Wow, what a fab day!!! A very early start, a long day, very stimulating.
So, after 4 hours sleep, got up at 5.30 and before I cycled down to the station, I remembered that I wanted to take some extremely well rotted humanure compost with me, as I thought the children would be interested in that. I'm really glad I did!
So, with a small rucksack and two canvass bags, I set off to get the 06.37 to Newcastle, with the tickets which had been sent to me by the Sunderland Sustainability Team. The trip up was uneventful... I kept on failing to read my NewScientist as I was too tired, and the highlight was pre-dawn Durham, and then the Metro trip to Park Lane, which I got to soon after 8am. David, one of the Sustainability Team people picked me up and drove to an industrial estate where there was an office complex with a large meeting room suitable for the groups of schoolchildren visiting the assorted stalls.
I was pleased to meet Suzanne from Peta, who was doing fruit and veg kebabs and presenting information about Meat Free Mondays. There was also a nice gent called Craig from Groundwork who was making things out of waste... hanging baskets out of plastic milk bottles and paper pots from newspaper. Then there was an excellent project fronted by Richard Smith, called Dig It, They were doing seedling based stuff, parsely seeds I think. Another lovely chap was Paul from Food for Life, he did a little presentation at the end too. There were also people doing a taste test between quorn and beef mince and tasting unusual fruit.
My stall had several items of 'going off' fruit and veg including a mouldy cauliflower and a carrot with black patches, a small collection of other suitable compost items such as a loo roll, a balloon, a bit of wood, some EcoLeaf toilet roll packaging, which is compostable plastic made out of potato starch, and another small collection of non-compostables. Then there was a box of compost beasties... worms, slugs, woodlice, a few centipedes. Always popular, these! I'd prepared two compost bottles (which I think is my invention as I've never seen them elsewhere) (OK, I just found these, but my design is simpler and better!!!) (OK, I've just found loads of similar designs on the net. How could I have thought that I invented these?) I suggested to the groups that they might like to try making compost bottles. I had 3 bags of compost: one with material just a year old, then one with riddled and very mature, and finally, the bag of humanure/sawdust compost. This was just SO popular, with loads of questions and interest. At the question and answer session at the end, most of the questions were on this.
I enjoyed chatting over lunch and loved doing the composting stuff with the small groups of 9 to 11 year olds.
However, I was glad to be packing up at about 4pm, and to get driven to Sunderland train station for the 5.30 Grand Central train back to York. This got in at 7pm and I cycled home quickly, tired but elated.
Later Gill and I watched BBC2's 'Life Without Work' which focussed on York's Seebohm Rowntree's report on poverty about 100 years ago. An excellent programme, and available on iPlayer for a short while.
Showing posts with label food waste solutions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label food waste solutions. Show all posts
Saturday, 23 October 2010
Sunday, 14 March 2010
Sunday 14th March 10
Well, an early start, not sure why. I had to go to the allotment shop before midday, but that didn't necessitate such an early start.
However, wasted time til 11 and then cycled off to Low Moor to get seeds for the forthcoming York in Transition Seed Swap at St. Nicks next Saturday. It was suggested that we'd get maybe £15 worth of seeds as a starter, so there was something to swap even for the first person who arrives. I volunteered to get some as I'm a member of the Low Moor Allotment Association (£2 per year) and this gives me access to cheap gardening supplies.
So this is what I got:
4 Mizuna, 4 Sorrel, 10 Basil, 4 Chives, 4 Coriander, 5 Lollo Rosso Lettuce, 5 Iceberg Lettuce, 5 Little Gem Lettuce, 5 All Year Round Lettuce, 4 French Breakfast Radish, 4 Bright Lights Chard, 5 Spinach, 5 Calabrese and 5 mixed Broccoli. 69 packets of seed for £14... brilliant!
I cycled round to Country Fresh and got a big bag of veggies plus two sacks of compostables, plus had a laugh with Richard who was in a jolly mood.
I popped in to Freshways on the way back home and they just had some out of date sliced bread, some of which we eat (ie today's haul has a best before date of 13th March, and is perfect for toast for a couple of days) but there's always too much to eat, so it gets dried by the stove and when completely dry, it makes great kindling. (really!) I'd rather it didn't end up like this... but the alternative is landfill, or I could compost it in a tumbler, but they're all full at the moment. Gone are the days when out of date food could be fed to pigs... now they are fed with foodstuffs specially grown for them. If our omnivorous meat animals could be given 'pigswill' (out of date and waste food, mixed and brought to the boil) their carbon footprint would be considerably less. But due to the stupid policy of feeding herbivores (cattle) rendered down protein from other animals, including bovines, and this causing the prion disease 'BSE' to develop and spread, causing the 'mad cow disease' outbreak, the practice of giving commercial food animals waste food was banned. Now it mostly goes to landfill. Madness. Additionally, the BSE problem led to the most ridiculous composting legislation, the 'animal by products regulations' which mean that processed food which might have been in the vicinity of some animal-based food may not be commercially composted in, for instance, council windrow systems. This material now has to be composted in 'in vessel' composting equipment, despite there being no proof that this treatment destroys all prions. The only beneficiaries have been the producers of 'in vessel' composters.
Fortunately home composters are not affected by the ABPR, and may freely compost kitchen waste in their compost bins, as they should.
Anyway, rant over. After lunch I chainsawed up a couple of pallets and soon after 3pm, my visitor arrived, Ansar, and his brother, Amjid (I think) who had driven over from West Yorkshire to see my Clearview stoves. Ansar had been researching woodstoves as he wants to install one in his rather cold and drafty house. He found this blog (I think) and contacted me. I tried to persuade him to use ethical transport, and gave him train and bus info, but like many, he is a petrolhead and preferred to drive here. Hey ho, at least he's wanting to make his house warmer using renewables. It's a start. We had a long chat about how the stove works, chimney lining or not, logs and different sorts of wood, storage and more.
Right before they went I mentioned my environmental education stuff, and mentioned Muslims the York Mosque... and so they headed on down there. I hope they found it. Nice chaps. I hope the visit was helpful.
Not sure what else I did... just a bit more work outside and then inside, more fruit drying and housework, made some tomato and onion base which Gill modified with celery and red pepper, and added some cooked macaroni, and we had this alongside some asparagus.. a Mother's day treat Gill said.
Lots of email traffic to do. I'd like a break, a few days when I had no emails or phone calls, and I could concentrate on my book, which I haven't touched for over a year. But today I did download the 116 replies to my questionnaire, and asked a mathematically inclined friend if he'd like to help me interpret the results.
However, wasted time til 11 and then cycled off to Low Moor to get seeds for the forthcoming York in Transition Seed Swap at St. Nicks next Saturday. It was suggested that we'd get maybe £15 worth of seeds as a starter, so there was something to swap even for the first person who arrives. I volunteered to get some as I'm a member of the Low Moor Allotment Association (£2 per year) and this gives me access to cheap gardening supplies.
So this is what I got:
4 Mizuna, 4 Sorrel, 10 Basil, 4 Chives, 4 Coriander, 5 Lollo Rosso Lettuce, 5 Iceberg Lettuce, 5 Little Gem Lettuce, 5 All Year Round Lettuce, 4 French Breakfast Radish, 4 Bright Lights Chard, 5 Spinach, 5 Calabrese and 5 mixed Broccoli. 69 packets of seed for £14... brilliant!
I cycled round to Country Fresh and got a big bag of veggies plus two sacks of compostables, plus had a laugh with Richard who was in a jolly mood.
I popped in to Freshways on the way back home and they just had some out of date sliced bread, some of which we eat (ie today's haul has a best before date of 13th March, and is perfect for toast for a couple of days) but there's always too much to eat, so it gets dried by the stove and when completely dry, it makes great kindling. (really!) I'd rather it didn't end up like this... but the alternative is landfill, or I could compost it in a tumbler, but they're all full at the moment. Gone are the days when out of date food could be fed to pigs... now they are fed with foodstuffs specially grown for them. If our omnivorous meat animals could be given 'pigswill' (out of date and waste food, mixed and brought to the boil) their carbon footprint would be considerably less. But due to the stupid policy of feeding herbivores (cattle) rendered down protein from other animals, including bovines, and this causing the prion disease 'BSE' to develop and spread, causing the 'mad cow disease' outbreak, the practice of giving commercial food animals waste food was banned. Now it mostly goes to landfill. Madness. Additionally, the BSE problem led to the most ridiculous composting legislation, the 'animal by products regulations' which mean that processed food which might have been in the vicinity of some animal-based food may not be commercially composted in, for instance, council windrow systems. This material now has to be composted in 'in vessel' composting equipment, despite there being no proof that this treatment destroys all prions. The only beneficiaries have been the producers of 'in vessel' composters.
Fortunately home composters are not affected by the ABPR, and may freely compost kitchen waste in their compost bins, as they should.
Anyway, rant over. After lunch I chainsawed up a couple of pallets and soon after 3pm, my visitor arrived, Ansar, and his brother, Amjid (I think) who had driven over from West Yorkshire to see my Clearview stoves. Ansar had been researching woodstoves as he wants to install one in his rather cold and drafty house. He found this blog (I think) and contacted me. I tried to persuade him to use ethical transport, and gave him train and bus info, but like many, he is a petrolhead and preferred to drive here. Hey ho, at least he's wanting to make his house warmer using renewables. It's a start. We had a long chat about how the stove works, chimney lining or not, logs and different sorts of wood, storage and more.
Right before they went I mentioned my environmental education stuff, and mentioned Muslims the York Mosque... and so they headed on down there. I hope they found it. Nice chaps. I hope the visit was helpful.
Not sure what else I did... just a bit more work outside and then inside, more fruit drying and housework, made some tomato and onion base which Gill modified with celery and red pepper, and added some cooked macaroni, and we had this alongside some asparagus.. a Mother's day treat Gill said.
Lots of email traffic to do. I'd like a break, a few days when I had no emails or phone calls, and I could concentrate on my book, which I haven't touched for over a year. But today I did download the 116 replies to my questionnaire, and asked a mathematically inclined friend if he'd like to help me interpret the results.
Thursday, 9 October 2008
Thursday 9th October 08
I took our youngest to school and came back via a logpile and therefore with a big load of dry and ready-to-cut logs...
Spent a couple of hours chatting to Gill who seems to be slowly recovering from her tooth abcess, and did emails and writing. I have been asked by BBC Radio York to do a piece on reducing food waste for their website, so this took an hour or so. Then went out to wrangle logs... excellent!
Lit the stove as a child needs a bath. Enjoyed my lunch, my good mood seems to have reappeared, thank goodness! This was compounded by a phone call from ITV 'Britain's Got Talent' as I'd been spotted on the local news unicycling at Harrogate Car-Free-Day, and the ITV lass invited me to apply to be on Britain's Got Talent. I haven't seen this programme so she explained what happens, and I asked her opinion about whether she thought my show/skills etc was suitable for the expected 3-minute format. Once I'd put the phone down I couldn't stop giggling about this... I found it absolutely hilarious to think of going on the show. But I've decided not to bother. My entertainment career doesn't need any help, I don't want to win any money and it sounds like a bit of a bear-pit audience-wise. But it was good to be asked!
Went down to school at 3.15 to help out with Green Thumbs... I took a group of 6 or 7 kids and about 10 ceramic pots which had been painted by children last week, showed them why a crock was needed over the hole in the base (they went to find stones etc for this and placed them in) and used compost from the planters which have had crops growing in them all summer to half fill these pretty pots. Then they placed 3 or 4 Narcissus bulbs in each pot and filled them up to the top with more growing medium. Then they watered them and that was the 45 minutes taken up, and I cycled home via the logpile I've recently discovered, near some new development where some trees have been taken down.
I had a brief time at home and then went into town to meet a friend and had an interesting evening, we ate at El Piano and walked down to the Millennium Bridge and then up to the Youth Hostel. I've learned quite a lot about historical re-enactment, and how in the 'Dark Ages' people had to make their own clothes and cutlery (for instance) and this means that objects were valued more than in today's society, and being in a re-enactment group helps you learn skills which in a 'greener' world, we'd be doing more, not just relying on being able to buy stuff so easily and replace stuff if it goes wrong or breaks. I'd never thought of this 'by-product' of being a re-enactor. Infact I'd not given much thought to the whole re-enactment scene at all!
On the way back to home after the pubs shut I picked up four huge sacks of leaves which had been tidied up from roads (I think!) and just left for the binmen to pick up... so my leafmould pile 2008 is starting today.
Spent a couple of hours chatting to Gill who seems to be slowly recovering from her tooth abcess, and did emails and writing. I have been asked by BBC Radio York to do a piece on reducing food waste for their website, so this took an hour or so. Then went out to wrangle logs... excellent!
Lit the stove as a child needs a bath. Enjoyed my lunch, my good mood seems to have reappeared, thank goodness! This was compounded by a phone call from ITV 'Britain's Got Talent' as I'd been spotted on the local news unicycling at Harrogate Car-Free-Day, and the ITV lass invited me to apply to be on Britain's Got Talent. I haven't seen this programme so she explained what happens, and I asked her opinion about whether she thought my show/skills etc was suitable for the expected 3-minute format. Once I'd put the phone down I couldn't stop giggling about this... I found it absolutely hilarious to think of going on the show. But I've decided not to bother. My entertainment career doesn't need any help, I don't want to win any money and it sounds like a bit of a bear-pit audience-wise. But it was good to be asked!
Went down to school at 3.15 to help out with Green Thumbs... I took a group of 6 or 7 kids and about 10 ceramic pots which had been painted by children last week, showed them why a crock was needed over the hole in the base (they went to find stones etc for this and placed them in) and used compost from the planters which have had crops growing in them all summer to half fill these pretty pots. Then they placed 3 or 4 Narcissus bulbs in each pot and filled them up to the top with more growing medium. Then they watered them and that was the 45 minutes taken up, and I cycled home via the logpile I've recently discovered, near some new development where some trees have been taken down.
I had a brief time at home and then went into town to meet a friend and had an interesting evening, we ate at El Piano and walked down to the Millennium Bridge and then up to the Youth Hostel. I've learned quite a lot about historical re-enactment, and how in the 'Dark Ages' people had to make their own clothes and cutlery (for instance) and this means that objects were valued more than in today's society, and being in a re-enactment group helps you learn skills which in a 'greener' world, we'd be doing more, not just relying on being able to buy stuff so easily and replace stuff if it goes wrong or breaks. I'd never thought of this 'by-product' of being a re-enactor. Infact I'd not given much thought to the whole re-enactment scene at all!
On the way back to home after the pubs shut I picked up four huge sacks of leaves which had been tidied up from roads (I think!) and just left for the binmen to pick up... so my leafmould pile 2008 is starting today.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
