Spring is properly here now.. .the storms have gone and the whole woodland is turning from brown to green. It's a fantastic moment - almost in front of your eyes. And with fabulous hard-working WOOFFERS on site (a lovely family from Prague, with children who go to a Forest School - how fab!) we've kicked off big time. Today's job was to trailer in tonnes of 3 year old horse manure (gardener's black gold!) into the Food Bank Garden raised beds - all built and ready to roll. Made I proper happy...:)
0 Comments
February has arrived and spring is sprunging all over the place...we've been giving workshops and talks to local community groups and day centres, making bee hotels, (SERIOUSLY underestimating how much bamboo you need to cut up for one single bee hotel..blimey!), submitting funding applications for our community bee safari day, identifying the site for our Food Bank Garden and working with the local surgery to offer placements to volunteers, reactivating our WOOFFER profile (four requests in two days as a result - bimey!), visiting other people's fabulous woodlands to find out what they're doing, making bird boxes, turning compost, planning a barn owl box,..and finally PLANTING SEEDS! Wuhoo! We are the proud stewards of sprutting tomatoes, sprouts, lettuce, mangetout and of course our wonderful regal kale - daubenton, ewigher and curly. All growing in 100% home grown compost, and all looking very very happy. Oh - and the final proof we are leaving winter behind: this week we have had...FOUR (count'em) beautiful brown and silky eggs. Well done, my gorgeous girls. We love you. UPDATE! This day has been postponed and will be rescheduled, owing to the death of Brigit's father after a long illness. We all send our huge love to Brigit and her family at this really tricky time. x Hurray! Bee Safari Day for May with the fabulous Brigit Strawbridge is now booked in - if you're interested, drop us an email and we can get your name down. 3 May, 10.30 - 4. Very limited numbers - and we're careful not to cause disturbance on the narrow lanes near us, so we encourage bike, bus and train, and car share! Drop us a line if you want more details on wildlybrilliant@outlook.com . Plus watch this space for more news on the Community Bee Safari Day in Hayle with Hayle in Bloom in June... :) Great licheny email this morning: Dear Sir / Madam Thank you for registering your interest in Plantlife's Heritage Lottery Funded Project which focusses on Atlantic Woodlands in the south west and provides opportunities for people to learn more about lichens and mosses; the management of these woodlands; and participate in other activities such as volunteering, attending teacher / outdoor educator training, being involved in family events. This email is to update you on project activities. 1) A project manager will be in post from late February and will be ensuring that individuals are contacted with regard to specific opportunities they registered an interest in. 2) We should have details of all the lichen identification days and the lichen apprenticeship scheme (epiphytic lichens in Atlantic woodlands) by the end of February and will be circulating dates, venues and more course information. The British Lichen Society have been developing the course content and we are really excited as to how this is all shaping up. We hope that those who expressed an interest in this will feel so too. We look forward to sending you out more information shortly. In the mean time thank you once more for registering your interest. Should you have any queries, please do not hesitate to contact me at felicity.harris@plantlife.org.uk. With kind regards Felicity Harris (Head of Outreach, England and Wales) The Wild About Plants Team T:(01722)342730 E:wildaboutplants@plantlife.org.uk www.plantlife.org.uk Splendid! :) Fantastic morning with the local Hayle Penwith University of the Third Age this week, talking about permaculture, forest gardening, cleaning with vinegar, preserving food, and being blooming bee-friendly (watch this space for news of the Bee Safari Day plans we have with Hayle in Bloom and Brigit Strawbridge!). Loads of enthusiasm and loads of expertise from a room full of energetically minded U3Aers..who knew there were so many secret permaculturists? Great to be invited to give a talk and I'll be back with a shedload of bamboo from the land here to help everyone make bee hotels. Hayle will soon be Blooming Bee Friendly.:) And then a great meeting with local food producers, looking at how we can sell our local fruit and vegetables to local people even more than we do now; my splendid mashua plant is sprutting energetically (lots of interest at the U3A talk and a group wanting to order their own!); 95 tomato seeds planted and being carefully warmed inside in 100% home made compost until the sun starts to make it safe outside; AND we have just started making our first of a new batch of bee hives...looks utterly brilliant thanks to my very dextrous other half...:)...it's all go at PermanentlyBrilliant... Things sprutting up everywhere....progress moving apace on our Food Bank Garden idea, working with the splendid Food Bank vols locally, and hopefully contributing to our local Health and WellBeing strategy. Got all sorts of ideas as to how we can link up with people who might just want to come and grow stuff for other people if they're feeling low and want a green rocket boost.... watch this space. In the meantime, also booking up slots to go and give chatty talks and workshops on permaculture and environmental growth and low impact living to the local visually impaired group, the local day centre, the local University of the Third Age, developing a sensory garden, and working on a fab bee friendly project and Hayle Bee Safari Day with the wonderful Brigit Strawbridge with the Hayle in Bloom group..January is all go and it's all about joining stuff up...my fave thing in the world! This is simply, utterly, wonderful. JUST what we're working on here at permanentlybrilliant - and this lovely man says it so perfectly - a wee dose of inspiration. My Big Hope: to help places like this happen everywhere so every cluster of villages has access to one. :) Extreme day: we got hailed on, rained on, blown on and hailed on again: but made excellent progress with scythe and hedge trimmers clearing bramble and bracken in the East Orchard, using the cut undergrowth to provide the first mulch round the apple, cherry and pear trees and digging out as many of the bramble roots as possible. We cut back our monumentally high and wind-thrashed bamboo to give the cherry trees more room, and then trimmed and stacked for use later in the year for beans, peas and our very own bamboo hedging technique. East Orchard is starting to reappear from amongst the bramble arching spikily over the tree tops, grabbing legs and arms as you try and wrestle it out from the branches and then lying in wait to tear at ankles when you think you've got it to the ground. Cheeky stuff. ;) We ended up drenched, muddy and frozen, but pleased with our hard fought results - a whole row of orchard appearing from the jungle! - and warmed up with Grandma's "bit of everything" soup and fab home made flat breads and cheese. Weather even worse in the afternoon - hail coming down sideways - so inside jobs beckoned: painting the new signs for the land and more work on planning the exciting new projects for the coming year - watch this space for more. :) Lovely Christmas with fambly, undeterred by monsoon levels of rain and eye-watering amounts of mud. Off grid living means being very careful with energy but knowing you have loads of water at this time of year... it's alll about going with the flow...:). We put some time in with our local food bank, a both uplifting and deeply upsetting experience, and it generated lots of discussion at the dinner table, including a quiet, thoughtful comment from one teenager about how grateful he was that we're in the position of being able to offer food and time for the bank, rather than in the position of needing one. Hmmm. Indeed. Ha. This week our perennial veg from Martin Crawford's Agroforestry Research Trust arrived in a fabulously useful cardboard box (now on the veggie patch under lots of chippings), including Daubenton kale, sea cabbage, mashua and more - all now in pots and in the ground. AND got our szechaun pepper tree from Otter Farm - looking like a determined toddler, a 30cm proud green stick...should be ready to harvest in about 2-3 years. Permaculture is all about slow and sure... |
AuthorThis is written by us, for you, to show what we do... Archives
May 2016
Categories |