Norwich FarmShare talk- 25 February

As well as running a hedge-planting workday on 24th February (all welcome), Norwich FarmShare will be relating their experiences of this unique city CSA at  the next meeting of the Norwich Organic Group.

Connecting community with food growing on 7 acres: Our story so far with grower,  Tierney Woods
Members of the social enterprise will share their experience of creating a community-run vegetable growing business. The growers, Transitioners and volunteers will be telling their grassroots story of how the farm got started, how everyone has learned about the site and soil, how people have benefited from being on the land and find out about opportunities to get involved.

All welcome; £2 entry for people who are not members of NOG. If you’re a member of FarmShare and you’d like to come along for free, please email us.

 Date:7.30pm Monday 25 February Venue: Friends’ Meeting House, Upper Goat Lane, Norwich NR2 1EW (next to St Giles Car Park)

Norwich FarmShare Workday - 25 November

Fancy a burst of natural exercise? Norwich FarmShare needs regular volunteer help on the farm every Wednesday (10.00-1.00 or 1.30-4.00, or stay all day- just turn up on the day, no need to let us know in advance) & also every Thursday morning to help with the harvest (starting promptly with a warm-up at 10.00am and working until 1.00pm- again just turn up) and at the Food Hub every Thursday afternoon (3.45pm-6.45pm. We have a rota for these shifts, so please email us to let us know you’re thinking of coming) to help with the distribution.
 
We hold monthly workdays throughout the spring, summer and autumn on the last Saturday of the month. All our members and supporters are welcome to come along (and bring their friends and families) for a fun day out on the farm.

We’ll give you any training and equipment you need on the day, all you need to bring are plenty to drink (it’s thirsty work this farming), something for lunch and good sturdy clothing and footwear. Getting stuck in to a good day’s planting or weeding alongside like-minded people is one of the best bits of Norwich FarmShare.

The next workday is Saturday 25 November 11.00 to 3.00, with a lunchbreak at 1.00pm. Do join us!
It’s best to arrive just before 11.00 to make sure you’re in time for the warm up and so we can show you how to do all the jobs safely. Let us look after you, as you’re looking after us!

Directions to the farm and advice on what to bring,

Good food March - 16 September

A Europe-wide protest and awareness-raising organisation, the march is campaigning to get changes to EU law on farming to support small-scale farms; encourage greener and more sustainable farming; get fair prices for farmers and consumers; improve animal welfare and much more. Find out more on their website.

The March is coming to Norwich on 16th of September, visiting by bicycle several food projects around Norwich before setting out to Norwich FarmShare for a picnic. You’re welcome to join the march at any point, from cycling the whole route to just enjoying the picnic at the farm.

Join the cycle route or join by car or on foot at any point:

Start: 12pm – 12.30 Meet at Norwich Train Station
12.30 – 13.15 Cycle to John Innes Centre
13.15 – 13.45 John Innes Centre, Colney Lane
13.45 – 14.00 Cycle Bluebell South Allotments
14.00 – 14.45 Grow-your-own Project (to be confirmed)
14.45 – 15.15 Cycle to Chapelfield Shopping Centre, Norwich
15.15 – 16.00 Chapelfield Shopping Centre, Norwich centre
16.00 – 16.45 Cycle to Norwich Farmshare, Near Postwick Park & Ride
16.45 – 18.00 Good Food Picnic at Norwich Farmshare

Refreshments will be available at Bluebell Allotments & John Innes and bring a picnic for the meet at Norwich Farmshare: the organisers ask that you bring homemade, wholesome, ‘non-supermarket’ salads, bread, hot water, tea, coffee & own plates & cutlery.

For more information and any questions contact Britta on 07545 765 274, For more information on Good Food March 2012 see www.goodfoodmarch.eu

On the move with Norwich FarmShare - workday 28 July

FarmShare has set up a new Food Hub at Bicycle Links in the St.Mary's Works complex. Bicycle Links gives unemployed and disadvantaged people skills and work shop experience, refurbishes unwanted bikes and stops them going into the waste stream and encourages cycling as a sustainable means of transport.

We think it’s a great location and we’re delighted to be sharing a space with a social enterprise whose social and environmental aims match so well with ours. If you’re not a member of FarmShare but would like to come and meet us, see how the Harvest Share Day works and see Bicycle Links you’d be more than welcome any Thursday afternoon (after 4pm); the full address is Bicycle Links, 18 St. Mary's Works, Duke Street, NR3 1QA.

Over at the farm, which is entering the most abundant half of the year, volunteers from the Big Norwich Bat Project have been recording bats. They were delighted to identify 6 species including soprano pipistrelle, noctule and brown long eared bats.

FarmShare welcomes visitors and the Tierney, Christophe and the team love to see people up at the farm. There are regular opportunities to come and get involved or just have a walk round the land. The next workday will be Saturday July 28th but you can come and help with the harvest any Thursday morning or come down at other times by arrangement - email Tierney here:
grower@norwichfarmshare.co.uk.

Norwich FarmShare - Midsummer workday - 30 June

Midsummer and the farm is looking beautiful. The summer crops are growing and looking more and more tantalising with every day that goes past. The air is full of birdsong and the bees from the Norwich Community Bees hive are busily buzzing.

Tempting? Come and join us for a fun day on the farm, bring a picnic lunch and get your hands dirty: getting back in touch with the seasons, the land and really understanding where your food comes from is what it's all about.We’ll give you any training and equipment you need on the day, all you need to bring are plenty to drink (it’s thirsty work this farming), something for lunch and good sturdy clothing and footwear.

Getting stuck in to a good day’s planting or weeding alongside like-minded people is one of the best bits of Norwich FarmShare. If you need directions to the site, you’ll find them here.If it’s your first time, don’t be shy, just rock on up and make friends with our farm.

If you’d like more information about the work day feel free to get in touch either by sending us an email or calling on 0845 6805721.

FarmShare Work Day: Saturday 30th June, 11.00 to 15.00. Do join us!

A chance to become a Norwich FarmShare apprentice

We're offering two fantastic chances to join the FarmShare growing team as an apprentice.

The two apprenticeships are voluntary and will last for 6 months, during that time the apprentices will work for 1.5 days a week on the farm (a day of which will be spent with the horticultural mentor), they will participate in a two day communications for community growers workshop, organise a volunteer workday, meet other similar groups from East Anglia and further afield, visit other enterprises, learn the basics of organic production (including protected cropping, crop rotation, weed control, crop/harvest planning, fertility building and more). In addition they will learn more about how community enterprises like Norwich FarmShare work and develop their skills in team-working and volunteer management. Both apprentices will have the option to attend an introduction to permaculture course and to choose a local enterprise they'd like to visit. There's more detail here on the FarmShare website.

It sounds pretty amazing!

If you're interested you can download a more detailed description of the apprenticeships HERE.

Deadline for applications: Monday 25th June
Interview date: Wednesday 4th July (at Postwick)
Start date: Monday 16th July

Discounts for families at Norwich FarmShare - Workday 28 April

We’re really pleased at Norwich FarmShare that our application to join the NHS Healthy Start scheme has been accepted. This means that if you’re a family on a low income with young children you can get vouchers from the NHS to pay for your share.

You’ll be able to take part in all we offer in exactly the same way as all our other members: you can come and spend time on the farm, enjoy some exercise in the fresh air and get to know our great community. All this plus deliciously fresh locally produced seasonal vegetables!

If you want to see if you can apply for the scheme, the Healthy Start Website has all the information you need. Once you’ve got your vouchers, sign up with us too and you’re ready to start collecting your vegetables!

We're enjoying the bounty of the early spring vegetables just before the hungry gap really starts to bite. Purple sprouting broccoli really has to be the queen of spring vegetables and our crop is doing really well. There are two delicious recipes for purple sprouting broccoli on our website, alongside many other seasonal delights.

Your next opportunity to get involved with Norwich FarmShare is our workday on Saturday 28th April. You can find out more about what we'll be doing and what to bring here.

See you there! Elena at Norwich FarmShare.

Pix: Hafidha and Aziz on the farm, Elena

Norwich FarmShare on Radio Four and Workday - 10 March

Rob Hopkins did a brilliant piece on the Radio Four programme Four Thought, and we were delighted that he mentioned Norwich FarmShare as an example of 'engaged optimism'. You can listen to the show or read notes from it on his blog. I found the whole show a really moving and inspirational account of what Transition thinking can enable.

Spring is rapidly gathering pace and that brings a whole host of jobs needing doing on the farm. We’d like to invite you (and your friends and families) to come along for a fun day out on the farm: Our next workday is Saturday 10th March, 11.00 to 15.00. Tierney will be compiling a list of jobs which need doing, so I don't yet quite know what the day will involve, but it's sure to be fun.

We’ll give you any training and equipment you need on the day, all you need to bring are plenty to drink (it’s thirsty work this farming), something for lunch and good sturdy clothing and footwear. Getting stuck in to a good day’s work alongside like-minded people is one of the best bits of Norwich FarmShare. Everyone is welcome and there's no need to let us know beforehand. Just turn up on the day.

More details here. Hopefully see you in a sunny field soon! Elena Judd

Spring is coming at Norwich FarmShare

...and it can't come quickly enough for me! I enjoyed the spring and summer on the farm so much, getting involved with growing for the first time in my life. Tierney was able to spend part of a day hoeing recently- she told me how good it felt to be doing 'farm work' again. I listen to the birds song in the morning and I can already hear them preparing for spring. The sparky territorial songs are beginning- the great tit has the most distinctive spring song, listen to it here and then you'll hear it everywhere.

Tierney has spent the winter planning and plotting (and planning our plots) to get the best out of our land this year. She's created amazing spreadsheets showing what needs to be done and when: when we anticipate needing to irrigate, when we expect to be sowing and planting.... even when we might be able to hold open days, when we can invite the press to see exciting things happening on the farm, when would be good to hold wildlife walks.

It's easy to feel like the 'real' work is that done on the land with hands and tools, but it can only happen alongside the indoors planning work- so we're grateful for our members and supporters putting time in to plan our distribution and logisitics, our work to benefit the biodiversity of the site and yesterday planned how we can develop our marketing to reach more people around Norwich.

Find out more at www.norwichfarmshare.co.uk

Elena. Pics: last year's first onions poking though, Elena.

Norwich FarmShare Potato Day

Last Saturday marked the first ever Norwich FarmShare Potato day. As we've not (yet) got any storage on site, we can't keep our potatoes in good condition over the winter. Potatoes don't like to get the frost on them at all, so we needed to work fast and get the potatoes up and out of the ground, bagged up and given to our members to store at home.

We had a fantastic turn out with more than 30 people pitching in to get the potatoes bagged up- and we had it nice and easy as the tractor pulled a potato harvester along the rows, doing all the hard work for us. All we had to do was pluck the potatoes up from the surface and pop them in our bags. Alas, disaster was not far behind as the tractor gave up the ghost half way down the second row.

Thankfully, our members and their friends and families got stuck in with forks and strong backs and dug the rest by hand: according to my calculations we lifted more than 2 tonnes of potatoes between us- not bad at all.

As ever with farm workdays, blisters and creaky joints were more than matched by smiles and banter- and a lunch break spent stretched out in the warm autumn sun soothed our tired muscles. If you're tempted to join us on the farm, as we go into the quieter winter season the best day is a Thursday- to help us with the harvest. Drop us an email so we know to expect you!

See our website for more info and some delicious kale recipes. Elena Judd

News from Norwich FarmShare - Workday 22 October

We’ve had another busy month, but I suppose that’s farming: the quiet time is always just round the corner.

Tierney, our assistant grower has stepped in to take up the reins (though as yet we’re not using draft animals) as Head Grower, she’ll be assisted day to day by Martin, Christophe and the rest of the part time crew and will have help once a week from experienced organic grower Michael Knights. It’s no small undertaking and Tierney will need as much support as possible from the FarmShare volunteers. And the volunteers turned out in force to help Tierney on her first work day on the 25th when beanpoles were cleared, weeds pulled up, mesh moved and the poly tunnel prepared for winter salads.

The vegetable shares have been fantastic this month and, as we slip from Summer into Autumn, tomatoes and salads are being replaced by squashes, cavolo nero and leeks. A bumper crop of potatoes – too many to store – means we’re planning a potato harvesting day for October where members can come and pick their own sack of spuds from the soil behind the harvester.

Our activities have attracted a bit of national media attention too and next week FarmShare volunteers and staff will be interviewed about the project for Radio 4's Farming Today – we’ll keep you posted!

The next work day will be on Monday 10th October, 10am to 3pm; we’ll be planting onions – not as sets but as plugs each with half a dozen tiny grass-like seedlings and Saturday 22nd October when we'll be digging for potatoes. Josiah Meldrum

See our website for recipes, blog posts and information about joining FarmShare or email us

News from Norwich FarmShare - Workday - 25 September

We're fully in the middle of the most productive time on the farm: all the fruiting plants are heavy with produce- squashes, tomatoes and beans. The flowering plants are coming in: broccoli and cauliflowers and the cooler weather brassicas are starting to bulk up. This means that our veg shares are enormous, groaning with veg. Members stare wide eyed at each other over their mounds of fennel, custard squashes, tomatoes and more. We learn how to store veg and how to preserve it. Or we invite friends and family round for big meals based on what we have. And we store up memories of these bumper crops to last us when all we've got is root veg and cabbage. It's a surprising new-old thing to have to learn in these days of round-the-clock, round-the-calendar, round-the-world shopping.

The other new-old thing we're learning is that many hands really do make light work. We're growing without sprays, which means the weeds can only be kept down by sheer hard work. If we were to pay people to pull out the weeds, we would have to charge much more for our veg- so we ask all our members (and anyone else who would like to support us or who fancies a day in the fresh air) to contribute to work days at least three times a year.

The next work day will be on Sunday 25th September 11am to 3pm. Our last one was great fun, a really satisfying day. We hope you'll join us for this one too.

See our website for directions to the farm. We'll be working on the Postwick site. Elena Judd

Norwich FarmShare Workday - 20 August

As we head into August we are celebrating our first full month of delivering our fresh locally grown veg to our members. The veg we've supplied during our first month has been delicious and we've had a fantastic range. It's amazing to look back on how the site looked only a few months ago and reflect on how far we've come.

It's been really nice to start to get to know each other as we meet up to collect our veg. Lots of people stop for a cuppa and a chat- we often end up swapping recipes and tips on cooking the vegetables. I learnt that broad beans are much nicer if you take the skin off as well as podding them! I've never liked broad beans before, but I've really enjoyed them this summer, especially in the falafel that Tierney gave me the recipe for.

We've been grateful for lots of volunteer help over the month, some people come every week, others as and when they find the time. There are lots of jobs we need help with: harvesting every Thursday takes several pairs of hands to make sure all the veg is ready to take to our distribution point; but the job that's really getting away from us at the moment is weeding. Some of the weeds are taller than the crops! If you've got time on your hands and you fancy some healthy exercise in the fresh air, we'd love to see you on the farm.

We have work days every Thursday from 9.30 for harvesting. As for weeding, to make it as easy as possible you're welcome to visit the farm any time you'd like: then all you need to do is look for our 'weed me' sign and get stuck in. Our next Saturday workday will be on 20 August, 11am to 3pm.

Weekly updates, veg recipes and details of how to get to the farm are on our website

Looking forward to seeing you there! Elena Judd

Norwich FarmShare - Open Day - 11 June

It's Open Day down on the farm at Postwick on Saturday 11 June! Join us on the farm for a family day out. Bring a picnic to share!

We’ll be offering tours of the farm, introducing you to all the crops we’re growing and showing you the wildlife that shares our site. We’llh ave an opportunity for anyone who wishes to join in with the work onthe farm for an hour or so, and lots of fun activities for children. We’re also looking forward to a chance to share with you all the plans we have for the future. Absolutely everyone is welcome on the day: we hope to make it a real celebration of everything we’ve achieved so far. Please bring your friends and families along, the more the merrier. There will be lots of FarmShare members on hand to answer any questions you have and a chance to sign up if you haven’t yet.

Additionally, existing members are invited to join us a little earlier on the day at 12.00 for our Quarterly General Meeting. This will take only half an hour and is a great chance to catch up with what’shappening and take part in the decisions we make about the farms. As always, please contact us if you have any questions. Laura Creen

For latest Norwich FarmShare update click here.

Photo: Field of Dreams by Elena Judd

Creating a buzz - Norwich Community Bees - 18 June

A group of excited bee enthusiasts got together last Thursday for the first meeting of the Norwich Community Bees initiative.

At the Spring Scheming in March this year, one of the ideas that came out was the idea of a community-led beekeeping initiative. I'd been very impressed by the Bungay Community Bees scheme and thought it would be fantastic if we could do something similar in Norwich. The well-publicised decline in bee populations in the UK has concerned a lot of people and there was a lot of enthusiasm in the room to take this idea further. I offered to start the ball rolling and began to contact people in Transition Norwich and beyond.

The people at Norwich Farmshare were keen to support us, and offered a space on the Postwick site to get us started, as well as putting us in touch with a local experienced beekeeper. The group has now started pulling together the plans to make it all happen. We now have 18 members, including a number of qualified and part-qualified beekeepers. It's been fantastic to see how much energy and enthusiasm there's been so far, and I'm really excited about the future of the scheme.

Latest news! this Saturday (18 June) we'll be setting up our donated hive on the Norwich FarmShare site and generally getting things ready for the bees to move in at a date tbc! From 2pm onwards.

If you'd like to be a part of Norwich Community Bees, or would like to know more, contact Jon at jaysaulcurran@hotmail.com.

Norwich Farmshare Website and other News - Workday 22 May

The Community Supported Agriculture scheme and school farm are springing into life, with Laura and the gang planting out plants. There have been a few challenges on the farms, including the tractor breaking down, and a record-breaking dry spring which means we have to hurry up with getting some irrigation in place. Laura is still keen to hear from people who could do casual work (paid or unpaid), as well as recruiting for the new part-time post.

Meanwhile the marketing group is getting to grips with recruiting our first 100 members - so far we have 12. We've just launched our new website at http://www.norwichfarmshare.co.uk/- have a look! And if you can help us sign up more members, whether among your friends or other groups you're part of, please contact Tully. Or if you can spare any time to help with publicity and so on, again please get in touch. Tully Wakeman

We're planning an Open Meeting at Take Five on Thursday 12th May at 7.30. This will be an opportunity for anyone to come along and find out more about Norwich FarmShare. If you're not quite sure whether to sign up or not, this is an ideal chance to get your questions answered. Laura, our head grower, will be there along with several keen members of our team. We'd love to see you there! Elena Judd

There will also be a workday at Norwich FarmShare's second site at the Hewett School on Sunday 22nd May from 10am. Access will be via Gate 2 off Cecil Road and a walk round the driveway to the market garden area. Contact: Erik at martinburo67@hotmail.com