Monday 31 January 2011

To market to market to buy

a fat pig some more fat balls and nuts for the birds. Along with starlings, pigeons, and several lots of sparrows, we have pairs of blue tits and robins visiting the garden now that we are keeping their supply of food and water replenished every day.

We took Ron for a quick walk around the market on Saturday afternoon, stopping at the carpet stall for a bedside rug, and investigating several Farmers' Market Stalls for horse-raddish (which no stall could provide) before heading to the baker's for afternoon tea purchases. On the way round the back of the church, we spotted another 'farmers' stall' in front of Church House.

Bottles of delicious juice were on display on the The Growing People Project's stall. MWNN and I were given a small thimbleful to taste. It's quite lovely, a blend of 'cooking' and 'multi-functional' varieties of apples. It's not cheap but, compared to bottled apple juice on sale in the supermarkets, we can be fairly certain that most of the profits are being ploughed back into the project.

Growing People works in partnership with the Letchworth Centre for Healthy living, which provides horticultural therapy to people recovering from mental health problems.

The Letchworth Centre has an orchard of 100 apple trees on its grounds at the former Rosehill Hospital. Splendid use has been made of this year’s harvest. The team of volunteers picked the healthy crop before it was transported to a local bottling firm to be pressed and bottled. The 2010 crop produced over 700 bottles of Rosehill Apple Juice.

We are lucky to live in an area where local, home-grown/produced goods are easy to find.