Today, we helped the Bilborough Family Centre with a session aimed to look at fire, as well as having lots of other fun activities. The day was cold, but dry, which meant we could have a small fire in the fire pit as well as running the clay oven.
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| A future volunteer perhaps? |
We began with a tour of the site, partly to explain how we try to do things in a sustainable way, and how the composting loo works (most important!). The big thing with using fire for heating and cooking on site is that we aim to use just wood we have grown ourselves, so that it is carbon neutral (the tree grows, takes in the carbon, and is burned, without any fuel being used to cut it down, or transport it, so using it only releases the carbon it stored when it grew).
Then we ran a group of different activities. Chris helped everyone to plant broad beans. Pete helped them to cut wood 'cookies' - disks of wood which they decorated to take home. Mark helped the group to fill and decorate seed packets using some of the seed that we have gathered on site. Tracey's son Rowan is now our apple-pressing expert, so we brought him in for the day to help us run the press for the last time this season. Meanwhile, Tracey helped the group to make pizzas and volunteers from the family centre helped the group to make CD catherine wheels decorated with autumn leaves.
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| Rowan running the apple press |
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| Enjoying the fruits of her labour! |
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| Pete helping with wood cookie cutting |
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| Decorating wood cookies |
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| Mark helps with the seed packet activity |
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| Shaping the dough for the pizzas |
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| Topping the pizzas |
Then, while Pete got the fire going, Chris helped everyone to shave themselves a stick (using potato peelers for safety), to toast marshmallows on. Toasting marshmallows was a huge hit, so this bit of the day could have gone on for hours! It certainly filled them time whilst the pizzas were cooking.
The session went really well, and we hope the group will be back in the Spring.
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| Toasting marshmallows - a huge hit! |
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