Weekly Reports for December 2019

2 & 5 December 2019

Harvesting seed is now complete so we have been able to start packeting seeds for the February Seedy Saturday and also, importantly, sending off the seeds we have gathered for the Heritage Seed Library. This year we were able to send fresh seed of nine varieties of French beans, peas and lettuce to support the stock at the HSL and provide a resource of scarce and genetically valuable seeds to be distributed more widely and hence have a better chance of survival. We still have some to share at our Seedy Saturday on 15th February. We have also been busy preparing. We have been getting ready the tools and materials needed to support the two project days supported by the Community Payback teams, and also putting everything in place for the Winter Gathering on Sunday 8th. And it has at last been fit enough to start moving out fruit trees from rather small tubs (designed to be moveable at two weeks’ notice) to very much bigger ton bags where we hope they will thrive. Just hope we didn’t leave any rogue Jerusalem artichokes in the ton bags! Great work from volunteers in very cold conditions.

12 December 2019

The big event was Sunday’s Winter Gathering on a cold dry day. The three varieties of pumpkin soup were particularly welcome and were so popular the last arrivals had to be satisfied with a combined version of the leftovers. Setting up and tidying up kept the dozen volunteers busy, the biggest challenge being where to find the last of the robins on the Hunt the Robin trail! Wednesday was miserably cold and although seeds were packeted and useful plans were made, the theoretically warmer space of the polytunnel was not convincing. For once, we even closed a little earlier than usual.