An inclusive green space that keeps growing & archive pics!

The Empty Common Community Garden is thriving. It is not  just about fruit and veg, it's about being together and help each other out, it's beating isolation and finding something good to treasure and enjoy - aside plentiful fresh, organic fruit and veg!

The garden has hosted AGMs and informal meets for a number of organisations. We were particularly delighted to received a thank-you email from Corona House, a local charity that provides accommodation and support for women aged 18-64 who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless.

"Thank you so much, we had a really lovely time at Empty Common. One of the women said, 'It was so nice to be able to spend time outdoors' and another that, 'It is a really beautiful place'.  Attached are some photos from our time here. Sorry we didn’t get time to take very many, it took us a while to get the barbecue going. This is a link to our website." 

Here are the photos they sent us to share...

On the topic of 'food, glorious food', here is courgette quiche made from our produce by one of our volunteers. Sent with this fun message: "Sorry to perhaps eat more than my share of produce." 

It came with a reflection on loneliness: "Loneliness. There's a taboo about loneliness. I listened to a fair bit of Desert Island Discs, having discovered an archive on the BBC iplayer. It's about loneliness. People venture a CV, happy memories from their life. Sadly, with loneliness, it's a question of 'but what about now?'. It's terrible to have to abandon decent plans because there aren't enough people or just wish someone would talk to you, or watch lovers arm in arm and wish that they'd fall down a manhole, or whatever. 
Go to a garden, loneliness becomes loveliness." 

AMEN TO THAT! 

This was prompted by a request from Cambridge Sustainable Food if we might be interested in our garden being a part of work to combat loneliness - particularly in older people - through food and food-related stuff. Charlotte asked the members, through the mailing list, how we felt about it...

Back to the present & food - here are some colourful harvest pics!

It was also a great year for tomatoes - the polytunnel was at its best! Spot chillies in the foreground, basil down the edge, peppers and cucumbers down the left-hand bed. 

FROM THE ARCHIVE Throwback to older posts relating to the heritage wheat we grew one summer... pictures of a lovely day at Lode Farm with Cropshare.

Volunteers relax on a trailer ride back to house after weeding leeks... 

Trying the threshing, which wasn't 100% successful so some hand sorting was required. The winnowing machine was playing up, probably due to spiders webs inside it collecting the chaff - some tried to do it by hand but no wind to help. Lovely food and company distracted us from trying to do any more. 

Our wheat joined the other "Old Burwell" wheat grown in Cambridgeshire and was then sent back to join the stock pile that everyone had grown.