Lights, camera…action!

A film crew from Aberystwyth University visited the Taff Community Allotments last Friday, to find out more about why tenants have got so involved with the growing project. The filming is linked to the Organic Centre Wales programme, which promotes growing projects round Wales.
Fortunately, in this topsy-turvy summer we’re having, it was a great, sunny afternoon for the guest film crew, as the photo shows.
Jane Powell and her cameraman colleague quickly set up the equipment and began by asking our chairman, Fanwell Tandi, about how and why he’d become so involved in the project – spending 4-5 days a week at the site!
Fanwell gave some excellent answers and really sold the project well on camera – he’s a natural!
Tenant Jayne Palmer, the group secretary, who runs the New Foundations home schooling project, was also very positive about the benefits of the project and explained more about how the tenants are involved in the running of it.
When I was asked what benefits there are for Taff Housing, I mentioned the training for tenants making people more confident and experienced about growing produce, the health and social benefits and just having a great bunch of people involved together in the project.
As quickly as they arrived, the film crew departed to another garden project the other side of the city. Our ‘film stars’ should be appearing on the internet sometime in the next couple of months, once the film has been edited.
http://organicfoodandfarming.org.uk/
Meanwhile, on the growing front, we have been busy adding summer crops to the Community Growing Space – peas, beans, courgettes, mangetout.
The aim of the courgettes is to repeat our ‘cash crop’ experiment last year of trading in the produce with Inner City Pickle, who then turn it into delicious courgette relish.
http://www.innercitypickle.co.uk/

Here’s a selection of recent photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/organize/?start_tab=one_set72157634317949571

Housing visitors enjoy project

Two different housing associations have been to visit the allotment project in the space of a week.
Rhondda Housing Association enjoyed a sun-soaked trip to the Leckwith Allotments to discover what has been going on. They have a couple of growing projects in mind with tenants in the Rhondda Valley and we may well be discussing their ideas again with them at some point.
Pembrokeshire Housing Association, whose tenants also have a keen interest in outdoor projects, joined Taff tenants the following week for a more soggy visit and they were impressed with the range of facilities. The key difference with that visit was it came directly after the Allotment Open Day! So there was quite a lot more to see, including the rainwater tank on the training shed, which the tenants were impressed with.
We also had some presents to send our visitors way with – potted up calendula seedlings, which was well received by the Pembrokeshire group. We were glad to re-house the plants, as we need the raised bed (the plants had self-seeded from last year!) for another disabled tenant to use.
We are pleased to be getting more people involved in the project, week by week, after a terrible spring put off some of our tenants and volunteers.