Cyclists - Take Notice!

On a sunny day in September, for the first time ever, I cycled all the way home from work. From Holborn to Crouch End to be exact, a journey of about six miles. Poised at the traffic lights at High Holborn, and a little breathless, my overriding emotion was one of... excitement. All round me were cyclists, a troop of cyclisme in all forms: hard-muscled, fashionable, quirky, armoured, youthful, grizzled, the occasional spiderman without the mask, and me (and my guide) on Bromptons.  To be part of this bunch reinforced my sense of entitlement to be on the road.  We were a posse and we were going home.

I am not a complete cycling novice. True, I only learned to bike as a student at St Andrews and I never quite mastered using brakes downhill. (I thought that was what knees were for, to disastrous and scarifying effect.)  My first venture into urban cycling was in Rome.  Not my idea I assure you and after being swept into a tunnel on the Appian Way, I beached myself on a traffic island, threw the (hired) bike on the ground and burst into tears.  

Later I became a cycle commuter, hopping on and off trains but not really owning the road.  However, to support my partner, Richard currently qualifying as a cycle trainer, I agreed to be his pupil.  Here's what I learned from the first three sessions.  

1. Gears are very useful and you shouldn't have to struggle and pant up hill- get to grips with them.

2. It is better to bowl along at a constant pace than to build up speed and then coast (although it does mean fewer opportunities to shout out, 'Weee', one of the perks of biking in my book).

3. Road positioning, surely my most important lesson. Don't stay in the gutter or the occasional ghetto of the cycle lane.  If you want to turn right at a junction, you've got to be in the middle. If you want to turn left at a junction, get into the middle, and so avoid being overtaken by the car behind.

4. And the final thing I learned (which kinda I knew already) is my sense of direction is dire.

On a bike however, you can take notice and that is how I navigate my route. Research into happiness suggests that 'taking notice' is one of five ways to create well being: cycling opens up your whole being to the world around you.

So on my journey to work, I have noticed the enticing Cafe Vintage on Finsbury Park Road, that marks my turning to the right.  I have enjoyed the smell of sausages and toast as I pass Thornhill Primary School, which probably explains their prestigious Food for Life Partnership award. I have noted the bunch of boys, all in hoodies, having a confab in the tree cage in Arundel Square Park, the top level safely fenced in. I have spotted tree pits on Barnsbury Road, planted with rudbeckia and pansies.

Guerilla Gardening on Barnsbury Road catches my eye.

I have learnt to notice other cyclists and to extend the same courtesy I accord to drivers, letting them know I am moving out and demonstrating clearly an intention to turn.  Last week I observed a woman on a bike upbraid a motorist for coming out in front of her. But I wonder if she was just a bit complicit: she was hesitant and uncertain and the driver took advantage.

Finally I notice myself, how I balance on my bike at the traffic lights, deliberately relaxing my shoulders which hunch when I'm tense, my mind alert, waiting for the light to change, ready to wobble off with those few moments of advantage.  I was breathless and flushed the first time I rode into work but I'm getting stronger.  My homeward journey ends with two hills, one a slow incline in Finsbury Park, the other a fiendish pull up before the final whiz ('Weee') home. I would like to say that each day I ascend a little more but that would not be entirely true. I notice my state of mind, my stamina at the end of a long day at work and sometimes I let myself off the hook.  And that's ok.

These sunny September days are a delight and they are particularly precious as the light begins to angle and fade. It has been a good time to learn and wintry rainy days may prove a greater challenge. Nevertheless I am convinced that the pleasure in observing and noting is one that will always entice me back on to my bike.

Is it Goodbye to the 'More than a Box' Scheme?

It seems that Church Farm, Ardeley is considering ending the 'More than a Box' scheme and this Thursday is likely to the be the last delivery to Crouch End and other drop-off points in North London.  

Lots of smiles and delightful produce on display but the slogan, 'Farm Store to the Door'
 is proving problematic for the Crouch End 'More than a Box' scheme.

The reasons for this are clear and understandable. The scheme has only recently started to make a profit and while it has been brilliant at promoting the idea of sustainable food, it has not proved to be sustainable in a business sense.

Driving a van to London once a week is expensive and daunting for those unused to the city's traffic: it requires a high level of commitment from the volunteers on the farm. The scheme has worked until now because of the enthusiasm of interns, Sam and Laura who have seen the value of giving an urban community access to food straight from the producers. But with both these individuals moving to different roles, the continuity of purpose is likely to go with them.

It was Sam's idea to bring the farm to London.  He is the co-founder of the Agrarian Renaissance, a movement which aims to reinvent farms as 'multi-faceted rural hubs with sustainable food production, and direct distribution'. He was and is passionate about the idea of connecting the farm which provides the food, with the people who consume it, particularly in an urban context, where most of our access to food is mediated by supermarkets. 

Working with Transition Crouch End, the scheme began in July 2010, then a parked van with boxes for people to pick up on a Thursday evening.  Issues with street trading led to a move to the Haberdashery, a vibrant local cafe which was becoming a hub of the community.  Since then the drop-off points have expanded to a local community centre and to other parts of North London.

Members of the 'More than a Box' scheme have appreciated the fresh seasonal food and exceptional range of meat and vegetables.  Direct communication with the farm has led to a more streamlined, customised service which may have benefited members of the scheme outside London.  (In the beginning the meat box contained sausages, mince and a joint, and was very difficult to get through in one week!)  Members have appreciated the ethics of the source of their food: the high level of animal welfare, the support for an enterprise committed to mixed farming and the concomitant rejection of supermarket hegemony.

But more than that (hence the name) have been the visits to the farm, to stay or volunteer or just hang out with the animals.  The farm is a magical place: two of my favourite visits were when we took part in the Supermoon Walk in March 2011, and when we caught the wave of bluebells in the wood in April.  It may even be that the London contingent of the members' scheme appreciate the farm more than the local members: it is an escape.

But the scheme has also developed a local presence in Crouch End.  Members and farm representatives have featured in the local press several times, promoting the box and explaining its values.  Sam has represented the farm at two AGMs for Transition Crouch End and the farm provided the catering for the Muswell Hill Sustainability Group's meeting on sustainable food.

Livestock from the farm were a star attraction in the Crouch End Festival, appeared in the local press (twice) and are now enshrined in the festival publicity.  The day the Church Farm lambs came to Stationers Park may well be the box scheme's finest moment. They inspired a raft of wool-themed activities in the local community centre and delighted the local children, and the scheme gained two more customers.

As I write, the blog begins to feel like a valediction to an initiative that has been running for just over two years.  It does not seem likely to continue in its present form, but as a loyal member from the beginning I would like to keep a few doors open.  Alexandra Park Farmers' Market attracts between 30 and 50 producers every Sunday, as well as 1,500 to 2000 visitors but it is not the only market in town.  Harringay Market  was launched on 24 June and takes place every Sunday at North Harringay Primary School and on 1 September, another market opened up in Bounds Green School. These small ventures may be a foothold for the farm to maintain that special relationship with North London, forged in Crouch End.

And members would be able to support a local enterprise in a neighbouring area. I for one would be happy to go the extra distance to keep the box scheme alive.

   

Little silk brooches

Earlier this year Paul Smith opened a pop-up shop on Kingsway, Holborn for a couple of days during the week. This has become an annual event and the shop attracts its custom through casual passers-by and word of mouth.  The items are inevitably delightfully eclectic: vintage brooches, buttons, a fifties milk bottle stand (I think), guides to touring the UK as part of the Festival of Britain, fabric maps and tatty recipe books.

Heaped in a corner was a pile of beautiful silks sourced from Thailand, shimmering materials with subtle graduations of colour, their only defect a square cut out to provide a sample for the finished product.  I collected an armful and came back to buy more.  I was greedy but I was right to do so; if the pop-up shop had not existed, all the fabric would have been incinerated.

The silks are an inspiration and a delight. My first project was to use some as lining for a Kindle cover but I decided it would be a shame not to celebrate the rich interplay of colours.  The textile also has an interesting quality: it is not particularly stretchy (not so good for a lining where measuring is not my forte) but it is quite malleable.  Hence the decision to create the brooches below.

The flower petals bunch beautifully and the addition of the felt disc at the front and back creates a solid little brooch.  The fibres of the silk retain the tension of the running stitch (and fortunately don't seem to fray), resulting in an interesting organic shape that can also be sculpted.

Every piece of craft has a story.  My buttons are usually sourced from second hand shops and vintage fairs.  The blue button that provides the centre of the flower here however was in a end of season box in a haberdashery shop in Coleraine.  At 75p it was a bargain, because this was a fashion button made in Spain or France.  The seller also showed my shopkeeper buttons at £25, a snip, but my canny Coleraine businesswoman was not tempted. Apparently the UK no longer make fancy buttons...

London Green Fair and Apple Day

Many thanks to Lewis from the London Orchard Project for an interesting and informative talk at this year's London Green Fair.


I already knew a fair amount about the Project, having attended one of their training events at Camley Road Nature Park in 2009.  I learned a lot then from the splendid Wade Muggleton about apple trees, and how they can come in different forms (for example, espalier, step over and fan), and even featured in a Permaculture magazine photo.  The main outcome however was the decision to run our own Apple Day as part of Transition Crouch End, which is now in its fourth year.  Amber, the other Project Manager has actually been to one of our events and remembered the talk by John Selborne on the origins of apples. It seems to me this is a golden opportunity to revisit that connection.


There are three initiatives that the Project currently offers.  One aim is to create thirteen community orchards every year, working with local groups such as Friends of Parks and Housing Associations.  They will plant eight fruit trees and offer one's day training, with a visit six months afterwards to check how the plants are doing.  For their part, the community association guarantees four 'orchard leaders' who will take responsibility for the trees, including weekly watering during the first year.  The trees are planted carefully, which means choosing a suitable location; lawns with their bacteria-rich soil are not ideal for apple trees.  Because they are essentially edge of forest plants, they prefer a soil rich in fungus, which is facilitated by a mulch of vegetable matter.


Experience has shown that the new trees can be vulnerable to theft, vandalism and dog training, and so each new plant is protected by a fairly substantial guard, dug about three feet into the ground.  These may not be pretty to look at but will be reduced as the tree establishes itself.  The orchard is there for the duration.  By the same token, the choice of apple tree may be surprising: exotic varieties, rather than traditional.  Why is this?  The sad fact is that climate change means that delightful Victorian varieties such as the Peasgood Nonesuch, need chilly winter days to prosper, and these can be rare in an urban southern setting. Foreign varieties fare better.


The second activity offered by the London Orchard Project is restoration of old orchards.  It is striking how many of these exist in London, several of them interestingly linked to mental institutions,  founded in the nineteenth century.  (I wonder if St Annes Hospital in Tottenham is a case in point.)  The reasoning behind this seemed to be that tending the orchards was viewed as a kind of occupational therapy, something we would now regard as ecotherapy. 


The orchards can be seen on old Greater London Authority maps but the Project needs people on the ground to confirm this.  The Project will then attempt to restore old trees that may be overgrown and in need of care and attention.  Pruning out extra branches in the centre will recreate the goblet shape which is most productive, in that it allows pollinators to access the flowers and the fruit to benefit from light.  Older orchards are rich sources of biodiversity and even damaged trees are fruitful as excellent habitats for insects and birds.



The final service on offer is the harvesting of fruit.  The Project now own two cargo bikes, provided by the London Cycling Campaign, one in North London, one in South.  The Project appreciates that there are several groups already involved in collecting urban fruit.  There is the Organic Lea Scrumping project; Transition Kilburn to Kensal Rise have been offering fruit to schools for three years now and of course, our Apple Day would not exist without the input of the Urban Harvest and Gemma.  Nevertheless Lewis did mention one exciting development: the London Glider cider created by a group of enthusiasts in Epping and now stocked by six London pubs.  It even gained the accolade of a Camra award.


In terms of our Apple Day next year, it might be worth pursuing some of these ideas.  We already know about the iniquities of 70% of supermarket apples being shipped in from other countries, but did you know we could feast on a different English apple every day for six years?    


It would be great to invite London Orchard members to the Day to tell us more about their work.  They could also advise us about planting more apple trees in local green spaces, Stationers Park being a prime location. Lewis is a keen permaculturist and wants to explore the possibility of creating a forest garden around apple trees, where the formation of guilds would reduce infection and increase yields.  And of course they could give us feedback on our own apple produce, especially the liquid kind.  They have already conducted a successful experiment with cider-making and may be keen to share their expertise....  


It's never too early to start planning for Apple Day!  

The Crouch End Festival 2012

What have I learnt about being creative during the Crouch End festival?

There have been a few opportunities to explore my creativity during the last nine days: the Craft Trail, May Day in the Park and Crouch End in Cardboard.   Here are my thoughts as Waste Lady, a woman who can't let go of anything that might be construed as useful or beautiful.

But first of all, let me go backwards and say, well done to Claire and the Makers on the extraordinary and wonderful thing that is guerrilla bunting.

In the run up to the festival, bunting, normally associated with jubilee parties and vintage tweedom, became an act of defiance, a blazon of civic entitlement to drape the landmarks and iconic buildings of Crouch End. (Hornsey Town Hall, we had you in our sights.)  This was a wonderful collaborative effort, not just by the Makers Group at the Bunting and Bubbles Party when fuelled by prosecco, we pinned and sewed....

 ..but also by children in schools and playgroups who created their own flags and emblems with paint and hand prints.  (And thank you to the artist who wrote 'Croch End Festival' on one - it cheers up the W7 commuters no end.)  It was crafted by invisible, nameless makers who sewed their squares with beads, boats and butterflies, handed them in, quietly pleased with their effort. and hoped to find their work sometime during the festival.

But back to the Festival per se, and the Craft Trail.  Although a missed opportunity for me, the stash of upcycled crafts is accumulating and will be on display at some point.  That particular day was all about chairs, tables and vans, and toasting the Trail with prosecco (again) at the end of the day, and washing clay off a table used for sculpture at the beginning of the next.

May Day in the Park was glorious, though not the weather.

Dear Church Farm lambs, thank you for coming to London and looking so cool.  Thank you for inspiring so many woolly crafts through all the stages of spinning, weaving, knitting, and felting.  And thank you for being happy to appear as paper plates, iced biscuits and soft toys.

May Day in the Park was a phenomenal success.  Visitors to Stationers Park were enchanted by the bizarre sight of farmyard animals in an urban setting, and Elvis the resident border collie was deeply confused. 

On a miserable, wet day parents herded their hyperactive little ones indoors to be comprehensively entertained by the activities mentioned above.  The aura of success lingers, as parents list the lovely ovine objects their children have made and brought home to sit resplendent in kitchen windows and bedrooms, (for a little while).

And last but not least, the Crouch End in Cardboard.  Now in one sense, it was the least.  It was not very well attended. In the beginning, there were considerably more adults than children, many of whom will struggle to justify time bank credits they 'earned', as they created little people out of corks and pipe cleaners. 

But once the steel band had packed up in Weston Park's Spring Fair and the bar had closed, children did come and they joined in.  No-one told them what to do.   This was an activity that did what it said on the box, a reconstruction of Crouch End, using boxes, packing tape and buckets of ingenuity.

The construction expanded from the striking clock tower created by Alex to a panorama of Crouch End.  There was the macro: Park Road swimming pool, Rokesley School with climbing frame and pupils, Waitrose (although other supermarkets were available, namely Budgens) and the micro: trees, sheep and of course, the poet in the phone box.

For me, this was the most successful, because it was the least stressful.  I looked around and everything was mess and chaos, not an easy feeling because I teach English to adults.  My lesson plans (ideally) should have learning objectives and outcomes, and every moment, every second is a step towards achieving them, with me as tutor directing the group. 

 'Crouch End in Cardboard' on the other hand was creative mayhem. It was ephemeral.  Some people took their little cork people home, but most left them to live on in this virtual village, just as no-one made off with Lynne's sheep or hens in her superb knitted landscape, on display at May Day.  

Crouch End in Cardboard is now folded away in a shed.  I'd like to bring it out again at the Festival Evaluation meeting on 21 May and solemnly, ritually burn it, as a formidable farewell to Crouch End 2012, but it may just moulder along with other HVCC craft experiences, (although being biodegradable, this might not take too long).

And the lessons learnt?  Please, I won't be so didactic, tendentious or hectoring.  All I would say is there is something to be said for space.  Space to make a mess and find your own creativity, where you don't take anything home to treasure, other than the experience.  What you made may well sit in a shed, but your mind and hands have been shaped by the experience.  And at the same time, you have made friends.

Recycled laptop covers

As I prepare for the Crouch End Festival Craft Trail on Saturday 5 May, here is some of my previous work, all made from felted sweaters.

End of season tomato chutney

I mentioned earlier how I had made Nigel Slater's mixed tomato chutney, a combination of green and red tomatoes.  This weekend I cleared the last of the tomato plants from my own garden and the tyre garden I helped create at our local community centre.  With the recent sunny weather, a few of the most recalcitrant tomatoes managed to ripen nicely.  The community garden tomatoes had self-seeded from interesting varieties, which included some black tomatoes.  This all made for an interesting mix of colours and sweet and sour flavours.  On the down side, the ripe tomatoes rather had a tendency to burst, which meant it was impossible to scald them to remove the skins.  Never mind, this is a rustic chutney.

Ingredients
900g tomatoes, green and red
350g onions
90g raisins
250g light muscovado sugar
300ml white wine vinegar
1 medium sized, hot red chilli
1tsp of sald
2tsp of yellow mustard seeds (for my recipe I used brown)

Yield: I made twice the amount above and made just over 12 x 8oz jars of chutney. 

Cut up the tomatoes without peeling. 

Put the green fruit together with the peeled and roughly chopped onions, into a large stainless steel or enamelled pan, with the raisins, sugar, chilli, salt, mustard seeds and vinegar.

Bring to boil, turn down the heat, and leave to simmer for an one hour, giving an occasional stir to reduce the risk of the chutney sticking.

Note after about 25 minutes, add the ripe tomatoes and continue to simmer. until thick and golden brown.  Remove the bag of chillies.

Spoon into sterilised jars, and seal.