We got rolling with a whole lot of families and twenty trees to be divvied up and planted. The hard labour of digging holes had been done the weekend before, which meant people could mostly rock up, choose a tree, and get to planting. Each family was able to take a tree and responsibility for it – not only so they could always find their tree and watch it grow, but so we might be able to chase someone down with subtle pruning tips!

I find the question of ownership and assigning responsibility quite interesting. It was a way to engage with kids – saying, here, label your tree. I know that that helps to allow kids to feel like they’ve been a part of something. But I wonder to what extent bringing concepts of ownership into a community project might be counterproductive. And yet at the same time, it needs to remain tangible to people living in a time so obsessed with private property, ownership. The word ownership begs the question – how much does ownership have to do with private, and how much does it have to do with responsibility? Can we redefine terms and concepts going forward? La de da da da. This is my self-indulgent wah wah paragraph. Done.

Something I think we’ve learned throughout all our community growing projects is that kids. are into. GROWING. Even if parents are only mildly interested, if you show a child a plum tree without fruit and say “this is where plums come from, what to help them grow?” the kids will go wild.

We’ll hopefully be launching a blog or similar for this project in the next few weeks. I’m trying to come up with a way to make it sufficiently collaborative between all the families contributing to the orchard without… chaos ensuing. What’s more, I think most people would be pretty happy to crowd-source information on caring for native fruit trees. I’m thinking maybe a community Flickr and some sort of Word Press blog riffing off of our Community Garden blog, where participants can comment on individual tips posted every couple of weeks.

But if anyone has good examples of fostering on-line communities around real-life collective projects, it would be great to see them. Share share share.

There will be twenty trees in total replacing one of the disused tennis courts in the park. This Saturday (26/2), we’re calling on all able bodied people to turn up at 10 a.m. with a spade and determination! We need to dig 20 1-yard wide holes for the trees. Next Saturday (5/3) at 2 p.m., there will be a family day for the actual tree planting featuring kids’ activities, snacks, community joviality. The works! Come one, come all.

If you’ve got any questions, just pop an email over to ealingcommunitygarden@gmail.com or comment below!

This was also posted over at the community garden blog, but we like to spread the good word. So here it is again!

Local market + Doom Bar or a ginger beer tickles my fancy for a Saturday. I think I might do my practical shopping (for Ottolenghi’s caramelised garlic tart to fete HVS’ last night in the UK!) at the Ealing Farmer’s Market and then poke around at the Fox for some novelties. I bet I’ll find that the two are somewhat interchangeable for things like cheeses and chutneys. But WILL FOXY’S MARKET HAVE MY SPROUTS?

I’ll let you know.

(Can’t find a link to pop up here, hmmm. Guess there isn’t a dedicated Foxy’s Craft Market page?)

Liverpool was the most heavily bombed area outside London, and the first time I visited, HZD’s dad pointed out the visible alterations to the landscape that still exist along main roads leading in and out of the town – craters, evenly spaced modern buildings amidst old. St. Luke’s Church is one of the most striking remnants of the war – and made me think immediately of the metal fence posts in Hull that still haven’t been replaced sixty years later. HZD and his mum hadn’t been in before, and we actually had to sign a release saying that we wouldn’t sue if, uh, you know, it collapsed on us. There was a recommended one pound donation but that was it. And so we embarked on our hippie odyssey.

Urban Strawberry Lunch are a group of artists in residence at the church, holding performances and community gatherings. They showed love movies on Valentine’s Day. The place was full of Tsing Tao sponsored Chinese lanterns when we were there, along with reconstituted tables and buckets. The performance space at the front of the church looked a bit muddled, and they had sort of ambiant music pumping through the building when we visited. Urban Strawberry Lunch are also leading a Liverpool oral history project about the Blitz, called the Finest Hour Project. Their website is worth a look, as some of the audio files are publicly available for a listen on-line.

We visited at dusk, but that almost added to the mood of the place, with the roof still blasted off and charred beams still hanging from the walls.

This is definitely a curiosity worth visiting, and it would probably be a good idea to check out USL’s website just in the event you can have an ultra surreal experience at St. Luke’s by, I don’t know, going to watch Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress.

Along with this announcement came the reminder that the Ealing Plant Fair will be taking place 9 April. And you know what that means: Spring is coming. Summer is coming. We can leave our houses again!

Ealing Farmer’s Market operates every Saturday on Leeland Road W13, from 9:00 – 1:00. Cupcakes, chutneys, apples, brussel sprouts, lamb shank, buffalo yogurt… Come one, come all.

A couple of photos I’m lamely proud of from our trip to Liverpool this past weekend. It is my birthday this week and I needed birthday time with a momma, so I forced HZD to rent me his.

And it was good.

We met to hash out our planting plans over halloumi, red wine and experimental homemade breads. Are we really annoying yet? There were cans full of seeds and copies of last year’s plan strewn about the room. Which we didn’t stick to anyway. But it’s always worth a shot, right?

One of the most important aspects of this coming year’s plan was crop rotation, a concept I’ve been familiar with since I was about ten and began learning about medieval European agricultural innovation year in and year out. (American public school historical curriculum = crop rotation, Revolutionary War and Andrew Jackson. Over and over again. Nothing else.)

I’ll be able to post our revised planting plan next week, but for now we have our planting timings at the very least, which should be able to guide how we begin our seedlings on window ledges around the borough.

March: broad bean, Brussels sprouts, summer cabbage, chives, leek, onion and shallot, early potato, pea, radish, summer spinach, spring onion, turnip, pea, radish

April: beetroot, broccoli, carrot, cauliflower, lettuce, late early potato and maincrop potato, perpetual spinach, lettuce, pea, radish

May: French bean, runner bean, cucumber, kale, pumpkin, squash, swede, sweetcorn, carrot, lettuce, pea, radish

June: broccoli, pepper, tomato (planted inside in April),  carrot, lettuce, pea, radish

July: Spring cabbage, lettuce

August: Winter spinach, lettuce, radish

September: Lettuce

This will be adding to our permanent fruit beds which already contain strawberries, borrage, raspberries, gooseberries. We also have our rhubarb that has died down, and a pair of cardoons. The herb beds remain active, with thyme, parsley, sage and bay surviving the winter. There are still heads of lettuces and chard leaves to be had. The bulbs that I planted last spring have begun to perk up a bit. In a month or so, the allotment will likely be bustling every weekend.

I’ll hopefully pop up the coming planting plan in the next few days, to show how we’ve shifted the different types of crops from last year. This time round we’ve got a homemade cold frame and glass house from recycled windows, so my window ledges won’t be covered in in seedlings for three months. Win!

But these cheer me up in my farmer’s market haul: braeburn apples and chantenay carrots, the latter of which I never would have tried if it hadn’t been for Allotment2Kitchen’s vegetable chili pot recipe. (Please click for decorative chantenay carrot star. Seriously.) Now they are my favorite short squat nutritious ingredient in stews and chilis.

Also featured in our haul are brussel sprouts, blue vein Glastonbury cheddar and farmhouse butter from the same producer, potatoes and mixed onions. I’ve become particularly obsessed with cooking brussel sprouts lately – and doing up a Sunday roast-like dinner. Sunday afternoons are very 1950s in this house. Maybe pre-1954, given the total absence of meat.

Take a load of sprouts – quarter them – chop one large onion, or enough to make it all look balanced. Mince an excessive amount of garlic. I usually call it good once I hit four. Sautee them all together with butter until you can bite into a bit of sprout without it crunching. So, soften ‘em. Then add two to three tablespoons of dijon mustard. All together, the onions, garlic and dijon mustard collude to smother the sprouts’ bitterness, but they’re not so heavy the sprouts disappear entirely into the other ingredients. It’s quick and easy and a new staple of Sundays, along with horseradish mash. (Mash + tablespoon of horseradish + a slice of butter. Git it.)

BUT BEFORE ANY OF THAT. On Saturday I ate this doozy from the market on the way home. Can you say vegan pasty? Because I pronounced it pay-stee to the vendor despite the fact that I know it’s pah-stee. Yes, one vegan nipple tassle for me, please.

Wholemeal dough with sesame and poppy seeds pressed into the outside. Potato, squash, red pepper and I spotted at least thyme for certain on the inside… This is probably one of my new major culinary goals. Vegan dough without too much fake crapola is a worthy challenge, I think. (Or not. Maybe it’s easy. Not the queen of research tonight. Oh no no no.)

And yes, we did sit outside of the West Ealing Library taking pictures of my half eaten lunch. WHAT OF IT. I like showing the internet the things I get to eat for reasons that are still as yet unclear to me.

Over and out.

The council has created a river of leaves running down an alleyway by our house.

The council, or the blustery weather.

It was so windy in Central London today that at one point I wanted to screech. For the sake of screeching but also as a vocal expression of the fact that I was about to blow. way. far. away.