Butterflies

Today we have begun our contribution to the national Big Butterfly Count...and have been finding mostly Cabbage Whites or more officially Small Whites! We will be counting regularly over the next few weeks and entering our results on the web site-if you are interested too please check out: http://www.bigbutterflycount.org/

More young visitors

We have had another visit from the young people taking part in the National Citizen Service Programme. They have been clearing paths, adding materials to the compost, potting on and creating small herb gardens to give to a residential home and working on improving our meadow areas in the orchard and elsewhere -thanks guys!

Fruity!

Jean has decorated our veg trug with some knitted fruit and veg-it looks very colourful!! We are very busy harvesting squashes, spinach, peas, broad beans, lettuces, cucumbers, gooseberries and tomatoes -all delicious! Today we also had a workshop for our volunteers about working in harmony with wildlife in the kitchen garden which was led by the Cumbria Wildlife Trust -another good day!

First National Citizen Service day in the garden

We had 23 sixteen and seventeen year olds spend the day in the garden with us today

- we will have about 100 over the summer. The scheme encourages them to work in the community and do 30 hours of volunteering. Today they cleared paths, picked elderflowers for cordial, helped us in our meadow regeneration work by digging out barrowfuls of Docks, prepared materials for the compost and shredder and watered all the fruit, veg and flowers in the pots and green house!!

Harvesting!

Look at our lovely first squashes and yet more tasty strawberries!!

A Riot of Colour -it's Carnival Time

It was Carnival today so we were dressed up as fruit, veg, an apple tree, compost, a bee, a rabbit, a caterpillar, a bee, carrots, a strawberry and much more and followed the decorated golf buggy with an exploding cabbage on top!! You couldn't make it up! In addition the whole garden is a riot of colour and we have had huge numbers of wildly appreciative visitors today.....and the sun shone too!

Purple Cauliflower!

Yesterday we had a visit from the staff from another Local Food Project in Kendal, Growing Well. It was interesting to discuss the differences and similarities between our projects in terms of funding, volunteers, school visits and courses!  It was a pretty wet day yesterday so people were either weeding and harvesting in the rain or working in the green house. At the end of the day we spotted a beautiful purple cauliflower!!