Hello Horton Community Farm

 

 

We were pleased to welcome Horton Community Farm to the garden last week. They are starting up their own project in Yorkshire.

 

Horton Community Farm is run by a group of local people. They are now established as a cooperative organisation, and registered as a limited company. They operate as a social enterprise, and any profit that is generated is invested straight back into the project.

 

The project will renovate the site to provide a safe environment for people in the local community to grow healthy food for local consumption. The site is around 5 acres in total area with 100 plots. Only around 10% of the total site appears cultivated. The remainder is currently derelict, with areas of weeds, brambles, undergrowth and native saplings. There is also a problem with fly-tipping, vandalism, theft and drug abuse.

 

To visit their website just click on this link http://hcf.org.uk

We wish you tonnes of luck for your project

and would love to hear about all its progress over the coming months! Lu and Flo

 



Kitchen gardening workshop

 

We have a workshop coming up....

 

 

 

Just give us a bell if you are interested!

Spring colours in the garden

A few snapshots of flowers in the garden at the moment....

Compost building day

Yesterday a group from HSBC donated their time to the garden project to make us some much needed new compost bins. The rain held off for the day and towards the end of the day the group were working in the sunshine in the garden. Here are a few pictures taken of the group hard at work...

Half way through the day three volunteers also did a spot of gardening for us. An apple tree was planted for us in an area of the garden which is being re-designed. 

nearly finished...

Finished!...

Planted! (with a little help from a visitor)

Time to celebrate with a little bubbly...

THANK YOU

Many Many thanks to everyone who helped on the day and to the  organisers in the background who made the day possible! 

We are looking forward to filling them up now!

Where does Saffron come from?

 

Our little spring friend the Crocus...

 

 

 

 

 

 

Saffron is a spice derived from the flower of Crocus sativus.

The three vivid crimson stigmas is what we call saffron. These tiny stigmas are used all over the world in cooking and dyeing fabric.

The colour acheived when dyeing is a beautiful golden yellow.

 

 

 

 

 

This is a picture of a crocus field being harvested, all of the stigmas are collected by hand which explains why the spice is worth more than its weight in gold.

 

 

These two pictures are the crocus from the farm garden.

 

 

 

SUNFLOWER COMPETITION 2013

 

Get ready, get steady.........GO!

 

 

 

Roll up, roll up.

The sunflowers are here again.

Place your bets to see who will win the tallest sunflower competition 2013.

 

Grab your sunflower while stocks last.

 

 

 

Natural Dyes

 

In the garden we are dedicating a small patch for plants that are ideal for dyeing fabric. We’ve picked out just some of many plants that we can grow on the farm and may be even try them out for dyeing later on in the year.

 

This is the first of our collection; this is Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius).

This little seedling will soon become a large annual that will give us red and yellow dyes.

 

 All grown up...

 

 

 

This plant goes as far back as the ancient Egyptians where even Tutankhamun had safflower garlands round his neck in his tomb. The plant can be used for dye and most commonly for vegetable oil used across the world.

 

 

 

Other natural dye plants;

 

Yarrow (Achillea millefolium)– Yellow and Browns

Woad (Isatis tinctoria) – True blues

Madder (Rubia tintorum) – Intense oranges, scarlet and plum

Hollyhocks – Yellow, Mahogany, Green, Reds and Blues

Indigo (Indigofera tinctoria) – Indigo blue.

 

Indigo is probably one of the best known natural dye so we will try and get some for our dye bed.

 

  

 

 

Indigo dye bath in India...

 

 

 

This lovely green/blue is made from Hollyhocks...

 

 

 

 

Have you got any ideas?

NEW workshop

 

Cock-a-dooodle-do....

 

Our new workshop coming up in April is going to be chicken-tastic.

Book now before places fly away.