from Amanda –
Harvesting for our ‘Keeping it Local’ Fruit project is really picking up pace now. We’ve been lucky enough to be given plums, mirabellas, gooseberries, apples, figs, pears, and green tomatoes. Our first products have been made and are bagged up waiting to be labelled, ready for launch at Winterfest. The project is spreading it’s wings with interest from Dursley residents in setting up a Down to Earth Dursley fruit project. We need more volunteers to harvest the surplus or unwanted fruit from gardens in Stroud and other areas of the district and in the future, we’ll need to increase the number of self-employed fruit producers. We also need people to forage for hawthorns and blackberries. But mostly, we need a warehouse/kitchen where we can make the products – our office is overflowing with trugs and buckets of apples and our freezers are full, so if anyone knows of facilities we can use on a seasonal basis please get in touch
Our seed saving project is ongoing and we’ve got a really good supply of seeds from a range of foods. We’ve just collected beetroot, Cherokee Vale of Tears climbing French bean and radish. We have parsnips, broad beans, 3 varieties of heritage tomatoes, peppers, salad onions, lovage, kale, chives as well as some flowers to attract pollinators.This new project will grow over the next couple of years (quite literally!). If you can save organic seed for us, please let us know.
