Farewell my London…

I’ve known for a while that come the end of the growing season I’d be handing over my gardening belt and heading back to Zimbabwe. Yet despite the time I’ve had to get used to the idea, it’s no easier to say good-bye, both to the sites I’ve been working these last five years and the rather amazing group of people I’ve worked with.

When I started in 2007, there was the grower, two of us apprentices, and a fairly flexible programme for volunteers. Now as I leave my post as grower, the volunteer programme is still going strong but as well as the grower there’s also an assistant, five Patchwork Farmers and four newly graduated apprentices. In addition to growing a serious amount of food, we’ve really managed to grow a fine team of growers!

With our Clissold site becoming more and more productive (we turned the butterfly tunnel into a polytunnel last year) and the Patchwork Farmers running four microsites as part of the Patchwork Farm, it’s become quite an operation. One which saw us harvesting and then packing over 80kg of mixed salad leaves at the height of the growing season: getting a bag of salad out to every member of the box scheme plus onto the plates of many more people through local restaurants – and we kept this up for 6 weeks running.  It’s been hard work to say the least, with the rather large dose of logistics that comes with growing at multiple sites. But the level of cheer and dedication from my fellow growers plus the honest appreciation for the delicious organic leaves we are growing right here in London has been more than enough to buoy me along. It’s been so great to work with an organisation that is pushing up the amount of food grown and eaten locally, making small but important steps towards an alternative food system.

I wish Paul well as he takes up the reins: may your secateurs be sharp, the compost rich, the robin friendly, the slug scarce and let the salad growing continue on.

Here’s me at our Springfield site, about to make one of my final voyages with the trailer, well loaded with salad after the harvest. Thanks to Amy Scaife for the picture – one of only a few of me on the sites in all my time at Growing Communities.

Volunteers from far off lands…

The last month has seen the addition of two rather wonderful volunteers at Growing Communities. Of course all our volunteers really deserve a mention, but I’m profiling these two because they are part of a pretty special programme.

That programme is the Global Exchange Programme, of which the Asian Action Group in Haringey in partnership with an Indian-based organisation called Pravah is a part. With the aim is to set up international networks of youth volunteers and youth leaders who work, live and learn together (yes, I’m copying their mission statement!), this exchange sees the pairing up of 9 volunteers from India with 9 volunteers from the UK. Each pair gets to choose an organisation to work with. This year the theme was ‘The World of Food’ so Growing Communities offered up a pretty good place to discover alternative food supplies…in our urban market gardens and on the packing line, getting the veg bags ready for pick up…

So, I wanted to introduce you. Meet Jon and Molly…

Here they are with seceteurs at the ready before a Tuesday harvest…

In a little departure from my usual blogging style, I interviewed the pair of them, so you could get a sense of what they are up to…

How did you get involved with the Global Exchange (GX) Programme?
Molly: I’ve known one of the partner organizations, Pravah for a few years now and have come in contact with them a couple of times. This year however, I felt I wanted to participate in the GX program and explore two regions that were completely new to me, England and Rajasthan. I was curious especially about the work placements and work ethics in these two environments.
Jon: I learned about VSO through my mum after wanting to do some travelling before university. I then found out about the GX programme through the VSO website and it seemed like a great starting point for young people who want to develop themselves into what we now call ‘Global Citizens’.

Why did you choose Growing Communities as your placement?
Molly: If I remember correctly we were given about eight choices. Of the lot, Growing Communities seemed the most straight forward about the kind of work involved. Also, the work is very closely linked to what I am doing back home: organic farming. We do not have the concept of food miles and carbon footprint yet but I wanted to get a good understanding of how these things work, especially in an urban setting. A honest approach tackling a pressing social concern creatively.
Jon: I think it’s an amazing company that has been one of the pioneers in a successful movement that is only going to get bigger and better. I also chose this as my placement because I wanted to learn more about growing and harvesting fruit and veg so I could perhaps have an allotment where I do this when I’m older.

You’ve been working at the gardens now for 4 weeks, what do you find most challenging?
Molly: The cold! I come from an extremely hot region in India and so am completely and totally unused to cold weather. It affects my flexibility and productivity to quite an extent but is also an experience in itself. This is actually the only challenge!
Jon: As the harsh winter weather sets in, its definitely been more and more of a challenge to keep myself from turning into a popsicle whilst working on the growing sites. (this comes from a fellow from up north! Yup, it can be cold working outside but you’ve just got to keep moving!)

What do you like most about working with us?
Molly: I am spoilt for choice! I am so glad that I picked this placement. Mostly I enjoy all the hands on tasks. Many of the activities are very new for me, using seceteurs, raking, harvesting salad leaves, weighing and packing. The methodologies used here are very different and getting a chance to try out everything is a huge learning.
Jon: The people are simply great.  (We like you too Jon!)

What is your favourite salad leaf?
Molly: Miner’s lettuce, Salt bush, Sorrel, chives and the Sicily leafy bush that tastes faintly like liquorice.
Jon: Has to be the mustard leaf. (I had them harvesting mustard a few weeks in a row, so he must have gotten a taste for its fiery flavour)

What do you hope to get out of working with Growing Communities?
Molly: I want to understand how urban organic marketing works. Being around the fire station on Wednesdays I have observed the general energy and find it very heartening that what appears to be a small scale set up actually has a strong and loyal customer base, many of whom come and pick up their food bags! That is exactly what I want to learn.  Hopefully I can recreate the same back at home. I want to be able to build a long lasting relationship between producer and consumer that is symbiotic.
Jon: Enough experience to hopefully grow my own fruit and veg one day and the opportunity to see how such a great company works. I also want to do ‘Woofing’ in the summer and this will be good experience for me.

And the million dollar question…will you grow salad when you go home?
Molly: In India I come from a place that has excess sunlight most of the year. Most of the greens that flourish in that climate are native hardy ones that are able to deal with little water. At GC I find that water intensive crops do well. Perhaps it is not always an external water supply or irrigation but the climate in itself provides it. Unfortunately I don’t see the same salads doing as well there as they do here. I like quite a few of the salad leaves here, especially the salt bush and sorrel. I am hopeful about growing them during the winter months. The leaves of the salt bush seem succulent; perhaps they are suited to harsher climates. Sadly, I don’t think I can grow the rest of the salads…
Jon: I’ll encourage my grandparents to. They own an allotment at home.

Jon and Molly will be working with us until the middle of December. On the 22nd December, they and the other Global Exchange volunteers will be putting on a market in Haringey at the Selby Centre, the culmination of their time here in the UK. Head on down if you want to meet them. From there, they’ll be doing a similar stint in Rajasthan. I’m looking forward to hearing how it all goes, and more specifically…how will Jon deal with the heat!?

When a team digs in…

Our site in Clissold Park took some serious steps forward today. When LRS Consultancy got in touch to ask if we could host their team building day, Pip and I jumped at the opportunity to get going on building the outside beds.

This is how it looked when they arrived at 10am.

There were some raised eye-brows when I explained the day’s task: 2 beds to be built from scratch…were we asking too much? But who’s to question the collective power of 15 able-bodied volunteers…we cleared, leveled, measured, staked, sieved soil, double dug, laid card, filled the beds, sowed the seed and hooped and netted…

Every tool in the shed was put to work…here they stand, waiting while everyone nipped out for a quick lunch at Fat Cat Cafe down the road…

And here, at 4pm, is the result of a fine day’s work…

It never ceases to amaze me just how much a group of people can get done in a day. Big thanks to everyone at LRS…you can be very proud!

Taking shape…

Had a wonderful day down at our Clissold site today. It was the first time this year that we’ve had a proper volunteer session there. Up until now, it’s kind of been out of bounds to volunteers as it was a bit of a building site really. But now that the new gate has been installed and the fencing around the boundary is almost in place, the time has come for work to begin in earnest to get the site up and running again.

It’s not that we’ve not been busy at the site up until now. As I blogged way back in February, the move to the other side of the butterfly tunnel resulted in our taking ownership of the tunnel to turn it over to a more agricultural endeavor. In these last couple of months we have managed to cover it in plastic in preparation for some serious undercover growing. This was achieved with a brilliant little work team to get the hoops covered. A task made more complicated by the un-sympathetic weather that day. You need to have a really clear warm day to get a polytunnel covered. The plastic does better when the weather’s warm so you can stretch it really tight and you need the hoops to be dry so you can stick the anti-hotspot tape to them. This is essential if you want your plastic to last when it gets hot – those metal poles absorb all the sun’s rays and the plastic touching them can melt on a hot summer’s day. So it was touch and go that drizzly day in March. But did it we did, and we’ve now got a great tunnel in which to grow more salad and hopefully extend the season in which we can grow it!

Now the digging of the beds has begun and the site is starting to look good again. Thursdays are now another opportunity to volunteer and the turn out today was truly heartening. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll get some crops in the ground by June.

This is…Martin

Martin’s been coming to Allens Gardens pretty much every week since he turned up to volunteer two years ago. And if he doesn’t come to work for the day, he always tries to make it for lunch time…

Why do you like coming?
I love gardening, it’s great exercise, good company and great craic*.

And what do you like doing most?
I started off doing lots of the growing stuff – weeding, cropping etc. – but now I’ve taken a ‘visiting gardener’ role: tidying the yard, the ‘art direction’ of the site, so letting in the light, cutting back the elders, building the netting over the fruit trees…I tend to ‘garden’ the site and let the growers focus on the food growing. And I enjoy it. Strangely I am not so into growing veg but it is nice to be around people who like growing organically.

Anything you don’t like?
No, nothing. All positives.

And what do you do in the rest of your time?
I work at Games Monitor (which is why it’s so important he gets a rest from the computer monitor!)

Something else that Martin brings to the site is his passion for the robin, and I’ve loved how much he has taught me about this territorial, vociferous yet eloquent bird. He spent a long time taming it to take food off his hand, coming to the Allens Gardens regularly with his film canister of yummy maggots, so that it became totally familiar with him.

The day I interviewed Martin (8 Sept) was the first time he had seen it again in a long time – it spent the summer gadding about with a lady friend – so he was delighted that it was in such good shape.  He tells me that it is moving towards winter mode, so is being friendly again to its potential source of food. Cheeky opportunist…

Amongst his other talents, Martin’s also a keen photographer. This is one of his photos.

* craic is Gaelic for what we get up to at lunch time…talking sense and nonsense at the same time…

This is…Zanna

Zanna is a fellow Zimbabwean, which means I’m always doubly delighted to see her. This week she came down to Clissold to help me out while Sophie is away. Studying sustainable development, her interest in working with us goes beyond the pure health benefits of getting away from her computer for the day…

Which sites do you go to?
Last year I was mostly at Springfield but this year I have been coming to Allens Gardens, which is only 10 minutes from where I live.

What do you particularly like about volunteering here?
I love being outside, spending time in a beautiful space near where I live, doing something productive and meeting local people. It makes me more rooted in the area, where before I had no connection to it, I was just a commuter. Also Ru (the head grower) is incredibly generous with his knowledge. I also love lunch time. All the different ages is a huge positive. Gardening at home is very solitary.

Is there anything you don’t like?
No  (we like that!)

Anything challenging?
Harvesting salsola! No, really, I like to do a different task each week, something I haven’t done before. And you get lots of support from people if you get stuck.

What do you do in the rest of your time?
I’m taking a part time masters in sustainable development, specialising in environmental management. I also work for an NGO that promotes social justice across Africa. Volunteering at Growing Communities I feel more aware of the food supply chain.

Volunteering since: February 2008

This is…Julie

Like Chiqui, Julie’s been volunteering at Growing Communities since April. With no experience, apart from growing herbs on her balcony, she totally enthuses about her Tuesdays spent with us. She’s a regular at our Farmers’ Market on Saturdays and comes to Allens Gardens because she wants to be involved in the practical side of the things that she has been interested in for a long time, agreeing with us that the local economy is vital.

What do you most like about volunteering here?
It’s really peaceful to be outside and getting the fresh air…I feel like I’m not in London. London can be an assault. I’m in a different head space here, which feels really healthy. It’s good to have contact with nature. I would like to be able to give more time than I do. And the jelly & ice-cream!*

What don’t you like?
That’s not come up yet. The work is quite hard, but I don’t mind that.

Tell me something that you’ve learned from working here
Well, it’s confirmed what I thought, that organic growing is not easy. I’ve been learning things bit by bit, taking in things slowly.

And what do you do in the rest of your time?
I’m developing a research project on public services, valuing care services against privatisation.

* This was a first-time treat today, with apprentice Ida making special vegan red-currant jelly from the berries left over from last week.  We’re hoping it’s sparked a new tradition in super yummy puddings on a Tuesday…

This is…Precious

If you come to Allens Garden on a Tuesday afternoon, chances are you’ll meet Precious. And if you’re very lucky, you’ll hear her sing as she works.

She’s our longest standing volunteer having been coming to Growing Communities for over a decade!

She loves the welcoming atmosphere of our growing sites and that things are under control here. For her, it is a place to catch up with things that are going on around the area and is “a wonderful reference point” for the growing she does in her own space nearby: “If I have questions I can find some answers here,” she says.

Despite her long standing, she doesn’t consider herself an experienced grower, as she didn’t grow up with gardeners in the family and only started growing food in her 50s. We think she’s being too modest!

One thing she’s not so keen on – the raised beds! She thinks ground level would be better for back ache. And one thing she would like to do more – turning the compost.

In the rest of her time, she is very involved in a community garden project where she lives and they grow food. This is the main reason for her long-term commitment to Growing Communities. The project, started in November 2006, is run by the Peter Bedford Housing Association, a charity for disadvantaged people.

Add this to her connection with the North London LETS scheme and her involvement in her Quaker local community, and I’d say we’re lucky she gives us her Tuesday afternoons. They just wouldn’t be the same without her.

This is…Chiqui

Just back from the States where she was managing an organic market that was all about local, sustainable and the small scale, Chiqui was super exited to chance upon Growing Communities. ‘This is the logical extension of the work I was doing over there.’

What do you like about working here?
Everything! Particularly likes ‘just being’ with the plants and how hands on it all is. She also likes meeting such a diverse bunch of people who are all into working together on a community project. ‘Being outside, being in touch with the seasons, the cycles…so cool.’

What don’t you like?
There’s nothing she doesn’t like about coming here. ‘I love it, I just wish you needed us more days!’ (Could we get a better advertisement?!)

What do you do in the rest of your time?
When she’s not working with us, she’s a potter by profession and also does some volunteering with Pogo Cafe.

Volunteering since: April 2009

And Chiqui? It’s short for Chiquita, a nickname from when she was a kid. We think it should be short for Chicory, but then we would, wouldn’t we?

This is…

My new feature for 2009 is to be a focus on the wonderful volunteers that come to our sites every week and help us to grow salad. After all, we are called Growing Communities and so far I’ve given you mostly growing…

I’m not going to call it ‘Volunteer of the Month‘ because I reckon that makes it seem like a title, and, at the risk of sounding cheesy, they all deserve the title every month. Rather, my aim is to give you a sense of the people who work with us, no accolades or awards, but an acknowledgment of how much we appreciate them.

First one coming up shortly…