Selby Jolly

I've been having a little blogger's block recently. But after a lovely day volunteering and the prospect of being on holiday next week, I'm feeling inspired again! Even better, I suddenly have a couple of days where I have nothing to do except sort my life out a little - which includes writing a couple of decent posts! But until I get around to doing that I'm going to write about my volunteering jolly to Selby.
The YWT in Selby are based at the Stockbridge Technology Centre, where lots of agricultural and horticultural research takes place, and we went to visit them to harvest some willow for our Christmas craft event. It always good to go to new places and see the way other people work, so here is a list of my highlights of the day:

• Trying medlars for the first time (I like how the RHS qualify them as a"traditional, if unusual, treat")
•  Seeing some unusual crab apple trees absolutely laden with beautiful, bright red fruit - how very festive! We got a bag full for our Christmas crafts and I also got a pocket full to cook up. I made a purée which was quite a lot of work for a very small amount... but mixed with some elderberries and blackberries it should make a lovely foraged pie!
• Spotting a hare and watching him run away from us. He went for miles and was so steady, it was just like he was on a track like the "hares" at the dogs!
• Watching a gang of long tailed tits enjoying the bird feeding station and catching a glimpse of some yellow hammer (one of the only birds I can identify by its song!)
• Trying Yarrow Tea. I'm not sure if it really tasted of much other than the honey and lemon that went into the jug with it, but at least now I know that it can be used to make tea!

Stirley Stories

We hosted a Community Reporter workshop on the Farm this week and used our newly gained skills to interview our lovely volunteers about their experience on Stirley Community Farm. Here is a video which was edited from our interviews very quickly by the lovely people at Growing Newsome.

At the workshop I was actually surprised about how difficult it is to interview people, and to be interviewed! I found having a camera pointed in my face very off-putting and therefore found it quite difficult to talk about things that I normally talk about everyday! On the other side of the camera I had a similar nervous reaction but after a few goes I found I was getting better at it. Not quite Paxman yet though.

Palm Oil Revisited

As part of my food diary for Oxfam's GROW week, I wrote a rather lengthy post about Palm Oil. A couple of weeks later BBC Radio 4's Food Programme featured an episode about Palm Oil which I would recommend listening to.
It may have answered my query about the two differently labelled biscuit packets in Sainsburys, where one said "Made with Sustainable Palm Oil" and the other said "Supports Sustainable Palm Oil". It turns out that there is a somewhat dubious "credit" system where companies can purchase unaccredited (and most likely not sustainably produced) Palm Oil then buy a certificate from sustainable producers to compensate... Hmmm.
It's certainly a very interesting programme and well worth a listen. Palm Oil itself seems to be almost some kind of wonder product - it's only the way its production in response to the ever increasing global demand is being managed.
I found the last part of the programme which looked at Palm Oil as a traditional ingredient in some African countries, comparing it to the equivalent of Olive Oil in Italian cooking, particularly thought provoking. I had never even considered the heritage of Palm Oil - from which it is now very far removed.

Detangle VS Declutter

I've not done a blog post in a few weeks so I thought I'd better write something before I get out of the habit!

Last time I went home, which was at the beginning of September, I forgot my hairbrush. So after two months without brushing my hair, I've developed some major tangles, bordering on dreadlocks. Two months without brushing your hair?? Why not just buy another hairbrush, many people have said. Well for a while now I've been trying to declutter and generally lighten my life a bit. I generally don't buy too much stuff and I find it easy to avoid the shops but somehow I'm very good at collecting things... I refuse to buy a hairbrush when I know that I've got about 5 in my cupboard at home that I have bought or been given over the years. For about a year now I've been going through all the things I own and trying to be ruthless. But try as I might, I still seem to have lots of STUFF. I'm just not good at throwing out things that I think could be used again. Like the 5 perfectly good hairbrushes in my cupboard. So not buying a hairbrush may seem like a minor battle, but it's one less thing that I will have to not throw away in the future. I'm home next weekend and I'm looking forward spending a few satisfying hours wrestling with my tangles.