It’s been really exciting to celebrate Urban Food Fortnight with other Londoners who are joining together to grow a Million Meals. What with Cider Sunday, Cultivate London Open Day and our Pick and Pickle Courses , we are hoping for a quieter couple of weeks!
Pick and Pickle
With two day courses over the last couple of weeks, it’s been fun to welcome guests to help us pick the best of the bounty from the kitchen garden and get to work in the conservatory preserving batch after batch of jellies, chutneys and pickles.
Thanks to Chris Kirby for the photos.
Believing in community – Doing it together…
It was a real privilege to be invited to join in with the Open Day at Cultivate London last weekend; subscribers will remember our post last year that told the story of us moving polytunnels from one derelict site to another. It’s great to see them established in their new site and taking on a new team of trainees. I love all that this organisation stands for and packed up preserves, one of our apple presses and a couple of happy hens to join in the Urban Food Fortnight celebrations.
Harvestometer…
After a busy couple of weeks, I spent some time today harvesting some fruit from the garden and logging our produce on the Capital Growth Harvestometer. I’ve been keeping a record of all the food that I’ve gathered from the garden; fruit, vegetables, honey, herbs and eggs. The website works out the value of the food that we’ve grown and adds it to the total of Londoners who are aiming to Grow a Million Meals. I was thrilled today to discover that so far this year we’ve produced a whopping £1,067.76 worth of food, not including the juicy grapes and melons!
Book of the Blog Post:
I’ve recommended this book before, but as we focus on Urban Food Fortnight, it really seems the most appropriate for this post. Steve’s inspiring story weaves in a wealth of information which captivates the reader. With beehives on top of Fortnum & Mason, The Tate Modern and throughout our city you can be assured that no beekeeping experience is needed to thoroughly enjoy this book!
This book is available with many of our other favourites books from the Hen Corner Shop!
Other News:
- Our honey harvest was less than last year at around 15lbs, but we have three healthy colonies that we are feeding up for winter
- We have already made 113 jars of preserves and have ordered another 137 new jars ready to fill…
- Most of the hens are moulting; we have so many loose feathers in the garden we could start stuffing pillows!
Jobs for next week:
- Encourage our daughter, Macy, as she finishes her creative entry for the National Honey Show
- Keep feeding the bees, they are taking nearly a litre of sugar syrup per colony a day
- Create a recipe for Spiced Apple & Pumpkin Chutney – they’ll be lots of it!
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