Apple Pressing and a Trip to EcoWorks

Wednesdays at Windmill are often quite calm and a chance to get things organised. This week was a bit different, as we had a chance to go to a workshop day at EcoWorks in St. Anns, organised by the Federation of City Farms and Community Growers - (we're members, and it's a great organisation).

Ellis, Jools and Helen went to the get-together, whilst Tracey stayed behind as we had a group of children from Mellers Primary who were keen to come to find out about making apple juice.

The small group from Mellers had a great time, first tasting a variety of different apples, then learning useful knife skills in chopping the apples ready for processing to make sure they were clean with no blemishes. They found out that the machine used to cut up and squash the apples before pressing them is called a scratter, and quickly became a good team, working to get the apples through. We then put the press into action and made lots of lovely juice.

Preparing the apples helped pupils with their knife skills

Using the scratter to crush the apples - the pupils loved the name of the machine

The first juice appears

The pupils really enjoyed tasting the juice, and proudly carried off bottles of the extra juice to give their class mates a taste. Thank you to the Dig In Community Allotment who lent us their apple press and scratter.

Helen and Ellis have a go at bread-making at Ecoworks

Tracey then hurried off to EcoWorks to join the rest of the group. They had been finding out about engaging the community and veg box schemes, and after a wonderful home-cooked lunch, we then went on to do some bread making followed by a tour of the allotments which was fascinating and gave us lots of ideas. We had a great time - thanks to the Fed and to Ecoworks. If you'd like to find out more about the organisations, have a look at the links below.


Ecoworks - www.ecoworks.org.uk


The Federation of City Farms and Community Growers - www.farmgarden.org.uk


Dig In Community Allotment - http://www.diginstapleford.org.uk/

End of the Harvest

Things are winding down here at Windmill. We've still got a few crops in the ground - fennel, rainbow chard, kale, spinach, brussels and purple sprouting broccolli for spring, but the rest is pretty much done.

Having said that, we just planted our winter onions and garlic, with help from Robert Shaw Primary school, (though we had to shade them against drying out in the heat!), and we'll be putting the broad beans in soon too.

Our last big harvest of the year?

We did do quite a bit of picking and got a nice little crop of beans, mini corn, lettuce and a bumper crop of tomatoes of all kinds, but there won't be much more now, so we have to start thinking of getting the beds ready for the winter. I like putting on a top-dressing of compost and then leaving everything to freeze well, to kill off some of the pests, but then putting cloches and cardboard on the soil to warm it up in early spring, so we can get going early.

Of course, we aim to experiment too, so we may try a very late sowing of carrots to see if we can get away with a winter-growing crop, and the same with some of the hardier peas. We also hope to keep the salads going all winter but that is dependent on no-one else taking a shine to our polytunnel plastic...

And because of that, we've acquired another crop - of barbed wire. Sadly, faced with all the vandalism, we've had to really up the defences, because we need to have a working polytunnel, and we haven't got enough money in our budget to cope with repeated thefts or damage.

Thanks to Nick and the team for their hard work in helping us to make Windmill safer

One job we really enjoyed was taking some of our spare apples and pears to the Acorn Day Centre so that we could spread a little of the generosity which has been shown to us by everyone who donated fruit to us for our Harvest Celebration.

Fancy a pear?

Lots of different apple varieties to try at Acorn

We had enough different varieties to please all tastes, and people were able try before they chose which fruit to take. We also left some spare for anyone who came the following day, so we hope everyone got plenty.

Windmill Harvest Celebration

Today was Windmill's first Harvest Celebration for the Climate Friendly Gardeners project and we are delighted at how well it went. It was a lovely sunny day, and the temperature hit 28C, which was great for our visitors, but did kind of scupper our Autumnal plans to serve lots of hot soup and make popcorn using the fire-pit! Still, we adjusted to be more hot weather appropriate, everything seemed to work and over 50 people paid us a visit.

The Harvest Celebration begins. 

Visitors enjoying the food tasting table

Our huge Brandywine tomatoes delighted some of the visitors

We had all kinds of activities, including apple pressing with Rowan and Ash - (thanks to Framework for providing the apples and some of the labour for that), traditional and modern outdoor games with Matt, like apple bobbing and giant jenga, "pin the worm on the apple", making Japanese seed bombs with Khaled, apple tasting with 17 different varieties run by Helen and Ellis, lots of different foods to taste made using produce from the Gardens, and freshly made apple pancakes thanks to Jeremy.

The apple pressing was very popular

Matt entertains one of our younger visitors

Making Japanese-style seed bombs with Khaled

The well-stocked apple-tasting table, with 16 varieties
from  John Hempsall's Heritage Orchard at East Markham

Jeremy's apple pancakes disappeared as quickly as he could make them.

There was also a produce competition, with a good number of entries, especially in the jam section, other categories being longest marrow, heaviest marrow, best chutney or pickle, strangest vegetable and best display of fruit, veg, flowers and herbs. The winners were decided by Rukia and her young helpers, who particularly enjoyed tasting the jam!

Some of the entries for out produce competition

The "Best Display of Produce" entries

Visitors admire the entries

The Winner's role of honour

Best Jam - Kath Williams (runner up Gill Dickinson)
Best Chutney - Rose Perkins, (runner up Kath Williams)
Strangest fruit or veg - Sally White
Longest marrow - Dave and Pam Willey
Heaviest marrow - Framework
Best display of produce - Dave and Pam Willey (runner up Sally White)

Dave and Pam's prize-winning Produce Display

Sally collects her strangest vegetable prize for her many-legged carrot

Thanks go to everyone who took part in the competitions, and we were so pleased to see so many entries. And we were also delighted to see so many volunteers on the day - Claire, Ellis, Dan, Helen, Meirion, Matt, Khaled, Jeremy, Ash and Rowan all did a great job, and coped well with being ordered around by Tracey. Craig also stepped into the breach and took most of the photos you'll see here. Thanks also to the Keyworth Abundance Project for the loan of their apple press and scratter.

The tasting and apple-preparation table in full swing

We've had some lovely positive feedback from the day and we definitely hope to run it again next year - hopefully with an intact polytunnel!

Fantastic Day!

Despite all our woes over the polytunnel, we have just run a super session with a Robert Shaw year 5 class, which really helped brighten our mood.

Harvesting the mini sweetcorn

Ellis, Tracey and new Groundwork bod Craig helped the class to harvest produce and then we split into groups (Vampires, Spooks and Zombies!) to plant onions and garlic, paint totem poles and cook to make a pasta dish with a fresh sauce using the tomatoes, onions, garlic and herbs from the allotment. We were delighted about this as a Robert Shaw class helped us to plant the tomatoes when they visited in the Summer term, so it only seemed right that they would be the ones to do the harvesting and get to taste what they'd grown.

Adding the final touch - some shredded basil from the polytunnel

The pupils all worked hard, and then enjoyed the food that the Vampires had made (despite having to handle garlic!) They also helped us to harvest our pumpkins, which we'll be using during a variety of sessions over the Autumn, though we made sure they had one to take away as a thank you for their efforts.

Trying out the pasta with fresh tomato sauce

Robert Shaw Year 5's with our pumpkin crop

Tracey made good use of the small amount of left-over pasta when she then went out to do an outreach session helping children from the NUSA after-school group to start planting up their new raised beds. The group were delighted to get the bonus of an early tea.

Not again!

We can't believe it - Windmill has again been struck by vandals. Sometime between when Tracey and her family did the watering early on Saturday evening and this morning, someone broke into the site and cut off the polytunnel plastic AGAIN! This time, they also quite deliberately cut down the supports for all the tomatoes, as these were tied on each of the polytunnel uprights. They also broke into the shed and took some things, though fortunately not anything really valuable, but they broke the shutter and the window glass, so we have a lot to do to mend everything. This time, we weren't alone in suffering attack, as at least 10 other allotments were targetted, with small thefts and damage to crops. Our plastic is marked with smart water and indelible pen, but the attackers didn't seem to mind that.

Thank you so much to Claire from Groundwork and Sally, one of the local allotment holders who helped to tie up the tomatoes to prevent further damage, and helped to save the bulk of the crop.

Fortunately Nick and the Groundwork Work Team are available this week, and have riden to the rescue. They will be reinforcing the fence, adding barbed wire and anti-climb paint to all the potential break in points and mending any broken stuff. We're also thinking of how to make the polytunnel less vulnerable, because we really can't afford to fix it again, and even now, fixing it is taking money we hoped to use for other things.

Tidy up

This week, we're getting ready for all the visitors we will be having next week, so it's been mostly about tidying up.

Dan and Ellis spent some time moving our cut wood indoors as we plan to have a fire in the fire pit for the first time at our Harvest Celebration and we want to make sure it's as dry as possible.

Dan colects wood for the fire pit

Ellis collecting wood for the fire pit

John Nelson volunteered to run the strimmer for possibly the last time on site as we should be moving to using a scythe as part of our commitment to lower energy systems and techniques. He helped us tidy up some of our rough edges so things are looking nice and tidy.

John hoeing away at the rough edges

The brandywine tomatoes are looking amazing - bright golden orange and huge. They will be perfect for our session next week with Robert Shaw Primary, who will be visiting to make a pasta sauce with them. We also had a good harvest of courgettes, beans, baby corn, kohlrabi, spinach and chickpeas. The chickpeas are especially interesting as they have cropped really well, although we've had so little rain. This year has been about trying to use as little water as possible. Next year, we'll try different amounts of water on similar crops so we can see just how much is really necessary.

A Grand Day Out!

Today Windmill went to Woodthorpe Grange Park to the first "Grow Your Own" day. The weather was a bit mixed - windy and sometimes quite wet with short, sharp showers, but Tracey, Dan and Ellis battled on and managed to create a rather nice display to show what Windmill Community Gardens can do.

Over the last few weeks, Helen, Lisa and new volunteer Meirion have worked on a display for us to have for events like this, and this was its first outing. It looked pretty good, and fortunately the Groundwork boards stood up to the weather, which kept trying to blow everything down.

Very professional looking display board - some pictures may be familiar!

We also used a basket of Tracey's and some of our produce to create a "horn of plenty" effect which showed it all off rather nicely. The aim was to give a lot of the produce away for donations. Dan and Ellis got a great double act going with Dan touting our wares, and Ellis plugging the gaps in the display with the extra produce.

Horn of plenty display - fruits (and veg!) of all our labour

Windmill did rather well. We got the prize for Best Representation of a Project and a £25 voucher for B&Q came along with the certificate. Of course we had our secret weapon - a "Guess the weight of the tomato" competition with the largest of our Brandywines - (that weighed 20oz, by the way!) And another triumph - Dan's entry of a mutant double courgette won the prize for the strangest veg! Apart from that, we took over £50 in donations for our produce.

It was a really good day, with lots of networking with other groups and a chance to get ourselves better known with the public. Well done to all that helped either beforehand or on the day