Tuesday, September 11, 2018

A smiley event

Regular readers will know about the FoodSmiles community garden project Naomi started back in April 2014. On the day it was launched, the half-acre plot - donated by the farmer owner - had been untouched for years, and was very daunting,



but the new members of this collective worked long and hard to turn it around, with the help of a number of generous donors, particularly St Albans' Aylett's Nursery.




Last Sunday, four years on, they held a Harvest Festival celebration of the past year's success. a good number of the large team that work the plot attended, along with local mayors and members of the public.


It was a lovely event. They'd had festivals like it in previous years, but we'd always been on Kantara at the time. This was our chance to celebrate with them. Said the Maiden provided music in three sets, there was lot of food - much of it home-grown - and local ale. Nome had put together a treasure-hunt around the site, in the style of the professionally-produced ones she and Ed and Grace and I have done before.






I was amazed by the great progress they'd made since the last time I saw the garden. The poly-tunnels are full of tomatoes and other less hardy crops, and the out-door beds are a delight. The workers receive a regular basket of the produce, the size of the share being related to how many hours work per week they sign up for, and the baskets have been plentiful and varied. FoodSmiles were at the Mayor’s Pride Awards at the end of March, and came away runners-up in the Environmental Champions category - a great achievement.





On the boating front, even if we were able to be back on Kantara now, we'd not be able to go anywhere. Some weeks ago, we got mechanic Colin onto the matter of our leaky fuel injectors. He and others had tried in vain to stop the leaks, so now it was time to have them reconditioned. Colin removed them and took them to a company that are set up to do the job. Their expected charge was £40 per injector - there are four of them. He came back to me a week later with the news that they'd actually cost four times that, and that it might well be that new injectors would be cheaper, or only a little more expensive. I contacted a Barrus dealer and asked them for a quote. £230 each plus VAT! The job's back in Colin's hands now, and we're going for the refurb!

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, painting's all done on the hall, stairs and landing, wallpapering will be completed today, the carpet man's coming to see us soon, and the plumber's been briefed. The utility room's only small, so it won't take us long (though we've said that before...!)

The header of this blog says something about "living the dream". We're back to dreaming it now!




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