Category Archives: Green Care

Another day, another title

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I’m struggling to think up new titles for my posts. Half of me wants to become a bit tabloid (“Great tits on the table today!” is so tempting when discussing the presence of Parus Major at the bird table.) The other half of me wants to take the easy way out with a dull title such as “Tuesday”.

The problem is that I don’t think the tabloid approach helps build a quality image, and the other approach just leads to a confusing number of posts named after days of the week.

We had a group from a MENCAP gardening group. They were out our way to collect horse manure and had arranged to drop in. We had a chat and home made mince pies, sold them a hamper and a couple of penguin tree decorations and invited them back next year for National Breakfast week.

We’re planning on having a few groups out for breakfast next year, raising some cash for Mary’s Meals and raising awareness of how important breakfast is. It’s a continuation of the work we’ve been doing on breakfasts , and a continuation of the National Porridge Day work we started last year.

The Bread Group raised £26 for Mary’s Meals last week when they did their Christmas meal, which was kind of them (as was the food they left in the fridge for me). Hopefully we will be adding to this next month, particularly as we will have the Saturday morning cafe participating for the first time.

Jobs for the Day

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1) Check electricity meter readings

2) Feed Polish chickens

3) Make beadwork Christmas wreaths for keyrings

4) Make mince pies for visitors tomorrow

5) Answer interminable boring emails

6) Make lots of cups of tea (important job!)

7) Clean bird feeders and set up new seed feeder

8) Communal reading of Farmers’ Weekly

9) Set up skittle alley in barn

10) Referee cut throat game of Noughts and Crosses

11) Plan menus for meals on Wednesday and Thursday

12) Arrange for pick up of chicken that Johno is donating to one of the group

And that’s just for starters – there’s always plenty more to do. My next job, however, is making sandwiches for lunch…

Skittles and paperchains

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One of the things about working on a care farm is that there is always plenty of variety.

We now have access to a set of skittles. One of the group is a regular player in the local leagues and he’s training us up for a game at the Christmas party.

I’m not sure it’s going to be a great game. I managed a complete miss, which ended up in the raised vegetable bed that formed the back of the “alley”. We’d been warned about that by the farmer’s mum so we had to cover it up quickly!

I also managed to put several balls straight between the skittles without even making one shiver. That’s one of the differences between skittles and ten pin bowling, apart from the lack of shared shoes and heating – the spacing between pins is wider than a ball.

If I say I was about average you’ll get some idea of the standard. Fortunately we do it for fun.

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In the afternoon we turned our attention to making paper chains.

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On Saturday they will be used to decorate Santa’s trailer. I’m not really looking forward to it, as I may have mentioned before. Small children, four hours overheating in false facial hair and a bumpy trailer ride – what could possibly go wrong?

Finally, courtesy of a £5 hat from TESCO , I have an elf to help me. I’m not sure which of us has the better deal. He gets to use his own beard but at least I’m spared the humiliation of knitted comedy ears.

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Party Time!

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It’s the first party of the season tonight, the turkey tasting event. It’s not a Quercus event but we’re involved because we are trying to sell some our merchandise. We also ended up involved in some of the preparation because we’re naturally helpful! Or because we like to know what’s going on.

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On the left is a selection of table decorations made with foliage from the local hedges and flowers from the garden. On the right is a wreath made from strips of cloth: if you look closely you can see the remnants of one of my old shirts. Behind the table decorations is the rammed earth wall that serves as a heat sink – read more about it on the Ecocentre page.

Not sure what will happen tonight, but it will be brightly decorated

Christmas gathers momentum

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When the Christmas jumpers start you know that the big day can’t be far off.

Today we’ve done more decorations and we’ve been working for Shipshape Arts, a company describing themselves as an “artistic creation company”. They are based in a barn on the farm and do quite a bit for us – including helping us with the Education tent at Flintham Show and making the quoits we will using for the Christmas hoopla. In return we try to help them a bit, though “help” may be be putting it a bit strongly.

Today they gave people hats. You can see them being worn in the main picture. Of course, not everyone got a hat. For some reason I didn’t, despite the fact that my poor bald head needs some warmth. Just saying…

This is one of the statues that they put up for us recently – looked at from this angle it’s a bit more noticeable than it is when you stand on the back of the Ecocentre looking across the field. The stone that looks like it’s on the right comemorates the air crash in 1944 – it’s actually on the left but there’s a curve in the road.

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This is one of “The Sweepers” that were originally shown at the Southbank Centre Festival of Neighbourhood. We also have “The Neighbours”, who were also at the Olympic Park before coming up here. Did you know there was a market in second-hand statues? I didn’t. It was quite a performance putting them up, with low-loaders, forklifts, power tools and lots of helpers.

This is “The Neighbours” taken from a deceptive angle, inreality they are several hundred yards from the kitchen.

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We’re decorating the Christmas tree now. It’s a bit early for me (though I’m not the biggest fan of Christmas, to be fair) but it’s turkey tasting time this weekend and we are aiming for a Christmas Dinner feel to the centre.

Finally – I nearly got a picture of a bird feeding at the table. We’ve had great tits, blue tits, pigeons, chaffinches, robins, house sparrows, greenfinches, starlings and wood pigeons so far. It could be better but we’re hoping it will build up as time goes on. Meanwhile they are all quick to take flight and added to a cheap camera and poor light levels I haven’t much to show for my photographic efforts. Looks like I’m going to have to borrow my wife’s camera or wait until the butterflies come back in summer.

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At least you can tell it’s a robin, most of the others have been unidentifiable blurs.

Nearly Christmas

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Yes, it’s nearly Christmas – just over a month away. You can tell that when the turkeys leave the farm, as they did on Saturday. They will be back in a while, with their giblets shoved somewhere undignified and a complimentary sprig of rosemary. Meanwhile we have cleaned out the chiller (we tend to use it as an apple juice store at this time of year).

My original plan for Christmas was to have beef as the family has asked not to have turkey this year. That was replaced with a cunning plan for a seasonal recipe – reindeer pie. Then I saw the price. Back to beef, I think. Rudolph is safe for another year.

Today we started the decorating in earnest – we’re scouring the hedges for foraged decorations and going for a Victorian Christmas look. It’s sustainable and cheap, and keeps people occupied

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Soup

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There’s been a lot of soup about this week. There’s been a lot of many things to be fair, but I happen to have a photograph of the soup and photographs are important for blogs.

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It isn’t the greatest picture of soup: I clearly need to work on the presentation.  I had intended to take a better one today with a swirl of cream and some chopped herbs but I forgot the cream and nobody wanted any chopped herbs.

We had someone renting the main room for a couple of days and they asked if we could do lunches. Soup seemed a good idea, being warm, nourishing and within budget. What, as they say, could possibly go wrong?

Well, on the first day it turned out that three of the six attendees didn’t like soup. Unfortunately  I didn’t find out until I had made the soup for the second day.

On the second day it turned out that we had two untouched bowls and one half eaten (or drunk?) bowl. Progress indeed.

I would offer you the recipes but with that sort of success rate it probably isn’t worth your time. If you want a couple of imprecise recipes for Carrot and Parsnip soup or Pea Soup feel free to ask.

 

Awards time

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The farm won two awards in the Nottingham Post Environmental awards last night – winner in the Land Use and runner-up in the Coping with Climate Change categories.

After a brief break to bask in self-satisfaction I’d better get back to work. That environmentally friendly compost isn’t going to turn itself.

 

Parakeets and the Pareto Principle

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Before you ask, this isn’t a new scientific concept – the two things are linked only in my head. Sorry if you are a mathematical ornithologist, but this isn’t the exciting breakthrough you were hoping for.

Tuesday morning dawned in a foggy fashion and we headed off through heavy morning traffic to a retail park on the other side of town with Hobbycraft as our target. Half an hour later, and £40 lighter, we were back in the car.

Now that Halloween is over our next big thing is Christmas. We will make Christmas cards two weeks before Christmas and have Christmas dinner the week before. A range of design and build skills will be on show, ranging from excellent to dreadful and there will be endless rows about who gets the best stuff to work with, and that’s just the volunteers. The members of the group behave slightly better, though two of them do base their design work on the Pareto Principle –  trying to stick 80% of the decorations to their 20% of the cards. We’re working out a method of rationing for this year.

It will be a lesson in cooperation, and maybe even an exercise in maths if we organise it properly.

On a different subject we had a phone call while we were on the way here – we have someone else interested in joining the regular group. He’s coming tomorrow to see how he gets on with the rest of the group and if he likes us. I’m hoping he will as he adds a new dimension to the group, having developed dementia as an adult rather than being born with learning difficulties. He has a practical background so I’m hoping we will be able to get the nest box plan going again.

Finally, when we arrived the parakeet was in one of the trees behind the kitchen. It’s the third time we’ve seen it perching there and the fourth time we’ve seen it in total. We couldn’t get a photograph and couldn’t pick up the colour because the sun was behind it but it did look and sound very much like the ring-necked parakeets we saw when one of the kids was playing rugby in Middlesex. It was a surreal day to say the least – parakeets flying over, aircraft landing at Heathrow and the after-match meal cooked on barbecues under the trees at the edge of the field. I imagine that ours is an escapee rather than a visitor from down south. I hope so because they are they are a nuisance when you get too many of them, as Esher Rugby Club found out.

Back from holiday

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After touring Kendal Farmers’ Market and a number of farm shops (a story which might crop up in days to come) I thought this might be a good time to say that we do sell stuff on the farm. As you can see above, we sell apple juice which we press on the farm. We also sell honey, but we don’t do much with that – just rob bees and shove it in jars.

Though I’m a determined omnivore I have to concede that vegans have a point when it comes to bees. We run them ragged all summer pollinating crops and flowers then when they have filled their stores for the winter we steal the honey. However, I like eating honey and don’t have any immediate plans to give it up. Having said that, when I consider how hard they work to make honey it will give me cause to think next time I eat honey.

A spoonful of honey represents the life’s work of 10 worker bees. It takes the work of 7,500 workers to fill one of our jars and in doing this they visit 1.5 million flowers and fly 40,000 miles. It’s little wonder that they only live six weeks.

We’re open for sales from 9.00 – 1.00 on Saturday mornings when the Community Cafe can also provide you with drinks, cakes and breakfasts. Directions can be found here. Due to the international nature of the internet that means that most people reading this won’t be able to visit – sorry about that, but if you are ever around you will know where to find us.