Aye Up Me Duck, it's a Sunny Sunday!

Great morning's work by a happy band of sun-worshippers! Looks like the pond has been given a major seal - or should that duck of approval. We'll see if that causes problems in the long term, but in the meantime, they do brighten up the place.

Mr and Mrs Mallard are in the house.

Thanks to our fairy-fed mother, Lynn (the local rep for the Federation of City Farms and Community Growers), who arrived with some beans from Poland (no Pole-bean jokes please!). These heritage beans apparently should be grown up something recycled for a project, so what could be more "recycled" than our lovely bicycle-wheel trellis?

Trellis ready for beans.

One of the beans goes in. We'll keep you posted as to how
well they grow.

The volunteers for today - Ash, Rowan, Chris and Tracey were delighted to welcome back old friend of the project, Matt Hilton, who cycled in, got his gloves on and got going.

Matt did a particularly good job of removing ant's nests from the polytunnel. We often just let ants get on with it, but as 3 groups had taken up residence, and were happily farming aphids on all our crops, we couldn't let them stay. If you didn't know, ants use aphids as a source of "honey dew", a nice phrase for what is essentially aphid wee. This sticky stuff is full of sugars, which the ants collect and take back to the nest for food. Getting rid of ants should help reduce aphids, as ants literally farm them - moving them around plants. We dug out the breeding chambers, and placed the eggs and ants in a part of the garden where they won't be a problem.

Matt gets to grips with the ants.

The rest of the group did lots of needed jobs outside - mowing the lawn, watering newly planted crops and finishing tidying up the last of the wood we cut this year. 

Ash watering with perfect colour-coordination!

 We also planted some more squash, the last of the baby corn (i.e. the ones that grow into little stir-fry corn cobs), and Chris, Matt and Tracey managed to do the first lot of planting in the polytunnel. We've now got a nice selection of tomatoes, some cucumbers, mouse melons (also known as thimble cucumbers, melothrie and cucamelons), galia melons and basil.  The place is looking good!

Chris experiences Gardener's Delight...

Cucumbers, melons and tomatoes. No ants...

Tomato ring-culture section

 Some of the tomatoes were planted in ring-culture - ie. in bottomless pots that will be filled up with compost as the plants grow to allow them to make even more roots. You then water into the pot, and direct the water straight into the roots without wasting any. It's always worked pretty well for us.

Here's another little trick that's worth trying. With cut and come again lettuce, we are told to cut the outside leaves off the plant, and leave the middle. The only problem with that is that the stem gets long and leggy after a bit. We have a slightly different take on cut and come again.

Lettuce harvested last week has already started to regrow.

We know the outer leaves of lettuce are often a bit tough and get discarded, so we cut off the lettuce just above these. This leaves the middle of the lettuce looking rather bald, but it has lots of roots in the ground, so it soon sprouts new leaves from the sides. These grow quickly, so you can keep harvesting for quite a while from the same plant.

2 weeks of growth.

All Change at Windmill.

It's all change at Windmill. We are soon to be born again as an independent organisation, which will hopefully mean longer opening hours and lots of fun activities. If you are interested in getting involved, let us know.

If you fancy sponsoring us to do some activities, have some ideas for where we can get funding, or want to help with sourcing funding or some freebies, we'd be delighted to hear from you too.

If you need some fresh fruit and veg, some plants or some seeds, pay us a visit and see what we have. At the moment, we're rich in strawberry plants, lettuce and rhubarb, and we've got a good range of fruit bushes and saplings available.

And, as always, if you fancy doing a little light gardening or just want to turn up for a chat, we are open  every Thursday from 10am until 2pm (though opening hours are likely to increase shortly.) We love visitors, and we are happy to feed you at lunchtime for a small donation.

Get planting, get fed!

The amazing regulars, who worked through last Thursday's rain finally got their just rewards today. Wonderful weather, and we got loads done, though the pictures make it look as if we were just goofing around! The sweetcorn is now all in, as are most of the pumpkins and squashes. Well done all, but especially Joyce who stayed until 7pm. Moral of the story - if Tracey says she'll stay on a bit to miss the worst of the traffic, you might be here a while if you keep her company!

Chris enjoying his tea-break

Mark getting used to the UK climate again
after his European travels (like the hat!)

Newly planted celebration squash.

Hassan was still feeling strong after planting all the pumpkins

Not sure if Joyce is posing or dancing, but she
worked like a trojan, so I'm not arguing!

Great food as always - this time we had a delicious risotto using the first peas and broad beans of the season, alongside stored onions, freshly gathered sage, asparagus and red-orach tops. If you think you don't like broad beans, try them when they are still small, and we're sure you'll love them. Everyone agreed that the food looked great and tasted better. Another great low-energy recipe from the Windmilll Outdoor Kitchen!

Spring-Fresh Risotto - Recipe to serve 6

2 mugs of basmati or risotto rice

4 mugs boiling water

1 large onion finely chopped

Knob of organic butter or coconut oil

3 teaspoons vegetable stock powder

1 mug of freshly podded beans and peas

6 asparagus spears washed and chopped into 1cm sections.

6 sage leaves chopped finely

Red orach tops to taste (we used about 12 leaves) chopped finely

Grated strong cheddar to taste ( we used about 125 grams or 5 oz)

Brown the onion in the fat until it starts to look transparent. Add the rice and the stock powder and stir in, then add the water and bring to the boil. Cook for 2 minutes whilst stirring, then add the vegetables. Boil for another 2 minutes whilst stirring, add herbs and stir in, then put the lid on the pot, remove from the heat and place in a hay box or wrap in towels to keep it warm. After 10 minutes, check the rice is cooked, then add a splash of boiling water to loosen the rice, and the grated cheese. Stir in and serve.

The Future Factory brighten up the place

Thank you to the wonderful folk from Nottingham Trent University Future Factory, who worked so hard on repainting one of our beds on a blustery Wednesday. They also remained cheerful when the swirling wind kept blowing out the kelly kettle so warm drinks were delayed (we still think the kelly kettle is a wonderful device - next job - design a shelter!).

Ready to get started!

Being at Windmill,  the NTU team had to use elbow-grease to
take the paint off the beds, but they set to with gusto.

Base coat - non-toxic, low VOC paint, of course!

The start of the art work - going well.

Adding extra touches.

Andy and Lizzy get on with weeding the fire circle

Finished! Thanks to Angela, Hanna, Paul, Suborna, Siobhan
and Andy - well done all!

It was great to meet everyone, and we're delighted with the results of their efforts. Thanks to them also for giving the fire-circle and herb area a much-needed tidy up. And thanks to regular volunteer Lizzy for helping out as well, despite lack of sleep.

Spring Cleaning for May Day

Today - May Day is a great time for new beginnings, and it was interesting to notice how pretty much everyone that turned up was in the mood to do some Spring cleaning!

Admittedly, the shed (or "the House of Mouse" as we'll need to call it after a whole family of them moved in) is in dire need of another clear out, and probably a complete revamp, but the forecast showed the potential for heavy showers, so we concentrated on the outside instead. Everyone worked really hard, and it shows. 

The site looking all spruce up and tidy.

Lizzie, Scott and Dean did a great job of scything and mowing the grass in the orchard. 

Hassan and Chris moved the tyres from the polytunnels and used them to create potato towers.  

 

Filling up the potato-tower tyres.

We had a visit from a local resident who found out about us and wanted to see what we do. Komala is from Nepal, so we were delighted when she promised us some seeds from a native Saag plant that she likes to cook with.

Komala visited us to find out about Windmill. Tracey showed
her around.

Lunch was a Moroccan inspired dish with chickpeas, that used the last of our Acorn squash from last year, along with our onions and Rainbow chard.
                        

Rainbow chard - living up to its name!

All hands on deck to get lunch underway.

Moroccan-inspired chickpeas

A Chilly Planting Day

We're not sure where Spring went, as today was distinctly chilly at Windmill. Apparently we were also under a cloud of pollution and Saharan dust, but we bravely set to.

First order of the day was to dig in the green manure bed with the Hungarian grazing rye. The aim of green manure is to add organic matter to the soil, by growing something, then turning it under the soil to die off and rot down. The grazing rye turned out to be a bit of a pain to keep under the soil, so we may have to turn it again once it has wilted a bit to make sure it is out of the light.

Turning under the grazing rye (don't worry -
the crop in foreground is broad beans)

Then we planted some potatoes. At Windmill we plant them in dips to encourage them to stay moist, rather than raising a ridge over them first. It seems to work quite well in the raised beds we have, as they are free draining. It also allows us enough soil to earth up the growing potatoes well, which could otherwise be a problem in a raised bed with little spare soil. If we were doing it in a heavy clay area, we might do it differently.

Hassan and guy planting potatoes.

Tracey finishes off the rows.

Thanks to Joyce's suggestion, some of us also took the time to enjoy the sensory garden. It is looking nicely colourful at the moment, and the new lavender is growing away well. We also had chance to admire some of our daffodils, and to notice that the bees love the willow catkin flowers.

And the prize for most beautiful daff goes to..

Willow - it's the bees needs...

Tracey and Joyce in the sensory garden

Lunch was cheesy polenta and the first of our polytunnel salad leaves - a warming treat on a cold day, and very cheap to make at around 40p a portion (including salad dressing!). An added bonus is that it needs almost no cooking, so it's cheap for fuel costs as well, and any left overs can be put in a dish then cut into slices for later meals and snacks.

Polenta and salad with fake (but still tasty) balsamic vinegar

Budget Recipe - Cheesy Polenta 

You can use a website like mySupermarket to check prices to identify cheap ingredients, but street markets and independent shops may well be cheaper, so check out your local area.
Polenta is a great ingredient, because it is ready almost instantly, and it's incredibly filling, so a little goes a long way. A good tip for budget use of cheese is to go for ready-grated cheese, as it's cheaper and at the moment, there are some extremely cheap offers. But make sure you choose a strong-tasting one, so you need less cheese to get the taste effect you are after.

Ingredients to serve 6 
1 medium onion
1 1/2 mugs fine polenta powder (79p for 500g - the recipe needs about half a packet)
Boiling water - approximately 4 mugs
3 teaspoons vegetable stock powder (cheaper than cubes)
250g extra mature cheese (£1.50 on a 2 for £3 offer)

Finely chop the onion and fry in a little oil (we use coconut, rapeseed oil or olive (NOT extra virgin) for a minute or two, stirring to avoid burning it. Then add the stock powder and mix in the water. Now comes a trick - pour in the polenta in a thin stream, stirring as you go to avoid lumps forming. You should end up with a wet mixture like a thick soup. Boil for about 1 minute, stirring constantly. If any lumps form, crush them to even out the texture. The mixture will thicken until it is like mashed potatoes. If it still seems a bit goopy, then boil a little longer, or wrap it up and leave it for 5 minutes to firm up. Stir in cheese and serve with a leafy salad and a simple oil and vinegar dressing. Any left overs can be kept and sliced like a bread the next day to eat cold.

Hassan was impressed!

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!