The National Trust-owned Gibside Estate at Rowlands Gill just outside of Newcastle provides the home to the squash production at Gibside Community Farm, a true community-led growing project using part of the historically significant walled garden and some fields a couple of miles from the main site. To read more click on the post title or image.
The fabulous colours of the ripening pods of the borlotti beans added to the spectacular colours of Autumn on my short, whistle-stop visit to Five Acre Community Farm. one of the currently worried tenants of Garden Organic in the light of the charity’s proposed sale of the land. To read more click on the post title or image.
After I published my previous post on a visit to Garden Organic at Ryton, near Coventry, several people have been good enough to let me know that the gardens owned by the charity have been put up for sale in a somewhat secretive and subversive process. It’s an action which has shocked and which many find beggars belief! To read more click on the post title or image.
Tucked away along a country lane just outside Coventry is the esate of Ryton Hall and home of a charity, Garden Organic, which brings together thousands of people who share a common belief that organic growing is essential for a healthy and sustainable world. Open to the public, its a place more than worth a visit. To read more click on the post title or image.
To be able to visit David and Anneke Blake’s Worton Organic Garden once was pleasure enough, to go along for a second visit with the garden in its Autumn glory was a highly privileged treat. To read more click on the post title or image.
Volunteers were numerous,vigorous and – dare I say it – vociferous on the morning I visited Canalside Community farm and took part in the annual squash harvesting. It was a colourful and inspiring experience. To read more click on the post title or image.
The pressures and demands of creating and running a local, sustainabale food operation are intense when the ‘mainstream’ world is happy for soils to be wrecked and climates changed by subsidy-gobling factory farming. Nowhere Is that more apparent than at Cultivate Oxford. To read more click on the post title or image.
Dissatisfied with the “halal meat” available in the UK Ruby and Lutfi Radwan dreamt of starting their own farm. In 2002 they took the plunge, quit their teaching jobs, sold their house, bought a 45 acre plot of land in Oxfordshire, installed a caravan… and so began Willowbrook Farm! To read more click on the post title or image.
Coleshill is a quintessentially English village close to Swindon, just about on the Oxfordshire/Wiltshire border. Much of it is owned by the National Trust in the form of the Coleshill estate. The village has a long history which is extended into the 21st century by the presence of Sonia Oliver and her Coleshill Organics business! To read more click on the post title or image.
Romanesque cauliflowers have to be some of the most visually wondrous crops to come from the British countryside. And what a blessing the factory farming community don’t seem to be interested in them! Late autumn cauli and general brassica cutting at Organic Pantry near Boston Spa was a delight to behold.
To read more click on the post title or image.
People, Food & Well-Being 