Another cold, damp day but the volunteers’ spirits are never dampened. Just see what’s growing, what’s being harvested, the new beds being prepared – and all the smiling faces. The solemn faces only showed when the serious business of consuming delicious, freshly prepared vegetable soup was the job in hand.
At Community Roots today we prepared Willow whips for planting and then I worked with P and G to take cuttings from the rather tired sage plant while the lovely Mr S worked on other jobs.
In November we put elastic bands on the veg bags so that they could be tie dyed. Today we undid them and this is the one I worked on.
We caught the sunset, the new moon and Venus in one shot this evening.
It was the AGM tonight for the Community Roots project that we volunteer with on Tuesdays so I made a Galette Jalousie full of mincemeat as our contribution.
The work done on the one acre site is amazing! What has been achieved by the team and their tribe of volunteers is just mind-blowing. Here is the field in March 2021 and the ‘farm’ June 2022 – quite remarkable.
The field in March 2021
June 2022
Each person was asked at the start of the meeting, what Community Roots means to them and this word cloud is the result, the bigger the word, the ore people said it.
Above three photos taken from the screen at the meeting.
The Rainbow Chard at Community Roots farm is looking wonderful.
We had a plan of going rock pooling on Castle Beach today but took shelter and had lunch in the Gylly Cafe and watched the rain and the swimmers instead.
I had help making the lasagne for tonight’s meal, it being World Pasta day today.
We spent all morning at the allotment – harvesting onions, picking beans, planting some more squash and weeding, weeding and weeding! All the time, the bees were buzzing about and were about all we could hear.
Bee in courgette flower
Bee on Cosmos
Bee on Runner Beans
Bee on Echium Blue Bedder
Bee on Sunflower
Bee on white beans
We have twin Cosmos and twin onions!When going for breakfast the other day, I spotted a delightful post box topper on a roundabout in Truro but couldn’t get a good photo. M, who lives near the box, took this photo for me. I really love the wacky seagulls and octopus.Thanks, M.
We visited Community Roots today, described as  “Community Supported Agriculture 🌱 Nature Friendly market garden. Food and friendships within our community” and it was all those things and more.
We expected just to be shown around to to see what was going on but it turned out to be the day for putting up a new poly tunnel and it seemed that extra hands would be useful so we stayed and helped. What a wonderful sense of satisfaction and camaraderie.
Plastic covering ready to roll
Pulling it over and holding tight against the breeze
Tucking in the sides
Done!
It was the day for harvesting the onions and some volunteers, aged  from 3 to 75,  were laying them all out to dry off in the sun.
Tonight’ meal was Cajun salmon with new potatoes dug this morning, peas with lettuce and garlic (the French way) using lettuce that was a gift from an allotmenteer this morning and a dill sauce with fresh dill from another generous allotmenteer.
The trough outside the kitchen is flourishing – the lettuces are doing well, the Violas ready for salads and cakes, the borage seedlings all coming on well and the chives beginning to flower.
What a pretty little white spider on the Californian poppies.
Supper was a kind of deconstructed lasagne, to save baking time. Pasta with the ragu (from the freezer) Â and then the cheese sauce (from the freezer) on to tagliatelle, took only ten minutes and was delicious.
Here are the last few of the onions we grew last year. We are going to have to buy for a few months until the ones planted today, more than last year, Â are ready for harvest.