Bountiful Bristol Bulletin

People often say that they have no time to grow vegetables and the nature of many people’s lives in so transient that they dont know if they’ll even be in the same house at harvest time.

Truth is that when faced with an uncertain future you dont have to let your garden turn to a wasteland or a jungle. Today a load of sinks, toilets and bidets were being scrapped from a big house in St Pauls, so my friend and I took then round to some ‘Grofunnies’ who have recently heard that their rented flat has gone on the market. (more…)

Local Food, a new and exciting grants programme funded by the Big Lottery Fund, will be open for applications from 17 March 2008.The £50 million programme aimed at making locally grown food accessible and affordable to local communities has been developed by a consortium of organisations, and is managed on their behalf by the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT). Local Food is the first Award Partner scheme funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Changing Spaces programme to open its doors for applications, and will look to distribute grants to a variety of food-related community projects across England. Mark Wheddon, Local Food Programme Manager said:

“The Local Food programme provides a fantastic opportunity for a broad section of the public to gain access to local food and is perfectly timed to capitalise on the public’s enthusiasm for locally produced food and the environmental benefits which that brings.

“With such a broad and varied funding programme we would encourage people who are thinking of applying to be as creative as possible. From school farms and community box schemes, to local food education centres and community composting, the list is endless.”

Grants from £2,000 up to £500,000 will be awarded to not-for-profit groups and organisations in England delivering such projects as growing, processing, marketing and distributing local food; composting and raising awareness of the benefits of such activities.

Peter Wanless, Big Lottery Fund Chief Executive, said:

“The Big Lottery Fund is proud to support this scheme, which will help improve access to locally grown food for communities right across England. With such public interest in healthy eating and protecting our environment, there has never been a better time for people to come forward and apply for money to help put their local food projects into action.”

To find out more please call the Changing Spaces Advice Line on 0845 3 671 671 or visit www.localfoodgrants.org.

Have you ever dreamed of growing your own food and rearing your own animals but never thought you had the skills or space to get started?

Are you fed up with relying on shops and supermarkets for your every need?”

Then….why not join in with the GROFUN scheme OR contact KEO Films-the makers of River Cottage.

They want families with no experience of this sort of thing who are ready to commit to an experiment in self-sufficiency.

To find out more about this life-changing challenge please e mail rivercottage@keofilms.com or call 0845 8672694 and leave a message or phone 07811 443961 and ask to speak to Vanessa or Charlotte.

(I’m thinking of proposing that they come make a programme about GROFUN instead-it would be much better, tension, sweat, tears, compost, drama, slugs and laughter!!!!)

In other news-I have been interviewed by, not one, but two major broadsheets in as many days!!!! Yep, The Independent and The Telegraph have both been sniffing about the GROFUN headquarters (my bedroom) !!!

Look out for something in The Independent a week today or the following Thurs!

How exciting this all is………but its nothing without you-so join up to the scheme if youre at all interested and book in your Action Days asap and lets get things rolling!

Anyone interested in GROFUN is invited along to another informal meeting at The Albany, Shaftesbury Avenue, Montpelier, Wed the 19th, 6.30 for 7 where I’ll also be screening the film. There’s no obligation to sign-up its just a chance to find out more…….

Gro-well.

Dear BBB Readers,

I am proud to report that the short film we made which chronicles the first year of the GROFUN Project is now on the web!

With the help of Kyra, a local film maker/editor and Naomi it is great that I can now point those interested to an engaging and informative film to further promote the benefits of this growing, grass-roots project. My friend Steve produced the music especially for this film.

Thankyou Steve

You can watch the film here and comment or go to and watch and comment there. In terms of promotion of the scheme YouTube probably has bit more clout!

Please feel free to leave constructive comments, but go easy, much of the footage was unuseable due to poor sound or light quality and the final cut is the best it could have been with the raw material we had available. It’s not exactly Palme d’Or stuff, but it’s sort of innocent in tone dont you think?

GROFUN (Growing Real Organic Food in Urban Neighbourhoods) is a grass-roots, community lead inititative where teams of neighbours help one another set up back garden veggie patches and then reap the rewards of a mixed and locally grown ‘veg box’!

It teaches practical skills, address’s the problem of air miles and pollution and builds communites that are closer and more resilient to ever increasing energy shocks and food insecurity! Think about it, there’s only 3 days worth of food stocked in the supermarkets-what do we eat then???

For 2008 we need new recruits with gardens, preferably in the St Pauls, Montpelier and St Werbs area (to keep it local and ’sustainable’) and anyone interested in being involved, any which way, is invited to come along to the Grand Premiere of the GROFUN Movie to be aired at a get-together in the Albany Hall on Shaftesbury Avenue at 6.30pm on March 4th.

Please please tell your friends with gardens, a desire to grow veg and an interest in ‘relocalization’ and community etc to come along.

Furthermore, the current group has a Yahoo group where we stay in touch. It would be a great idea to join this…

We need many hands to make light work of this rewarding and fun project.

Vegetables need people like people need vegetables.

On today’s Times Online site appears a nice little piece on a project very, very similar to ours in S. London called Food Up Front. This scheme has 34 gardens participating which I suppose is why it has generated this many ‘column inches’!
GROFUN gets mentioned though and this Yahoo site linked up to-near the bottom of the article and on my browser the word GROFUN appears red! Yours too?
Check it out! It’s a really motivating read. We need to get more people relocalizing and sharing. The time is ripe!

andykisaragi

Sorry for the glib title. Just having a little break from writing an essay about nuclear power… I’ve never really been sure where I stood on this, and the more I look into it, the less clear it gets… anyway. I actually wanted to mention this article I saw on AlterNet, Urban Farming: Coming to a City Near You. It’s about GROFUN-esque schemes in America, from groovy west coast cities like Oakland to Houston in the heart of Texas. It’s all deeply encouraging, especially the Houston project. The president’s Texan roots kind of make one expect it to be the global centre of denial, but as the director of Houston’s Urban Harvest says, “With Houston being the oil capital, people here are more aware than most that oil prices are going to rise faster than inflation… As the cheap fuels dry up, metro areas are at huge risk.”
It feels a little like we’re approaching a tipping point. We’re seeing more and more of these little schemes popping up all over the place, more transition town projects are starting up around the country… This is that self organising stuff I’m always banging on about in action. Governments continue to hopelessly flap around trying to reconcile continuous economic growth with climate change and peak oil, but the real action is going to be from the bottom up, initially at least. We have a great opportunity in Bristol as the UK’s first Transition City to show urban dwellers that not only does something need to be done, but something can be done. As grassroots initiatives spread and public opinion reaches that tipping point, Governments will be able to start doing something useful - indeed, they will increasingly have little choice.

esteemed interested,

GROFUN had our first two meetings for the project this week and there is a great team on board. eleven definite growers plus a team of willing helpers keen to learn some skills and make new friends. there are sure to be a few others joining in too. the meetings were upbeat and productive and gardening experience amongst volunteers ranges from decades to zilch! the whole thing was filmed by a UWE film student on a very expensive piece of borrowed technology.

we have our first work/fun day coming up on sat in Montpelier and on the 11th feb we are doing a GROFUN-gardens Grand Tour, before hitting the seed swap over at the ACTA Community Theatre, Palmerston St Bedminster (11-4)

i have started a Yahoo group for GROFUN which will be key to the success of the scheme. if you want to be kept abreast of developments, meetings, updats, requests and invites etc, ask me to send you an invite!

keep Groing

nadiahillman@yahoo.ca

Montpelier’s innovative, urban food-growing initiative is growing! GROFUN (Growing real Organic Food in Urban Neighbourhoods) is taking shape and we need a couple more participants in the York Road area with a small patch of light garden and a few hours a week to tend crops. In return a weekly delivery of free, fresh, organic produce will be yours. Also, for the work weekends we are looking for a few extra hands. If you want to help out just for a day and pick up some new skills and friends please get in touch as soon as you can.

There will be two meetings for anyone curious to know more. You are invited to join us for one or both of the meetings.

Option 1. 23rd Jan at 24 York Road, Montpelier, 7.30-9.30
Option 2. 24th Jan at 2 Brigstocke Road St Paul’s Bristol 7.30-9.30

The meetings will follow a format. First an introduction/outline to this urban permaculture experiment, a little about me and my motivation, one possible vision for the scheme, an open-discussion to share all possible ideas, seed sowing and tea drinking throughout.

Participants will be expected to attend a work weekend on the 27th/28th Jan in Montpelier where basic raised bed building, soil conditioning and sowing will be demonstrated and info sheets distributed. All materials will be provided for this.

The time is now. If you know anyone in the Montpelier area who you think this may appeal to OR know someone who may want to come and help out with sowing some modular trays or pushing a few wheelbarrows of earth around do let them know about the meetings or pass on my details.

I have a 4 page outline of GROFUN should anyone want more details.

Those planning to come to a meeting could let me know so I buy enough buscuits! Thanks and look forward to hearing from you.

Best wishes for the new year!

Click to join GROFUN
Nadia Hillman (Coordinator)

GROFUN got a bit of print space in the 50th Anniversary issue of Permaculture Magazine-just out and I thought I would post it here for those of you who dont buy the mag.

“GROFUN is a beautifully simple idea with a beautifully silly name. GROFUN stands for Growing Real organic food in Urban Neighbourhoods and focus’ on small communities cooperatively growing food in their own back gardens, sharing labour, resources and produce.

The pilot’s overall aim is to produce a working model and a ‘How-To Guide’ which contains a clear set of guidelines for individuals to plant GROFUN seeds in their own community, across the country and across the world! A number of elements are now urgently and keenly sought grow this idea. A friend at the recent UK Permaculture Convergence (if you missed it this year, don’t miss it next time) illuminated how much more productive the pilot could be if it was being established several times over, simultaneously. Facilitators could interact and offer support via the telephone and internet and the learning curve would be far steeper (and therefore much quicker). After all, the level of urgency regarding relocalization cannot be emphasised enough. Time really is not on our side. With the implications of peak oil being felt more and more we will soon be quite reliant on our remaining market gardens, city farms and allotments but back gardens have the exceptional advantage of being a stones throw from the chopping board.  

I am seeking volunteers for three roles. Firstly to help prepare back gardens for small-scale growing in Dec/Jan. GROFUN seeks also to ‘skill-up’ the participants in practical, urban permaculture and so long as volunteers are communicative and capable, teaching experience would not necessarily be required. Unfortunately I can give no guarantee that there will be wages available, but at the least I would expect to be able to provide food and accommodation for the 2-3 week period in which we are building beds and propagating seeds etc. I would like GROFUN growers to end the year feeling at least more confident in their gardens.

Secondly, growers are also sought for the pilot I am facilitating in Montpelier, Bristol. Growers would need about half a day to a day a week once the initial on-the-ground hard work was completed.

Finally, I am hoping to hear from a few people who would like to read the four page proposal (a work in progress), discuss ideas and then run with a pilot themselves. Funding is likely to be available but it is not yet known if it can be used to pay any wages. Incidentally, the facilitator should profit from fresh and free herbs, fruit, vegetables, mushrooms, even honey each week.

Other outputs in the future would include the creation of part-time positions facilitating further GROFUN schemes, more skilled food growers, wide environmental advantages and stronger communities/local economies etc. So if you are interested in fulfilling any of the three roles please don’t hesitate to contact me. Participants don’t need a huge garden, green fingers or money, just a love of fresh, quality food and a little time each week to care for your small crop. You and the others taking part will share the produce between you and create your own localised, urban, sustainable food-growing system!

Please contact Nadia Hillman at nadiahillman@yahoo.ca or 07973 847894″

GREAT GROFUN NEWS!

I am thrilled to reveal that the charming folk at the Scarman Trust have awarded the community food-growing scheme called GROFUN £2000 of her highness’ hard currency with which to buy materials and tools for the building of stronger, relocalized urban communities! The money will go on wood, manure, spades, soil testing kits, water butts, composters, seeds, books and a video camera with which to make an educational short film about the project and how to set up such a thing.

I now need several more willing participants with a small, sunny area in their Montpelier garden and a couple of hours a week to tend a small patch of one, single crop. The outputs include learning new skills, meeting more people in your ‘hood’, a weekly supply of fresh, local produce, a renewed sense of self worth and plenty of exercise and fun. If you have friends in Montpelier, Bristol, please mention the GROFUN to them and get them to contact me on nadiahillman@yahoo.ca ASAP. Finally, if you have ANY time or materials to donate to the project, especially directly after Christmas, make contact today!