A free fruit day in Reigate

Shoppers in Reigate Town Centre will receive a random act of kindness of the fruity kind on Saturday 15 October. From 10am to 3pm, members of Transition Redhill and Growing Redhill will be on the High Street, with a stall near The Market Hotel and Caffè Nero. They will re-distribute fruit, with a take home message to “grow your own”.

The event comes at the same time of year as national Apple Day, which was initiated by Common Ground in 1990.

The juicy bounty will all be collected from local fruit and nut trees, with zero associated ‘air miles’. As well as boxes of fruit gathered before the event, local people are invited to bring unwanted fruit to the stall during the day. Last year, donations were made from fruit trees in gardens of local streets including Eversfield Road, Nutley Lane, Deerings Road, Lonesome Lane and Chart Lane.

Derek Smith, Chair of Transition Redhill, notes there has been a glut of apples this year, probably due to the warm spring weather. He notes that pears ripened very early this year, so are sadly unlikely to be found on the stall. And if apples are not picked soon, they will become windfalls and slowly rot into the soil. He adds windfalls can be frozen now and given to birds throughout the winter. Meanwhile, Surrey shoppers turn to supermarkets for convenience, leaving their own, free and tasty crops to go to waste.

Last year we re-distributed 25 crates of fruit and nuts in what we believe was the first of its kind in Reigate. People told me it was a wonderful event, and should be repeated. I want to collect details from local people with trees willing to donate next year. I also want to spread the message to “grow your own” this Apple Day.

Members of local group, Growing Redhill, will donate Bramley Seedling and Grenadier cooking apples and Cox eating apples to the stall, from their food growing site in Merstham (www.growingredhill.co.uk). This initiative provides mini allotments for growers under the Landshare scheme, pioneered by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall (www.landshare.net).

Apple Day was initiated by Common Ground in 1990. It was inspired by the revelation that we have grown about 3,000 varieties of eating, cooking and cider apples in this country, most of which have established provenances, and in discovering the richness of orchards as habitats for wildlife. Common Ground notes that in 2007 we imported nearly 70% of our apples (Defra Basic Horticultural Statistics 2008). Apples from the southern hemisphere and other far away places fill our supermarket shelves – even in Autumn, the height of our apple season. Every Apple Day event is conceived and run by people locally. For more information see the website www.commonground.org.uk.

Apple Day events in Surrey in 2011

(NB. Transition Redhill takes no responsibility for details of these events, which may change, please check websites for details).

RHS Wisley Taste of Autumn Festival - Thursday 20 to Sunday 23 October - A true celebration of all things autumnal. With apple tastings and advice, food and drink stalls, cookery demonstrations and home grown produce. Get your apples identified. www.rhs.org.uk/Gardens/Wisley/What-s-on

Wednesday 21st October – Apple Day at Petersham Nurseries
Help to save our orchards by buying English apples and juices and by celebrating Apple Day. A new selection of British grown fruit trees and bushes includes a wide range of apple varieties including Apple ‘Bountiful’, Apple ‘Braeburn, Apple ‘Charles Ross’, Apple ‘Golden Delicious’, Apple ‘Greensleeves’… and many more. All of the apple trees have been selected for their taste quality and good disease resistance. They are available in a number of forms including bushes, standards and fan-trained, the majority are self-fertile, all are British grown. www.petershamnurseries.com

Saturday 22 October – Transition Dorking 2nd Annual Apple Day Celebration, Dorking High Street in front of Barclay’s from 9am-2pm. Once again they will be pressing apples into fresh juice on the High Street to celebrate Apple Day. Bring along your apple glut and some clean dry containers (a one litre milk jug would be perfect) and go home with some amazing juice to drink or freeze. If you don’t have any apples – come anyway. It’s also a perfect opportunity to chat with about Food Float, Dorking Community Orchard, and Transition Dorking. www.transitiondorking.org.uk

 

Exciting news from Action Surrey

---

From Autumn we will be holding a number of Low Carbon Courses at our eco-demonstration property, Oak Tree House. These courses will be a unique opportunity for members of the public to develop new skills with all courses being hosted by industry experts. Some of the courses on offer include; designing and creating your own individual jewellery, developing a herbal remedies kit and learning how to make natural soaps, how to build your own DIY Solar Hot Water panel and an Introduction to Permaculture.

Oak Tree House is one of the only fully functional low carbon retrofit show homes in the South of England and has been transformed from an ordinary 3 bedroom house to a showcase property for low carbon living with a wide range of energy efficiency measures and renewable technology. Participants are sure to enjoy an action packed one day course at this inspirational and will have the opportunity to look around the property to discover other ways which they can reduce their carbon consumption and fuel bills.
Further information on all the courses and booking is available at: www.actionsurrey.org/courses.

Shoppers in Reigate Town Centre received a random act of kindness of the fruity kind on Saturday 16 October. From 10am to 3pm, members of Sustainable Redhill were on the High Street, with a stall near The Market Hotel. They handed out a total of 24 boxes of free fruit, with a take home message to “pick your own”.

The event comes at the same time of year as national Apple Day, which was initiated by Common Ground in 1990. In 2010, the event falls on 21 October.

The juicy bounty was all collected from local fruit and nut trees, with zero associated ‘air miles’. As well as boxes of fruit gathered before the event, residents also brought unwanted apples and pears to the stall during the day. Donations were made from fruit trees in gardens of local streets, including Eversfield Road, Nutley Lane, Deerings Road, Lonesome Lane and Chart Lane.
Members of local group, Growing Redhill, donated Bramley cooking apples and eating apples from their food growing site in Merstham. Reigate business, Clifton Nursery, offered discounts for fruit trees as part of the initiative.

Rebecca Harris, Chair of Sustainable Redhill, is an avid fruit picker and chutney maker. She notes that plums, cherries, hazelnuts, apples and pears can go unnoticed in our gardens. Meanwhile, Surrey shoppers turn to supermarkets for
convenience, leaving their own, free and tasty crops to go to waste.

Said Harris: ‘Local people reacted extremely positively to this initiative, which we believe is the first of its kind in Reigate. We were extremely busy handing out free fruit from 10am and thanks to publicity from the Surrey Mirror, people made a bee line for the stall. The extra donations of cooking and eating apples and   pears throughoutthe day, meant we could distribute even more. People told me it was a wonderfulevent, and should be repeated. I collected details from local people with trees willing to donate next year. I want to spread the message to “pick your own” this Apple Day’.

Last Saturday a group from Sustainable Redhill went for a visit to St Joan’s Dairy. The dairy is the only artisan ice cream maker in Surrey, having downsized from a full dairy herd a few years ago.

We all got to meet the “girls” and see how the ice cream was made. Using automated milking system and an amazing ice cream machine, they are able to get from cow to freezer in under an hour!

We were also able to gain an insight into the tough economics of dairy farming and the unfair trading contracts with the supermarkets. Having switched to production of just ice cream, St Joan’s are able to sell directly to local restaurants, farm shops and directly to you and I from their farm on Flanchford Road.
 
The dairy herd also have lots of space to roam around in the fields around the farm. Farming under these low-intensity methods, with no artificial nasties added to the food, is great for the cows, better for the environment and of course contributes to a fantastic tasting ice cream. For more information on the farm please follow the link below.
 
http://www.saintjoansfarm.com/
 
Thank you to St Joan’s for hosting us!

1 small bunch Lavender
225g/8oz Caster suger
100ml/3 1/2fl oz Water
450ml/16fl oz Single cream
1 Vanilla pod
6 Egg yolks
300ml/10fl oz Double Cream  

1. Pull a generous amount of lavender off its stalk with the aid of a fork (or young child) and place in a bowl.

2. In a saucepan, dissolve the caster suger in the water and bring to the boil, then pour over the flowers. Leave to infuse for one hour, then strain. I like to let some of the flowers into the ice cream, but not all.

3. Heat the single cream and vanilla pod gently to a point when a skin forms. You can cut the vanilla pod open to let the seeds out if you want.

4. Beat the egg yolks and add the heated cream slowly with a whisk, then return to saucepan  and stir until it makes a custard. Leave it off the heat to cool.

5.Whip up the double cream and fold the custard into it, adding the lavender water. Remove vanilla pod.

6. Put the mixture into a plastic dish and freeze for one and a half hours.

7. Beat up the mixture with a spoon and refreeze, leaving for another one and a half hours.

8. Beat agin and refreeze and leave one last time for one and a half hours.  

From “Seaweed and eat it” by Fiona Houston and Xa Mailne

A piece by Tony Lambell who spoke at the May 2010 Sustainable Redhill meeting about life before cheap oil …

Family background

These comments are based on my remembrances of life in my youth – that is from my birth in 1937 to 1955 when I left school for National Service. My father was a bank clerk – that meant that he had a regular salary, but could not be regarded as ‘well-off’ and had no savings or capital. As was usual in those days my mother gave up work on marriage. Of course there were no credit cards. Hire purchase whereby you could buy by monthly payments with interest was sometimes available but considered to be undesirable and known as the ‘never-never’. My parents used it just once to buy a new gas cooker. We lived in a semi-detached house in North London. We had no car, and were sparing in buying consumer goods.

Heating

The house had two sitting rooms. The front room or ‘lounge’ was only used at weekends. I now realise why. It was expensive to heat for limited use on a weekday and lighting the fire and clearing the ash away in the morning was a tedious process which would have fallen to my mother who was a small woman and not physically strong. The back room was the living/dining room – it had a coal fire or we used a two bar electric fire when the room was only occupied briefly. There was a one bar electric fire in the hall.

At our last meeting at the Home Cottage, we began to put together an Energy Descent Action Plan for Redhill and Reigate. We had a talk from our new Councillor, Jonathan Essex, about how to work best with the local government, and from Peter Lambell’s father Toni, who gave us an insight into what life used to be like without cheap oil. Constance from Transition Dorking joined us to give us a very good understanding of the concept of Peak Oil, and Jeff from the local business T4, came to tell us about the air source heating systems that they are installing in the local Rugby club.

Between this and some delicious green cup cakes, we all visioned into the future and brainstormed on subjects such as energy, food, transport, and water, in an effort to come up with ideas and plans for how we can make our town more sustainable over the coming years. The plan we came up with is a work in progress and will be posted on the website in the near future for everyone to comment on and add to. See also Toni Lambell’s notes which are well worth reading.

Composting is a natural process that transforms your kitchen and garden waste into valuable and nutrient rich food for your garden, for free. Your garden doesn’t have to be big to start composting at home; simply provide the right ingredients and let nature do the rest.

The Surrey Waste Partnership (Surrey County Council working together with the 11 district and borough councils in the county) is offering home composting bins at fantastic prices, starting from £14.00 (RRP £39.00).

Did you know 1/3 of your household waste could be used for composting?

Compost recipe: Kitchen waste includes:
 Cereal packets and egg boxes
 Fruit scraps, vegetable peelings and salad leaves
 Tea bags and coffee grounds
 Vacuum bag contents
 Vegetarian pet bedding

Garden waste includes:
 Old flowers and nettles
 Wood chippings and straw
 Twigs and dried leaves

Mix both kitchen and garden waste together, and over a 9-12 month period, you will have compost.

Benefits:
Saves you money:
 By not having to buy compost.
 Because it is organic and reduces the need for other garden products.

Boost your garden by:
 Keep plants healthy.
 Feeding your lawn and enriching borders.
 Nourishing flowerbeds and vegetable patches

Helps our environment:
 Because home made compost produces ‘peat-free’ compost. This eradicates the need to buy peat products, which have been commercially sourced and extracted from peat bogs, resulting in the release of stored carbon from the bogs.
 By putting less household waste out for collection, less energy is required as there are fewer vehicle movements.

Composting at home is the easiest way to recycle your waste because you can do it at home, in your own time. It takes little space and effort, and it’s so rewarding. Once you start, you’ll be surprised to see just how much the waste in your kitchen bin and garden bin reduces by – simply by putting suitable waste items into the compost bin instead.

To buy a bin or to dig up more advice on how to turn your table scraps and garden waste into compost, visit www.surreycc.gov.uk/getcomposting or call 0844 571 4444.

* The Surrey Waste Partnership is made up of Surrey County Council and the 11 district and borough councils in the county to manage Surrey’s waste in the most efficient, economic and sustainable way possible.

To an audience of 15 at the Home Cottage in March, Fanny Maiklem explained how she started in business 30 years ago, by selling eggs and potatoes at the gate. Fast forward to 2006 and Fanny’s Farm Shop won Best Rural Retailer. The core values are to:

Buy Locally
Sell Locally
Employ Locally
Do recycling.

Fanny explained that one thing that goes well usually presents two more problems to overcome. She noted farming is very political – Fanny’s Farm Shop will never beat the supermarkets and suppliers. She asked if we really know where the food on our plate comes from? And what is ‘local’? To some suppliers this could mean production up to 35 miles away. This prompted discussion around the lack of an abattoir in the area, causing unnecessary distress to animals. Fanny doesn’t sell anything that is not local. Calabrese and chocolate cakes are the best sellers.

“Do you know where the food on your plate comes from? We should challenge claims about ‘local food’ and ‘organic eggs.” Fanny Maiklem

Health and safety is a big issue for the shop, as is trading standards and hygiene. Three samples are taken from each food item as part of a stringent regime of environmental control. Regulations prevent giving livestock leftover food.

As well as her daughter working in the shop, Fanny explained she provides local employment and added “staff with special needs are a pleasure to have.”

Some of the products sold at Fanny’s Farm Shop, and their local sources:

Watercress                             Gomshall
Chocolate cake                       Loseley, Guildford
Oak-smoked bacon                Chobham
Owlett apple juice                   Kent
Spinach                                   Milford, Godalming
Milk                                          Leigh
Bread and scones                  Down’s Bakery
Butter and ‘parmesan’            Bookham, Hickstead
Eggs                                        Fanny’s Farm’s own.

New suppliers contact Fanny regularly, on the basis of the reputation of the Farm Shop. Fanny noted with sadness there is only one milking herd in the area now, at Leigh, where once there were six. The shop stocks more varieties of marmalade than Fortnum and Masons, and the annual marmalade competition attracts 100 entries. Fanny’s own marmalade recipe is a closely guarded secret. Further stock that comes from the farm includes honey from eight beehives, and eggs. The farm also has a small vineyard and cuts its own willow. Fanny would like to see more local land given over to producing  food and added…“Redhill Rec should be turned over to chickens!”

So what next for this local empire? Fanny has been trying to obtain a license to hold wedding ceremonies at the Farm, but this is proving the point of one step forward two steps back. The accessibility of the tree house is proving a stumbling block for obtaining a license, and Fanny has not been able to resolve her application successfully with the relevant bodies. This is clearly a temporary blockage to moving forward however, and Fanny says “to have a bride come in would be so exciting for us”. Fanny concluded her stimulating talk by adding: “the best is yet to come”.