did-it!

Between January and June this year I wrote for the Environment and Heritage Blog for Do-it, a national volunteering database and resource. Since starting paid work, I don't have the time to do much volunteer work and definitely not enough time to write about volunteering - so hopefully someone else will soon share their experiences and wisdom (maybe you?).

I thought I'd give a run down of my blogging over the six months as a one-stop shop for my do-it blogs. My first post in January, Learning to Grow, was really and introduction to me, what I was up to and what volunteering means to me. I then wrote about training after going on a community bee keeping course, followed by a post about the volunteering I do with  Oxfam. My next two posts were about community events I was involved with through Stirley Farm - Growing Communities, a workshop day sharing best practice for community food growing organisations, and Potato Day in Newsome. My next two posts were me getting very excited about the birth of our first calf on Stirley Farm and then about the hot weather we had at the end of March (which now seems like a distant memory...) with tips on how to avoid volunteer burn out. My next post was something I'd had in my head for a while about being a conservation volunteer and how people always compliment me on my tan and ask me about how I stay fit... The next couple of posts were about events I ran at Stirley Farm - a wild food event and a history event. My final post, after I had just got myself a job with Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, after 18 months of volunteering was some top tips on how to volunteer your way to a new career.

Foraged Flowers

The only problem with foraging - my new hobby - is that it's not the easiest activity when you're time poor! I suppose the exciting thing about it is that waiting for your ingredients to come into season requires a lot of excited waiting and once they are you a real sense of urgency! In May I couldn't wait for the elder to come into flower so I could try some recipes out then once they did I rarely had time on a sunny day to go and collect some! I collected a batch with my boyfriend very early on to make elderflower champagne whilst there were still only a few sprays on each tree and then again just before all the flowers disappeared to make cordial - it would have taken about half the time to collect the flowers for my recipe if I'd had a few more sunny days off or evenings. The elderflower recipes weren't quite right and will have to wait till next year before I can do some tweaking (elderberries later in the year though!), but the rose petal syrup I made is really fantastic! I live close to the very beautiful Scarcroft Allotment in York which have paths running through so that even people who don't have a plot  can wander through and enjoy them (I've got a lot of love for these allotments - maybe I'll write a post about them). The hedge along the path is intertwined with wild roses, so once again with my boyfriend in tow, we went out collecting petals. I'd heard the tip that if you only take the petals rather than the whole head, you still get hips later in the year (I'll be back for those!). Using a generic "wildflower syrup" recipe from River Cottage Hedgerow by John Wright, I layered the petals (we collected a litre icecream tub full) with 1k of sugar and left it for 24 hours. After a day when I came back to my mixture, I emptied the tub into a saucepan and added 550ml of boiling water (55ml for every 100g of sugar) and gently heated the mixture until the sugar had dissolved. At this point, the recipe says to strain and bottle the syrup. After tasting the syrup, I could faintly detect the rose flavour but it wasn't really strong enough. I tried one of the petals and it was delicious - sugary and full of flavour - so I decided to leave the petals in the sugar syrup for a little longer... So I went to Latitude festival and when I got back my syrup was full of rose flavour! I've decided to just leave the petals in because they look pretty and they still taste nice. The roses are still going up where I am so you've still got time to try this recipe before next year!

FOOD POWER!

After four days intensive campaigning with Oxfam at Latitude Festival, I'm now home, thoroughly cleansed, refreshed from a night in a proper bed and ready to share my experience with you! As always, volunteering with Oxfam is inspiring and motivational (I'm feeling motivated to revive my blog a little...) and this years campaign focus was very close to my heart. Oxfam's big campaign at the moment is called GROW, which is campaigning for a fairer food system. There are 7 billion of us on the planet (and increasing rapidly) and 1 billion of those people go to bed hungry every night. Oxfam believe that there is enough food to feed everyone, it's the system that doesn't work - favouring big conglomerates over small scale farmers, with markets speculating on food causing massive price spikes and developed countries (like us) getting into bad food habits, becoming so disconnected from our food that we don't really respect where it comes from, how it got to us and how much it costs to produce. Oxfam is working on campaigning against climate change, for equity for small-scale farmers and against unethical activities such as land grabs - but if GROW is really going to work, the movement needs to start from the ground up.
At Latitude (as at all the festivals Oxfam is campaigning at this year) we were asking festival goers to tell us about their food power. Food power is the power that all of us have to make the world a better place simply through the choices we make about the food we eat. Our aim was to inspire and celebrate what people already do, rather than to make them feel guilty for not doing enough. People shared their stories and ideas by writing their "food power" on a board and holding it up for us to photograph. The pictures will be used to make an inspirational e-book to show just how many people out there care about fair food and as a way to share ideas. We met lots of vegans and vegetarians as well as carnivores who thought that we could make a big difference by eating a little less meat, people who hate waste, windowsill gardeners and allotmenteers, fair trade and local lovers. It was certainly inspirational for me. Here were some of the favourite conversations, quotes and tips from my campaigning:

• "Your local market is super"
• Chatting to the lady who has a mobile farm that she takes around schools to teach them about where food comes from
• "You don't have to be vegetarian to enjoy vegetarian food"

At the end of our campaigning, we all did our own board and mine read:

• "I believe teaching people to cook healthy hearty food (on a budget) with fresh ingredients is the most powerful thing we can do"

If you're going to a festival this year, look out for Oxfam campaigners in their pink Food Power tee shirts, but if you're not going to a festival then feel free to share your food power, how are you eating your way to a better world?

Moonriders, away!

After months of not quite preparing as much as I should have... the time arrived for the Moonriders event - a 100km overnight cycle from North London to Brighton. We left Alexandra Palace at 11.40pm and set off into the night.

After 40 miles we stopped for hot food, change into a dry t-shirt and to spend a little time wrapped up like a jacket potato.

 And at last we arrived smiling into Brighton Racecourse at 8.30am... Not even a last minute puncture could stop us cycling over the finish line to collect out breakfast butties!

We've raised £450 for Oxfam so far but we'd really like to raise a little more... So please sponsor us if you've enjoyed following the Team Toots journey!

Change of scenery, and a change of name...

The last 18 months has been an amazing rollercoaster ride of volunteering adventures... And now my patience and hard work has paid off as I started my first proper, full-time paid job in conservation! Well, technically it's two part-time jobs, and one is temporary... but it's definitely a step in the right direction! For three days a week I am a Communications Assistant for Yorkshire Wildlife Trust, and for the other two days I am Dig In Project Assistant, also for the Trust.

So as I am no longer working for free, I feel the need to change the title of the blog. My boyfriend joked “Yes, I've sold out” but I thought “Yes, they pay me to do this!” was more appropriate!

Ideas on the back of a postcard, or in the comments section :)

Beer Pizza!

I'm trying something new on the blog today... I'm going to attempt to pass on a recipe which I just can't keep to myself - a quick, simple pizza base made using beer! There's no need to leave it to rise, it's ready straight away and tastes as delicious (if not more) than regular pizza crust.  I can't take credit for coming up with the idea, I first heard about it from my sister whose Spanish housemate makes them so after investigating Google we managed to find a recipe but the measurement weren't quite right. Most of the cooking I do amounts to a good deal of guesswork - I don't even own a set of scales - but I think I've just about perfected the recipe now.

To make the base you will need:

Two cups of plain flour (that's a 250ml vessel. If you're struggling to find something a large wine glass is generally 275 ml... you can see I'm used to guess working!)
One cup of beer (So far I've used lager type beers or pale ale, I'm going to give it a try with something really dark at some point though!)
One teaspoon salt
One teaspoon baking powder

You can double up the recipe if you like, it freezes brilliantly. And now to get pizza making...

1. Start by sieving your flour into a large mixing bowl and adding the salt and baking powder. Gradually add the beer and mix as you go, I use a spoon at this stage then get stuck in with my hands later. This is very satisfying as the beer foams up and you'll see it creating a doughy texture straight away.
2. Bring the mixture together into a ball, you may want to add a little extra flour or beer as you see fit. It should be springy and elastic already.
3. Turn your dough out onto a floured surface a kneed a little, it shouldn't need much, until you're satisfied with the consistency.
4. Now to shape your base, the way I do this is to use a rolling pin to make the rough shape then by stretching the dough with my hands and fitting it onto a circular baking tray. I accidentally put olive oil on the tray once, which made the base nice and crispy underneath but it meant that the dough kept slipping and shrinking down, so it depends whether you like a thin or thick base!
5. I like to bake the crust a little first to make sure you don't get a soggy middle... Do this for around 10 minutes, or until you think it looks ready.
6. Then add your sauce and toppings. The one I made today was dictated by what was in my fridge (ie not much) so the remnants of some very mature cheese, cherry tomatoes, basil, pesto and creme fraiche.
7. Then put it in the oven until it looks nice and crispy (sorry, I've not got timings for this. Depends on your oven and just how crisp you like it!) You can take it off the tray to crisp the bottom up part way through when the base is firm enough to be transferred if you like.
8. Take it out and enjoy it, with what's left of your beer if you haven't already drunk it!

Basket Making at Stirley Farm

 Sue showing us how to start off our baskets.

The base of my basket

 The stage of the basket making process where it looks like a giant spider...

 Bending the stakes upwards...

 ... to make something that then looks like a lobster pot!

 Now the weaving begins to make the sides of the basket.

After a tricky bit of plaiting at the top, here's the finished basket!