August ‘25
August kicked off for us with another of our Summer Picnics at the new Port Glasgow Hub in Kings Street. Thanks to all who came along and joined in with the Zumbini and chatted to the Oral Health team. Lots of fun was had by the wee ones and there was plenty of opportunities to chat about the healthy picnic food on offer. Our houmous, carrot and lettuce wraps went down a storm and the toddlers loved their vegetable pots! Watch this space for next month’s community Moveable Feast meal!
Lots of activity in the community gardens, with harvesting and sowing for autumn and winter. Alice continued with supporting the volunteers at Craigend on the garden they are developing at the back of the Centre. If you haven’t visited it, pop down! It is looking amazing. Craigend has a fantastic cafe offering affordable home cooked food - there is normally a queue to the door so be sure to get there early if you are going for lunch (especially Steak Pie Thursdays!). We have also been at Parklea for our regular Wednesday afternoon slot, where the allotment is really coming on and the polytunnel is laden with tomatoes. Volunteers have been brilliant and learning lots of new skills along the way.
It was also good to be back at Belville and to see the changes in their amazing garden. Belville staff and volunteers have worked really hard on the garden this year and had some great harvests. If you are interested in participating in their gardening clubs, they run on Monday afternoons and Thursday mornings. Get in touch with Sally at Belville for more information!
B&Q are now doing plastic pot recycling which is fantastic news. We took about 5 huge bin bags full of old and broken pots in there, that were beyond reusing, to stop them going into landfill. If you have old plastic pots, don’t take them to the skip, take them to B&Q instead! What a great service!
Parklea had a brilliant Heritage Week, full of sunshine and plenty of visitors. Alongside the photography and art exhibition, cyanotype and heritage food workshops, we helped man the herbal tea stand. Alongside us, was Fergus from the Orchard Project, with this bicycle powered apple press. The apple juice from the Parklea orchard apples was delicious and definitely worth the effort making it on the bike! Lots of people sampled the herb teas (from the Parklea herb garden), took away fresh bunches of herbs and some of the allotment produce. It was great to meet so many folk and to chat about ICFN, food growing and more specifically the health benefits of all the herbs! A fantastic day.
Lots of planning and stocking up in preparation for September and back at the Early Learning Centres, which has become one the main focuses of our work - teaching children how to grow, harvest and cook food so that they see it as a normal part of life and hopefully make good health choices around food as a result. We are looking forward to autumn sowing in the gardens with the nurseries and then move onto soup making again in October.
Goodbye Summer! Hello Autumn!
