to develop and implement a varied training programme in both horticulture and catering.

Paddock Community Trust is a registered charity with an established track record in community development project work and operates a number of programmes in adult learning, the environment and health and well-being throughout Kirklees.

To apply submit a CV and covering letter detailing your skills and experience to:

Simon Ashbee
Managing Director Paddock Trust
Paddock Village Hall
West View, Paddock
Huddersfield HD1 4TX

Tel: 01484 431400
Email: simon@paddocktrust.org.uk

Local Food Cafe Vacancy (pdf)

Growing here and there

Newsome’s roving food growers have got together for a mini exchange programme this week.

On Saturday 17th March, we had our first ‘Growing Newsome at Stirley Farm’ session. It was a chance for local growers to meet up and have a relaxing couple of hours doing some planting at the farm.

We also found time to have a peek at Stirley’s first calf, born on 14th March, and to see what has changed since the Autumn.

The orchard has been planted now of course, and there’s a new soft fruit area running the whole length of the veg beds.

The area next to the orchard will become a little meadow, thanks to some new funding that the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust have secured for creating Blooming Meadows at Stirley and other sites. Throughout the afternoon, more than one of us remarked “is it really only a year since we first planted potatoes here?”

After our tour, we got on with digging up some artichokes and land cress to make way for the next crops, sowing some beetroot, carrots and parsnip seeds, weeding the beds and planting a few seed potatoes. We were also able to plant a few of the seeds that had arrived on my doorstep that very morning, brought by someone I’ve never met,  who had been told that I could put vegetable seeds to good use.

As usual, we had an enjoyable and interesting time, and Kim gave us lots of good advice along on the way. For example, did you know that you can put some grass clippings in with your seed potatoes to help feed them, or that a nettle bed can act as a good decoy to keep the creepy crawlies off your cabbages? And all this knowledge was imparted whilst nursing half a pint of tea in a beer glass, but that’s another story…

Then on Tuesday 20th March, we got together again when the Stirley Farm volunteers spent some time with us at the Growing Newsome Community Allotment. There was lots to do here too, including preparing the potato beds and thinning out our wayward strawberry patch.

Spring has definitely sprung across Newsome, and we’re looking forward to sharing the growing season together. You’re very welcome to come along and join in – have a look at the Newsome food calendar to find out what’s on.

Stirley Farm, 17th March 2012 – more photos on Flickr