Parish 1000 Fruit Tree Project - Shepley - 50 more trees go in.

Green Party Shepley Councillor Ian Lumb puts the finishing touches to fruit trees at Shepley Playing Fields

Yet another blogpost about Kirkburton Parish Council's 1000 fruit tree project because we have planted yet more trees. This planting season so far we have planted trees in a Thurstonland, Kirkheaton and now Shepley. We do not pay for the trees to be planted, nor do the Parish Councillors go out and plant them on their own. All fruit tree installations have to have community buy in. In this instance the whole of Year 5 at Shepley First School had a hand in planting the trees and the great thing is that as they grow so will the trees. In every sense of the word they have planted a community orchard.

The real strenghth of the project is having knowledgeable, practical and committed Parish Councillors such as Ben Wightman, Ian Lumb and Robert Barraclough driving the project. We are succeeding in making the Parish Council very outward facing with high levels of engagement with the people we represent. This is the good stuff. We've had a few sneers from Conservatives from the sidelines about wasting money on fruit trees but I believe this is one of the best schemes the Parish has ever run making us relevant, visible and Green.

One of the legacies of these 'Green Years' on Kirkburton Parish Council will be the several hundred local people who will literally benefit from the fruits of their labours from the trees that they planted with their neighbours.

Cllr Ian Lumb with Cllr Ben Wightman cataloguing yet more fruit trees planted under the groundbreaking Parish project

Green Leader Caroline Lucas MP visits Huddersfield

Caroline Lucas MP visited Huddersfield today to see some of the projects local Green Party Councillors on Kirklees and on Kirkburton Parish are involved in and supporting. It was great to take Caroline round to meet some of the gang and a shame I didn't get any pics of her visit to Hillside Primary School in Newsome which she was very impressed with.


Caroline with some of our Kirkburton Parish Cllrs at one of the guidestoops used in the walks project.



With Robert Barraclough talking about the Kirkburton Parish Council 1000 Fruit tree project



With workers at Stirley Farm at one of the Veg growing beds

With Kim Warren Food Education Officer. A posed photo for the benefit of the Huddersfield Examiner.

Highlighting the need for greater investment on the Penistone Line.

Kirkburton Parish Council 1000 Fruit Tree Project hits Grange Moor

Cllr Ben Wightman amongst some of the fruit trees. We had several varieties of apple, pear, plum and cherry trees



Unloading fruit trees at Grange Moor allotments



Councillor Robert Barraclough helping set up the new Orchard



Cllr Derek Hardcastle in the foreground looking dangerous with a sledgehammer



A good turnout of local allotment holders meant the work was done relatively quickly. The hazel whips, gooseberry bushes, redcurrant and blackcurrant bushes will help maintain the banking next to the new drainage ditch



Cllrs Whittingham and Cunnington helping set up a boundary planting near the football pitch



Yours truly, Robert Barraclough and Derek Hardcastle posing now the latest batch of planting is done.

Kirkburton Parish Councils 1000 Fruit Tree Project begins



Parish Cllr Robert Barraclough with the first tree. 999 to go!



It's started. 25 fruit trees in (well 6 Pear very shortly) and 975 to go. This morning myself, Parish Cllrs Richard Burton, Robert Barraclough and Alison Munro joined residents from the Stocksmoor Village Association to plant the firs trees. It was a beautiful morning, spirits were high and there was a good turnout to tidy the area of brambles and dig the holes ready for the first plantings. We had a good mixture of cherry, apple and plum trees with pear to go in early next week. We've found a good supplier for the initial trees so we are hopeful we should be able to complete the project well under budget. It is a win, win project  that ticks many boxes. Growing local food, helping bee populations and wildlife generally, involving local people, helping local businesses all of these are helped by this project. It is a 4 year project to boldly plant fruit trees all across the Kirkburton Parish to leave a lasting and valued benefit to local people. Engaging community groups is a must with schemes such as this to make sure they are planted in the right places and that the community has stake in the project over time. There was talk of jam and wine making using the produce when the trees mature and start fruiting. All really good stuff and exactly the sort of thing the Parish Council should be doing.



We're producing a google map of the scheme to map progress as we go along and here's a link

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?msid=212163637218521680168.0004bafacdb2f6942d746&msa=0&ll=53.594813,-1.732047&spn=0.002219,0.003449



Local residents get stuck in planting

 

Yours truly wih members of the Stocksmoor Village Association

Spudtacular!



Seed potatoes very nearly a sell out except for........

 

............Kestrel seed potatoes - slug and customer resistant



The Seed Swap and Potato Day at Newsome Scout Hut was a tremendous success for the Growing Newsome gang. Nearly a thousand seed potatoes were sold for the bargain price of 10p each. There were around a dozen varieties covering the first early, second early and maincrop categories. The event started at 10.00am and by 1.00pm they we were down to around one variety of second earlies which didn't seem to sell for some strange reason. They were 'slug resistant' which I think people took to mean 'even the slugs won't eat these!' There were seeds to swap, homemade cakes, jams and chutneys to purchase, cut price fleece to protect plants from frost and I was outside helping flog our bargain £5 fruit trees as part of the Newsome Thousand Fruit Tree project. We shifted about 40 fruit trees and we were had more exotic fruits this year, including greengage, quince, plums, pears as well as eating and cooking apples. It was certainly buzzing in the morning and a good number of folks stayed on for lunch of baked potato and beans which sold out. The Stirley Farm crew were also busy that day planting around 15 fruit trees in their new orchard. All in all a cracking day



Down on the farm

Kim Warren in the foreground with David Browning of KEP

Yorkshire Wildlife Trust's project to establish a community farm at Stirley Farm is coming on leaps and bounds. A few of us hardy souls went to see progress on the site on land between Newsome and Castle Hill on Saturday morning. The plans are to make it into a working farm with an educational and community focus.

 It enjoys strong support in the Newsome Ward as perceived insurance against housing development as well as being a good use of the land in it's own right. There is also a strong link with the Growing Newsome project and it was with their movers and shakers that I was out in the rain on Saturday morning. Many of the buildings on the farm site are in a pretty ropey state so there is going to have to be a major refurb which gives an opportunity to have some 'wacky do'' eco and energy features.



Diane Sims central behind some peas. Oh look there's David Browning again!

 At present the staff on the site are working out of a temporary container style  office unit without electricity. We were shown round by the Food Education and Training Officer Kim Warren who has a wealth of knowledge about food growing and used to be Jamie Oliver's gardener but has now taken on the challenge iof getting our local communities interested in growing and eating their own food. She is already making links with local schools.

I got some curly kale from the farm to put in a stew. After my recent experiences with the allotment this was a much needed morale boost on the local food front.

Growing pains

We've had a theft on our allotment. A dozen onions and half a row of spuds. The chap who nicked them wandered through the gate which was unlocked and merrily dug up our produce while talking to the new plotholders opposite telling them what ' hard work' it was having an allotment. A blond chap in his forties apparently.

We put this sign up opposite. Normally I'm against capital punishment but there must be exceptions to the rule!

Attack of the Mutant Potatoes

Ms Karen Allison with our mutant spuds

Down on the allotment I share with Karen Allison in Primrose Hill it has been harvest time. A bit early but we've had some good spuds and onions. The spuds as you can see are a bit misshapen but I guess they'll taste OK. We also grow beetroot, broccolli, courgettes, leeks, lettuce, parsnips, swedes, turnips. The inconvenient element of all this is so much of the work needs to be done in the run up to the local elections so as you can imagine it has been a bit manic this year. It's our second year of growing and we're looking to expand the plot more next year and do more growing from seeds.

A Tale of Two Community Gardens

The community came together.

There was a disused, council owned play area near their homes.

They wanted to create a place to relax, to come together, to grow vegetables, fruit trees and herbs.

You may be thinking this is another blogpost about Highfields Community Orchard in Huddersfield but you would be wrong. At the weekend I went to the Association of Green Councillors Conference in Norwich and on the Friday night (before the beer and curry) we went to see a successful project to  transform a forgotten patch of land to the rear of some houses into a community garden. Grapes Hill Community Garden was truly inspirational with a project where local  people can collect herbs and fruit and disabled wheelchair users can grow their own vegetables in raised beds. We got a special pre-opening tour of the garden which will officially open in August.

The parallels with Highfields are significant. Both Council owned land, both former play areas, both are near the town centre, both have local people coming together in common cause to improve their local community. That is where the parallels end. In Norwich the Council has supported the project and funding has been found from external sources to bring the project to life. In Kirklees the Council still sees the future of this land as a lucrative development plot rather than a community resource. The Highfields Community Orchard folks have permission from Kirklees to be on the site for the next 6 months or so and this may be extended but a political steer has not been forthcoming.

Ironically, the local Councillors in Greenhead Ward are supporting the establishment of a village green on Clayton Fields a mile up the road. This is something I very much support not least because I used to go sledging down there as a kid when I lived on Imperial Road. The irony is that the council owns the Highfields land at Wentworth Street. With the smallest amount of political direction it could allow local people to have a community orchard in a built up area with all the social benefit that would come from that. This, unfortunately, is not forthcoming.

1000 Fruit tree project - Phase 2

The 1000 Trees Project is collaboration between Kirklees Streetscene Service (Parks and Open Spaces) and Newsome Councillors, funded through the Area Committee. The object of the project is to plant 1000 fruit trees across the ward. These trees will bring many benefits to the area including improved landscape quality, improved diets for locals who pick the fruit, (including improved levels of physical activity), additional wildlife habitat for some endangered wildlife species and also reduction in pollution levels.

Phase 1 involved the planting of fruit trees across Newsome Ward on council owned open green space. Phase 2 will involve 100 apple trees being planted in house gardens across Newsome Ward by the householders. Any Newsome resident will be offered one apple tree at the reduced price of £5. This will also include a tree stake, tree tie and planting /care instruction sheet. The money collected will then be used to provide plants for a proposed herb corridor along a public footpath in the Newsome Ward.

Julian Faulkner, Kirklees Social Forestry /Allotments Officer and Councillor Andrew Cooper will be at the 

Growing Newsome Seed Swap on Saturday 26th March, 10am to 12 noon at Newsome Scout Hall
 
to distribute trees and  to offer advice to those wishing to take part.

 For further information on the seed swap visit

http://growingnewsome.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/seed-swap-saturday-26th-march-2011/

Harvest Time

 Down at Malvern Road allotments in Primrose Hill it's harvest time! This was a disused allotment brought back into use following a successful budget bid by Green Cllrs which saw an expansion of allotment facilities across Kirklees. Ironically it is difficult to see such a programme getting funding today but because it was funded people are able to grow their own food cheaply at a time of rising household bills and rising unemployment locally.

The rising role of allotments obviously fits very well into the Growing Newsome agenda link and there is a community allotment at Ashenhurst that needs volunteers to help. Contact Growing Newsome guru Diane Sims to volunteer your services http://growingnewsome.wordpress.com/contact/.

Our allotment has produced loads of spuds, peas, beans, cabbage, turnips and marrows and marrows and marrows which were courgettes before I went on holiday. Our kids don't like marrow so they've been eating it quite happily mashed into pasta sauce until I told them. I then explained the many uses of marrows including the fact that if you mash marrow and banana together you get marajuana. If I ever find evidence he's tried doing this he really will be in trouble!

 

Growing Newsome Grows

Here it is my first video link to my blog. This is from the Growing Newsome Seed Swap event taken by local food guru and organiser Diane Sims. Its really inspiring stuff. Yes the basic ingredients are tea, coffee, cake and seedlings but ultimately it's about people taking a bit more control of their own lives and becoming less dependent on supermarkets. People are also using their own local environment to do this and with their neighbours who become friends. Its so positive I think it should be the cornerstone of a lot of action to build successful and happy communities.

Well allotmenting tomorrow for me to plant my stuff.

Guerilla Orcharding!

On the edge of the Newsome Ward (actually just over the edge in Greenhead Ward)is a piece of land off Wentworth Street near the centre of Huddersfield. It is a green patch of land with a small tarmac area. Ideal as a community space and as a community orchard. To try to make this a reality local people have presented a petition to the Council, spoken at Full Council meetings and asked me to negotiate with the Council on their behalf. We've all reached a brick wall. The bottom line is that the Council could make a packet by selling at as a building plot and a community orchard doesn't really cut it in the making cash for the council stakes.

What is in play here is two different approaches to value. Community value versus capital value. On the community value side all we have is bringing people together in a common project, a new low cost facility for the area, local grown healthy food in an urban environment and a valued improved green space near the centre of Huddersfield. On the capital value side they have money. Now let us not put down the value of money. After all it could be used to support community cohesion projects, local food projects, local community facilities. The irony is of course obvious. To make the irony of the situation even starker locals have decided to plant apple trees there anyway and develop the land as a community recreation and growing space at no cost to the council.

It is of course easier to take away land for building which never had a use or a purpose. Once that land has a positive community use it changes everything.

Over to you Kirklees.

Mayors Local Food Awards

One of Cllr Julie Stewart-Turner's innovations in her year as Kirklees Council's first ever Green Party Mayor has been to promote local food for communities, schools and businesses. It has been a real success with the Annual Mayor Making dinner using all local produce including Yorkshire Wine this year.

One important event initiated by Julie was an event where local food producers were teemed up with local buyers to help faciliate deals that make the green principles of local production for local needs very real. This was a hugely successful event and well worth doing again.

http://www2.kirklees.gov.uk/news/onlinenews/newsdesk/fullstory.aspx?id=1662

The Awards were another element and a way of recognising acheivement of local food producers. It was a great event and pleasing to see Berry Brow Infants and Newsome High School both getting Awards. They were both in our patch and no, neither me nor Julie were Judges! But for me, and I think a lot of people, there it was great to see 'Growing Newsome' getting the recognition they deserved for all the food growing community projects by winning the Community Award. Diane Sims didn't hold back when she collected the award, with the rest of the gang, and her genuine enthusiasm and commitment to the project clearly showed why they had won.

Fortunately several people and companies won awards who were not associated with the Newsome Ward and well deserved they were too.

Will the Awards continue? I think they will and not just because Julie says so, but because the local food agenda is really going to grow and has huge potential to bring people and communities together. That is something we can't really get enough of right now.

I better plant my spuds!

Reasons to be cheerful.... Growing Newsome!

Growing Newsome is very literally a grassroots organisation, or maybe more appropriately a root vegetable organisation because they aim to grow quite a lot of them this year. They are an offshoot of Newsome Ward Community Forum and over the last year they have done stacks of useful stuff including seed swapping, establishing community allotments on Occupation Road and at the Ashenhurst Allotment site, providing timely advice about planting and mutual support. Yesterday was taking on the bramble patch that time forgot in a back garden. The deal was that we help a householder bring her garden under control and use the land for growing vegetables for the community. When I arrived there were about 20 or so students from Leeds being informed about the work of Growing Newsome by Diane Sims, one of the Growing Newsome Gurus. Pretty soon some of them were helping local volunteers and getting stuck in with secateurs(spell check that one some time). Soon we were uncovering Mayan ruins and lost japaneses soldiers, actually the odd tennis ball and a kids croquet set. There is more to come on the local food front with our first tranche of the 1000 fruit tree project about to come to fruition (the puns are flowing well today!).

So what are the big lessons so far from this for the Council. The Council talks a lot about the need for community cohesion and rightly so, even if 'community cohesion' is not a very engaging phrase. Growing Newsome is a real catalyst for greater community cohesion. It empowers people, brings them together on positive local projects, improves the local environment, provides food for the wider community, reduces carbon emissions, reduces food miles, combats the impact of peak oil, reduces reliance on supermarkets and makes you feel really darn good and positive! Lets face it having gone through the Council's latest budget process I need a bit of positive. Lessons for Green Party Councillors? Well I think I can say we have succeeded in putting sustainable energy high up on the Council agenda, local food and supporting community projects like Growing Newsome is already our new focus. The local food agenda will literally grow and grow (puntastic!)

For more details of 'Growing Newsome' check out their website at:-

http://growingnewsome.wordpress.com/

Kirklees Budget Amendments - Good, Bad and Bogus

So all can now be revealed. The time for amendments to the Kirklees Budget has passed. We will go the budget meeting next Wednesday with a Labour budget based on the financial constraints forced on us by this Government following their mismanangement of the economy. There are 3 amendments, the Conservatives, the Green Party's and the the Lib Dems. We have gained some things out of the budget process. In our amendment we have the extension of the free insulation scheme Kirklees Warm Zone for another 3 years. I tried to get them to rebrand it 'Green Zone' to avoid confusion with the Governments 'Warm Zone' scheme but also to annoy the Lib Dems (see previous posts!). Of course they weren't having it but the issue of confusion between the 2 schemes is genuine and will have to be addressed at some point soon. Not least because 'Warm Zone' is a brand that we have to pay for. There are also opportunities to bring new measures to the scheme free draughtproofing for vulnerable households, electricity saving measures such as Real Time Displays and Powerdown and deliver them on an area by area basis.

Other things we acheived were in the 'side agreement'.

We have a commitment to continue to support the core funding costs of 'Build' the body which provides training in skills for the building trade for brickies, plumbers and decorators until these are picked up thorugh supportive contracts such as Building Schools for the Future further down the line. This is exactly the sort of project we should be supporting at these times.

We also have a commitment to develop support for projects promoting local food producers in the area. This has been a strong theme for Julie Stewart-Turner our first Green Party Mayor during her year in civic office.

There is a commitment to come up with proposals for a free bus link from Huddersfield Town to the Galpharm Stadium possibly electrically powered. This would provide a link to all the sports and leisure facilities in the area and reduce the need for car travel at a venue which isn't directly served by Public Transport and where the car parks are often full at peak times.

Our big hope is that we will be able to establish a free solar panel scheme for private householders with the capital costs for the Council being met by the new Clean Energy Cashback being introduced this April. We are due a report in June on whether or not it is a goer. The Lib Dems don't like the idea of this scheme and didn't believe it was much worth pursuing. No doubt if we make it work it will be appearing in a Lib Dem leaflet as one of their initiatives. Bitter? Moi? You bet I am!

We have already established the principal of self funding capital for solar projects with the £5million agreed for solar panels for council buildings last year. Providing free solar panels at no net cost to the Council for private householders is more difficult but I don't think impossible.

So what of the Lib Dems Budget amendment? Well surprise surprise we have £2 million to upgrade the insulation of Council Tenants. But I hear you say 'Didn't they claim they had already acheived this in that scurrilous leaflet they posted in Almondbury in December?' (see December post 'Dem Fibs from the Lib Dems') Well yes they did. So they lied, it's what they do. More energy stuff from them £300k for Solar PV for community buildings, some additional monies linked to the boiler scrappage scheme and an energy advice project for the elderly. All good but there is nothing else! If you didn't know better you would think they were desperately trying to win back lost ground on the energy agenda. No matter, if that's the case then the Green Party has acheived more in this budget than simply getting our own initiatives passed we've pushed the other parties on or agenda and got gains for local people.

The Conservatives submitted an amendment it means their Council Tax is a 1% increase instead of a 2% increase. To do that they have further decimated jobs, services and cancelled anti recession measures, but they have the cynical 'We're cheaper' headline for their leaflets.

I'm definitely getting grumpier as I get older.

Fruit Trees and Honey Bees

This year Newsome Green Councillors are planning to get a thousand fruit trees planted on public land in the ward. Newsome isn't a huge area but we believe we have identified enough space for the trees. The 1000 fruit tree project (I must think of a better title) has 2 aims:-

Aim 1 - To plant a 1000 fruit trees - We want to plant a mixture of fruit species giving people a range of free food in their own backyard. We are keen to involve school children in the planting to give them a sense of connection with the land around them and to give them the ability in a few years of being able to eat food from a tree they planted. I believe the benefits go beyond the food itself and it helps give people a sense of place and a better connection with the geography around them.

Aim 2 - To get the word 'Beellotments' into the Oxford English Dictionary - People are familiar with the word 'Allotments' . You get a patch of ground from the Council and grow stuff on it. Recently people have tried putting hives on allotments but the bees annoyed other allotment holders. With the thousand fruit tree scheme we have the opportunity to fence off an area of trees specifically for hives which the Council can rent out to beekeepers. The bees will emerge from their hives with trees to pollenate on their doorstep and we will be doing our bit to protect our vital bee population. Magic!