Farnham Food Initiative

We had a leaflet through the door over the weekend from Joe who delivers organic food and veg boxes locally. His website is http://www.surreyproduce.com/ and seems to have a wide selection of fruit and veg on offer. Has anyone else heard of this scheme?

Download May 2008 Flyer (pdf)

Here’s a copy of the latest flyer that we have just had printed up. Please email it or print it off to give to family, friends or people in your neighbourhood to help spread the word about the Farnham Local Food Initiative.

Please put the next Planting Day date at Crondall in your diary - Saturday, 31st May. More details to follow, but you can bet that digging, clearing and more planting will be on the cards! If you want to see some photos of the last Planting Day to get an idea of what it is all about, just click on the photos on the left hand side of the site. Please think about becoming a member as well.

And if you can’t make the 31st May, just remember that the last Saturday of every month is a Planting Day!

Creating a local Food Co-operative:

The following is a presentation made by Robert Simpson at the launch of the Farnham Local Food Initiative in February 2008. Read more »

The following is a press release for the Planting Day on 26th April 2008 at the Crondall site.

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Farnham Local Food Initiative: Spring Planting Day Saturday 26th April
 
Just eleven weeks after the launch of the  Farnham Local Food Initiative (FLFI) more than forty-five people participated in the first ever Spring Planting Day of the new local food group.  Springing into action around 10.00am last Saturday volunteers arrived at the site near Crondall to tackle a range of tasks preparing the land for potato planting, onion sets and succession crops. The sun shone providing ideal conditions and work progressed enthusiastically with much digging and rotovating as the potatoes went in.  A tangible sense of community sprang up as people worked the land together for the common purpose of growing food locally. The day was planned to end at 4.00pm but enthusiasts were still to be seen on site two hours later! Read more »

Have a look at some of the photos of the Planting Day that took place on 26th April at the Crondall site. I will be adding more photos, as well as descriptions over the coming days. If you were there and took your own photos please send them into us and we’ll get them up as well - farnhamcsa@googlemail.com.

Go to Planting Day photos

Speaking of the weather… We now have a link through to www.crondallweather.co.uk. The weather is updated every five seconds, yes that’s every five seconds. If you go to the site, they have also set up a web cam which is about 800 metres away as the crow flies towards the golf course. The web cam apparently looks towards the 5th green of the Oak Park Village golf course.

How fickle the weather is, and it makes you start to understand the influence it has on the land. After the glorious sunny day we had on Saturday to the downpours and showers of the last few days. The result of which is that it is unlikely any activity is going to be able to take place on the Crondall site until next week sometime.

There is still lots to do over the coming weeks - more planting of seeds, weeding, hoeing, rotovating… Vince and Susan will be putting together a plan of the activity that needs to take place to ensure we get some produce over the coming months. If you would like to join and volunteer for some work, even a couple of hours a week will make a difference, then please do get in touch via email farnhamcsa@googlemail.com

Please also be aware that because of our insurance requirements you need to be a FLFI member in order to volunteer. Whilst we would love everyone to be able to simply turn up and help, this can’t always be the case. Please do join and become a member

Click through to the Farnham Food page on Flickr to see some photos of the ploughing work that has taken place over the last few weeks to prepare the Crondall site for the Planting Day on 26th April.

A personal view…

This post will be a bit of a strange one for me. I am writing it with a number of different emotions about the Planting Day on Saturday - the first event of the FLFI social calendar. Let me clarify: I will start off feeling one thing and thankfully by the end be in a completely different place. That’s not much clearer really, is it?

Let me get the first feeling out of the way: that of a complete fraudster. I turned up with family duly in tow at the Crondall site at around 3:00pm on Saturday. My excuse was that it was my son’s birthday. As I traipsed around the site, family still dutifully in tow, I kept being overcome by tidal waves of guilt. Here I was turning up with one hour to go, not having dug up a single sod of earth, walking around going ‘well done, you deserve a pat on the back!’  Read more »