We need seeds and equipment, so if you have any spare supplies please let us know.

Become a Sutton Community Farm Member. For a yearly membership of £20 you can enjoy many benefits including a 5% discount on your shop at The Veg Van, discounts on courses, a weekly newsletter, a tour of the farm and invitations to special events and activities.

Tell your friends and colleagues about us. We can organise activity days out for both small and large groups, tailor made to your needs, including a crash course in food growing, scarecrow making and much more!

Saturday 30^th and Sunday 31^st October 2010

An excellent way to find out more about Permaculture, this two day ‘taster’ based at the community farm and award winning eco development BedZED in south London, will provide an opportunity to actively learn about the principles and gain practical experience of Permaculture design.

The lively, participatory and thought provoking course will be run by Graham Burnett an experienced permaculture practitioner, designer and teacher in Wallington, Sutton (zone 4)

Email Anna or tel. 020 8404 7085 to reserve a place of for further information

August:

September 1st - Environment fair, new grower and permaculture details

August 19th – farm and veg van on the BBC! First wheat harvest and farmers market too

August 12th – new compost loo and first international volunteer

August 4th – scarecrow competition and Evening Standard article

July 29th – our new beehive arrives! The big potato dig begins…

July 15th – courgette harvest and visit to local veg project at Woodcote nursery

July 8th – lettuces and green manures

July 1st - summer BBQ, live music and pumpkin planting

June 24th – summer solstice celebration and first farm produce transport by bicycle to the Veg Van!

June 17th – links with the Veg Van and Orchard Hill

June 10th – first farm lettuces and facebook set up

June 3rd – community service make brilliant brassica cages

We’ll also be starting to monitor biodiversity on the farm this Saturday and will be joined by Sutton’s Biodiversity Officer Dave

Our bee hive is now installed too thanks to Rob which is really exciting (see photos)!

As it’s the summer holidays we’ll also be doing children’s activities every Saturday – let us know if you’d like to help with this.

Other news:

Last week 10 of us headed to the Woodcote Nursery vegetable garden – it was really inspiring and we’re keen to work towards making the farm as productive…

Job opportunity: Talking of productivity we are looking for someone who can work one or two days a week at the farm, operating farm equipment such as the tractor so we can get more of the land into use – let us know if you know anyone who might be interested.

New loo: We’re getting a new (free!) compost toilet installed next week – it’s much larger (and better) than our current one and will hopefully be wheelchair accessible too…

Team work:Over the next few weeks we will be painting the shed and building a gate for the farm – let us know if you want to join the fun!

Permaculture: thanks to everyone who expressed interest in the farm permaculture course – we’ll send details in the next newsletter or two.

We were lucky enough to be donated two bbqs and some local charcoal (which encourages wildlife and reduces transport emissions by up to 85%!) courtesy of BioRegional Charcoal.

We’ll be having an activity day as usual from 10am and will be busy weeding and watering as well as assembling the bbq, gazebo etc. We’ll be on site from 9am – if anyone’s able to come before 10 to help us set up that would be fantastic! We’ll start cooking food around 12. We’ll be doing regular farm tours too, so do invite friends, the more the merrier!

Exciting news from the farm, our first crop: delicious, crisp, organic, carefully nutured lettuces are now ready for munching!!! Do join us on Saturday (10-2) and help yourself – anyone who’s helped out is entitled to a free lettuce! We’ll also be selling them at the farm, via the Veg Van and other local outlets (let us know if you know of anyone who might be interested).

As well as lettuce crunching on Saturday we will be planting beetroot, sowing lettuce and chinese red mustard and mizuna (oriental salad), planting out tomatoes and chillis, weeding, watering, harvesting! Along with the traditional picnicking and tea drinking of course!

We are also planning a seed / seedling swap – do bring up any spares and swap ‘em (or donate them to the farm!)

Be Our Friend?

Now we’ve been going a few months we want to get more organised and would love to know when you’re able to join us. We’ve therefore set up a facebook page and will be adding the events to this. Do become our friend (click here) and sign up for events – that way we can share lifts and know how many veggie burgers to cook etc!

Other News

We had a great day last Saturday planting cabbages, sweetcorn, squashes, tomatoes, mulching beans, weeding and watering. We also have a new oak sapling hedge!

On Tuesday we were joined by a lovely team from Orchard Hill College for adults with learning difficulties, which was fantastic! They are making a promotional leaflet and video to encourage more students to the farm and will hopefully be joining us every Tuesday!

The Community Service Team and Youth Offender Team are also doing a great job every Sunday helping with planting, watering, weeding and carpentry.

Everyone who comes to the farm brings different skills and qualities, which is what makes our farm community so enjoyable. Children, picnics, mosaic-making and clay sign-making are just some of the treats we have seen this month. And not forgetting our non-human community, we have the return of the skylark, (who temporarily disappeared after we ploughed the fields). The photo shows two of our regular volunteers after a hard few hours weeding… still smiling!!!

Garden Organic is encouraging the people of Britain to grow edible plants. This nationwide campaign, The One Pot Pledge®, is hoping to recruit 30,000 people who will pledge to grow their own food for the very first time.

Taking part is easy. If you’ve not grown your own before then make the One Pot Pledge® and choose to grow one of the Garden Organic recommended vegetables. If you have grown before but want to help others then sign up as a Gardening Guru, recruit a new grower, download the growing cards and help make their first attempt a success. 

Interested?  Sutton Community Farm hopes many of you will join the One Pot Pledge. We’d also love to run a One Pot Pledge event up at the farm. Drop us a line and tell us your idea and how you would like to take part.

http://www.onepotpledge.org/index.html

Happy Growing!

Sarah and Anna