Museum Magic

I'm having a change of volunteering scenery at the end of this week. Friday and Saturday I'm volunteering at the Manchester Museum. On Friday I'm helping out at a Wildlife themed Magic Carpet event. The Magic Carpet involves story telling and craft activities for the under 5s. I helped out at last months Fruit and Veg Magic Carpet and it was a really great event! The Museum also has a great gardening project going on at the moment with it's own Museum Allotment.

On Saturday morning I'm also going to help with some Planet Dinosaur activities, in support of the BBC series. Not really sure what it's all about but I know that these guys are involved...

'apply ever after

Since signing up to the local freecycle group in Huddersfield, I've managed to get some really good things for the farm including a good quality water butt and a new phone for the office with an answering machine. I recently got in touch with a lady via freecycle who had too many apples from the trees in her garden and wanted to get rid. So Sue and I went over and collected a large bucket full!

I'm currently sorting them out in the following ways so that we get the best use out of them:

• Good size eating apples are being stored by wrapping in newspaper. Hopefully they should keep for some time and us volunteers will be eating apples through the Winter!

• smaller ones and the less tasty of the two varieties are being layered with hay to store for the time being the Sue is going to take them to apple day at Edibles to get them pressed to make cider for our Christmas do!

•  and the ones which won't save are being separated for immediate eating or cooking. I've already made an apple tart. Many more apple pies/tarts/crumbles to follow...

Trying New Things

I remember when I started back to my second year of university after having had a rather exciting and adventurous summer break, I made a pledge to do something new everyday to try and maintain that sense of adventure that often fades with the day to day grind... I managed to keep it up on a daily basis for a couple of weeks but I still like to try new things on a regular basis to keep life interesting!

This week I'm having a good week of firsts. Yesterday I tried Giant Puffball Mushroom for the first time (yum!) and today I operated an excavator! Can't wait to see what new opportunity tomorrow brings!

Winter Gardens Project

I found out last week that my application for some funding from the Think Big project from O2 was successful. I'm delighted because I had already done quite a bit of preparation in the hope that I'd be chosen...You can follow the progress of my project through My Project Cloud.

Here are some little felt fruit and veg prototypes I've made for the project. The idea is I'll be making these with Primary classes as part of a Winter Garden display.

Small Pleasures

Living a very busy and active life sometimes means that it's hard to take a little bit of quality time just to do the small things that make you happy (things which don't include sitting in front of a computer screen!). Today I took half an hour on my way back home from work at Stirley Farm to collect some blackberries. Don't forget to make time for the small pleasures in life! Right, now I'm off out to do some membership recruiting...

I Heart Volunteering

As I've written before (and as you can probably guess from the title of this blog), volunteering is what I'm all about. At the end of last year, I decided to make some major changes in my life. I was motivated by a range of factors but one thing that pushed me was turning 25. Apparently (although I'm not expecting to feel too much different on my 26th birthday) 25 is when you stop being a young person! I will truly miss my rail card but the thing which struck me was the amount of volunteering opportunities on interesting projects which seemed to have the cut off age of 25. So I quit my job and got myself onto one of the aforementioned projects! I spent 15 wonderful weeks as a V project volunteer on the Sharpham Estate in Devon (including a 2 week exchange to Hungary) and when the project finished I was keen to find other interesting projects.
And so I ended up in Huddersfield as a trainee with the YWT on a community farm project. Whilst not being specifically aimed at young people, I don't think I would have got the role had I not gained the confidence and experience from the V project and become addicted to the sense of fulfilment brought through volunteering  my time and skills to make a project happen.
As momentum has gathered, I've been taking on even more different projects (which I mentioned briefly in my previous post) including becoming a Change Campaigner for Oxfam. The Change programme kicked off with four days training which left all the participants (and the facilitators of the event) incredibly motivated. I met so many interesting and inspiring people that I've been filled with a new energy! I can't wait to get stuck into campaigning and one of the first things I want to do is to meet my MP. I've had concerns for quite a while now about the future investment in volunteering for young people now that the V Involved funding is finished and I'd like to see the new government pledge a similar scheme (for all their rhetoric about the Big Society...). By assisting people to take time out of their lives to volunteer for a project or cause they care about, you create passionate, caring people who will spend the rest of their lives continuing to do this. I want more people to get the chance to love volunteering as much as I do!

New Projects

It's been a while since I started this blog and as you can see, it didn't really get off the ground... Since then I've had some inspiration and motivation from a great bunch of people at an Oxfam training weekend (which I will be writing more about) and decided to get back to it!

I've also moved location (from South West to North West via East Midlands) and started some new very exciting projects. I'm now a trainee with the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust on a community farm project in Huddersfield. Stirley Farm is a really exciting place to work and I'm sure I'll be writing loads about it here, but if you want to find out more like the Facebook page and follow the Twitter feed!

I've also just started to campaign for Oxfam and I'm really excited about getting stuck in! The GROW campaign is really exciting and I have lots of ideas of things I'd like to do relating to this campaign and Oxfam's other campaigns.

I've also applied for funding to run my own kid's growing project through Think Big (and if you're under 25 you should apply too!) I should hear about that in the next week. Fingers crossed!

In the next month I'm also getting trained up to be an eco-assessor in schools and to do Love Food, Hate Waste training.

Yes, I've got a lot on my plate (I also have two part-time jobs to fund my extravagant volunteering lifestyle which I haven't mentioned...) but I'm absolutely loving life at the moment!