It's SOW Green

Wow - what a day!

Today was the culmination of a huge amount of planning and preparation from Tracey and the volunteers, as we hosted the "It's SOW Green" conference, to mark the end of the Climate Friendly Gardeners project at Windmill. It was also the launch of our new Resource Pack, which shows a lot of the lessons we have learned and ideas we have tried at Windmill over the last 3 years.

Delegates at the New Art Exchange

Tracey gets support from
Claire Hale of Groundwork Greater Nottingham

The day began in the New Art Exchange next to the Forest. We welcomed "The Queen of Green" - Penney Poyser to set the scene for the day, then Tracey gave the main presentation about Windmill and our work. After a tea break, and the chance to enjoy the wonderful beetroot and chocolate brownies from Beccy's Global Kitchen, we then had presentations from Phil Knott from the Charity "Send a Cow" (we pinched many of our best ideas from them), and long-time friend of Windmill, Anton Rosenfeld from the Sowing New Seeds Project, who taught us all we know about new exotic crops, and what to do with Shark's Fin Melon!

Penney and Phil getting ready for their gig

Following a spectacularly good lunch from the New Art Exchange kitchens, the volunteers rushed to Windmill to get ready for the afternoon visit to the site. We set up information and workshop sites all around to showcase lots of things that we have done. When the conference delegates arrived, they were able to have a try at scything, building bottle beds, seeing how we made our hugelkultur and tyre arc, how rivers work and how we save water, where our crops and food come from, how we run our polytunnel and how we help wildlife on the site. That was followed by a cooking demonstration from Tracey, showing how we use our hay-box to cook pumpkin risotto, with Lynn Taylor from The Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens on hand to make sure that lots of tips for cooking hygienically outdoors were passed on. Most of the delegates kindly brought their own mugs for the event, so we didn't have too much washing up to do!

Chris gets a hand making a bottle bed

Tracey shows how rivers and flooding work - or making mud!

Mark shows how to save energy - with tools.

Well done all who brought their own mugs!

Cooking the risotto

Everyone got a taste of the risotto to prove the hay-box works!

The volunteers were just amazing - confident and knowledgeable, and we got great feedback from the visitors. Tracey managed not to cry (just) when several nice things were said about her and she got given a beautiful bunch of flowers by the volunteers! Massive thanks to everyone who helped out, especially our star volunteers Chris, Mark, Rosy, Jade, Carrie, Hassan, Lizzie and Joyce. Steven also lent great support, and Shona was a huge help behind the scenes. You are all stars and should be very proud of yourselves.

The finished resource pack

Kath's beautiful map

The Resource Pack is also a joint effort, brought together by Tracey, but with many contributions from Rosy, Jade, Matt, Claire, Andrew and Kevan, with a fabulous new map of Windmill created by the talented Kath Hamper. Credit should also go to Diane and Adrian from Print Revolution who toiled long and hard to make it as pretty as it is!

Well done all!

Windmill - Wildlife Wonderland

What a gorgeous day we got today - a perfect day to help the wildlife that is literally full of the joys of Spring. Joining us, also full of joy, were a happy team from Gateway to Nature - and we're always glad to see them, so joy all round!

The first step was to add a few more trees to the wildlife hedge that we planted in the boundary car park in 2012. The hedge plants were chosen because they have fruits or nuts that will be food in the autumn for birds and animals. The team set to work, firstly to see what trees remained, as there was a "strimming incident" when the neighbouring allotments, who look after the car park, strimmed the hedge. We thought we'd lost a lot of the plants, but it turned out when we marked them, that most of the trees were still there, and still quite healthy. We gave them a weed through, and then planted up thin bits and gaps, and mulched everything with wood-chip to keep the moisture in.

Guy trims back the bramble to make planting
more comfortable!

Jon shows us how to slip plant a tree

Simple!

The Gateway to Nature Team after a job well done.

Then, in true Windmill style, we rewarded the hard work with soup made from last-year's pumpkins, which had been made earlier and was kept piping hot in the hay-box.

After lunch, we worked to improve our site's wildlife value. We created "critter bottles" - lots of plastic bottles full of straw or cardboard rolls, to provide dry spaces for mini beasts. These went in various places in the orchard, and in the mini beast hotel.

Bottle with a cardboard roll inside - excellent for
various mini beasts, including lacewings

Filled with straw - bottles make a great dry space
for many different creatures.

Stuffing a large bottle with hay and cardboard
to see if this is even more enjoyed

Putting "critter bottles" into the mini beast hotel

We also created a hedgehog house from flower pots and used hay and sticks to camouflage it,

Hedgehog home ready to be installed

Once box is covered with hay and twigs, it's almost invisible
and quite cosy.

Another interesting idea that we borrowed from Summerwood Community Allotment is to use some of the old hose that we have to create potential homes for solitary bees, which like holes to nest in. We've also installed a new fancy bee box, to go with the bamboo-bundles that we already have, so we'll check them later in the year to see which have been most successful, or if the bees just use the compost bin like last year! We also put in a few other bee-boxes, aimed at bumble bees, so we'll see if they work too.

Bumble-bee nest option 1 - clay pot version

Version 2, plastic bottle version bee home

Old hose pipe can also make a good home for solitary bees.

In other news, we were pleased to see that the robin was taking notice of the teapot that we put into the rosebush as a possible nesting site. It looks as if there might be a pair using it, so we'll see if that turns out to be the case. We've included quite a few nesting sites for birds that like shelves and open-fronted boxes, so hopefully they and the blackbirds will be happy.

Thanks again to Gateway to Nature. We really enjoy their monthly visits, and it certainly means we get a lot done!

Grafting workshop

Great turn out for the grafting workshop today. 16 happy people, all trying to cut nice little jigsaw-links to make a root-stock link up with a grafted apple.

It takes a surprisingly long time to get the hang of the process, but it is very satisfying once you do, though the proof of that will presumably show up in many months time, when it will be clear if the grafted wood has taken!

Thanks to Leo from Summerwood Community Garden, who did such a great job and was a very patient teacher. Thanks also to Tracey for providing soup, and Birgitte for her delicious jam that went down so well with the bread, and to all the folk who turned up.

If anyone missed the grafting and would still like to have a go, they should visit Summerwood on the last Saturday in March, between 10am and 1pm.

Spring Cleaning!

Just a quick blog today to thank the wonderful volunteers for all their hard work sorting out the polytunnel and storage areas, which had been getting a bit wild and wooly. Well done all and thank you so much for making such a difference. It will be great to move around without falling over, and really helpful to know where everything is!

And lunch? Pancakes of course! Stuffed with a mushroom and tomato sauce and cheese - lovely grub!

Behold, the tidy polytunnel!

Green Art with Green Bottles and Other Stories

Another very productive day today, despite a hail shower with blobs as big as chick-peas (yes - bigger than normal peas!). The main aim of the day was to do more work on our mosaic apple sculpture, which has been sitting sadly waiting for some attention for quite a few months now. It has survived gales and torrential rain, so it only seems fair to help it live the dream and turn into the apple it's intended to be.

Our regulars were joined by some of the lovely folk from Gateway to Nature, who very quickly got the hang of the controlled breaking of bottles, to make their own bits of glass to create the mosaic. The aim is to crack the base out of the bottle and then remove the curved top, so you are left with the largest possible tube of glass. This is done by scoring a circle around the bottom edge of the bottle with a diamond wheel cutter, then holding it over a lit candle. If the bottle is fairly cold to begin with, the heat from the candle flame is enough to cause the hot part of the bottle to expand a little, which then causes the bottle to crack along the score-line because of the stress, so the bottom should just neatly pop off. After that, you need to score another ring around the top of the bottle, just below where it curves in for the neck. The cutter has a weighted ball on the end of the handle that you can use to tap the glass from the inside which causes the score-line to crack and the neck should then come off in one piece. After that, it's simply a case of scoring lines down the length of the remaining tube of glass, and tapping inside until it breaks in 2 halves. The glass can then be scored again to make squares, curves or other shapes. We'll try to find a "how to" that uses our method, or make one ourselves to add to the post. Just a note if you are thinking of trying this for yourself - you need to wear gloves to help keep any glass shards out of your fingers, and whenever you are cutting glass, you need to wear safety glasses in case any chips fly off the surface.

Cutting glass mosaic pieces.

The aim of the exercise is to turn waste bottles into art - as the glass makes good material for mosaics, though you need to stick it on with white tile adhesive, so that the colour shows up well when it's finished. If you use grey or brown, the final colour will look muddy

Guy adds some green to the apple

Most people had a go at adding the green glass, and some added some extra decorations, so our apple now has a new butterfly and a ladybird, as well as some other interesting flowers and beasties.

Lizzy and Guy hard at work on the apple 

Whilst the mosaic team were doing there thing, those who like a bit more physical exercise were getting on as well. Joyce helped new volunteer Chris to plant more lavenders in the sensory garden, and to take cuttings from them. Other Chris, Hassan and Lizzy helped to process more of the wood we have cut for fuel, though they had a go at the arty stuff too.

Hassan working his way through the wood pile

Joyce & Chris about to prune the newly planted lavender

All the while, we were aware that the birds in the area are singing their hearts out. The robins were putting on a really good show, but the hail apparently heralds some colder weather, so we hope that it's not like last year, when lots of breeding birds lost their first broods. Fingers crossed it's just a quick snap and that March will actually bring Spring instead of re-starting Winter after the warm and wet weather we've been having.

The robin, singing beautifully in between the hail showers

Food today was carrot risotto - just rice, vegetable stock and grated carrots boiled together for a few minutes and left to cook in their own heat, with some cheese added at the end - a quick, healthy feast well earned by our hard workers, and much enjoyed. It goes well with a tomato sauce.

Wind, wood, water and wildlife.

Strange start to the day, as Tracey arrived to be greeted by what looked like a red-legged partridge wandering sedately up the track towards the orchard car park at the entrance to Windmill Community Gardens. It stopped for a good look at the car, and then continued unhurriedly, until she got out to try and take a picture, when it took to the air and disappeared. With all the crazily strong winds, it's possible it's been blown in from somewhere else, but it would be interesting if these exotic little birds decide to take up home with us. They were introduced from Europe by King Charles II and would be a good mascot for equality, as sometimes both the male and the female raise clutches of eggs on separate nests. We'll see if it turns up again and agrees to a photo for positive identification!

Creating the narrow marsh behind the pond.

The team soon turned up, and after a warming brew and look-round, quickly got to work. Jobs for the day - to create the marshy areas at the back of the new pond and tidy up the pond edge by the path, to take down the wood we will need for the coming year, and to use the prunings from our gooseberries and currants to make cuttings.

Each year, we coppice or pollard some of the trees around the site, to provide wood for our cooking and fires during the year. The trees will re-grow multiple stems from the sides of the cut stump, so they provide a renewable resource. Our aim is to create a truly sustainable system which provides enough wood year after year, and as you may have read recently, we are now using the regrowth for other things, like weaving bed-edges. We don't use chainsaws for the work, even though we are initially cutting down trees up to 5m tall. We use a fabulous saw on a pole which is very sharp and very controllable. If we take the tree down bit by bit, starting with the top-most branches, we also reduce the risk of something large falling on someone, and by putting ropes onto the branches we are removing, we can ensure they don't land on something we want to keep. We also take care to cut trees early in the year to avoid the nesting season, and when the weather is mild, like it has been, to check that there are no birds already nesting in or near them.

It's fun to use the pole saw - and also to teach people how it works. The cutting all happens as you pull the saw towards you, but the teeth pretty much do the work themselves, so the main effort is in moving the blade backwards and forwards, rather than in trying to force the blade into the wood. Tracey gave the health and safety brief and a quick lesson, then Guy got into the swing of things. He picked it up really quickly, considering he had no experience of this kind of work. Hassan came to lend a hand, and also proved to be a quick learner.

Audrey, Mark, new Chris and April took on the fruit bush cuttings, and made a lovely job of setting them out to grow in one of the beds we made from a builder's bag. We did an experiment last year with layering some of the lower branches on the fruit bushes (ie. covering them up with soil where they touched the ground), to see if they would root. It worked pretty well, so we had 3 ready-rooted bushes to add to the cuttings as well.

We were joined today by the DISO team, who got stuck into helping Laurence with finishing the pond and helping Chris to process the felled wood into usable material (we need stakes and poles, as well as fire wood and sticks for the rocket stove). Some of the lads also had a go with the pole saw, and were really getting the hang of it by the end of the session.

We were given a present of some lavender bushes (thanks Tim!), so those needed heeling in. Guy and Hassan got on the job, and we've now got them all nicely tucked up until we get the sensory garden pathway organised. The aim is to have a lavender-lined walk, which should be a great scent experience.

The finished pond, ready for planting up in Spring

Thanks to Laurence and the DISO squad, the pond is looking really good, and should be ready for us to add some plants in early April. We're making progress, which is always nice to see at this time of year, and certainly better than this time in 2013, when things literally froze to a standstill.

Fruit Tree Pruning Workshop

Not sure how we managed it today, but our tree pruning workshop managed to just dodge the showers, and miss the worst of the wind!

A jolly bunch of folk turned up from many places, and were all delighted to spend 3 hours with Marc Richmond, a local pruning expert with RHS training. It was a good learning curve, as Marc began with the car park orchard trees, which are quite young, went into the Mill Allotments to work on some more mature trees, and then returned to Windmill itself to help us with the on-going revival of our wild and wooly pear tree before finishing with a good old haircut for the gooseberries, and currants in the fruit cage. He covered apples, pears, plums, cherries and soft fruit, so everyone found out something useful. (NB. stone fruit need to be pruned when they are in leaf and growing strongly to avoid silver-leaf disease, so they weren't pruned during the session).

It was pretty chilly, so everyone was really pleased at the end to have a chance to warm up with some parsnip curry soup from Tracey, and some excellent cake from Birgit (thanks again!). A nice side effect of the course is that we now have lots of cuttings for making new plants!