August 2024 newsletter
By sam dodd
A very warm welcome to our latest newsletter.
August is the busiest month on the Farm, so hopefully the newsletter gives you a sense of our activity and the continuing hard work of our staff and volunteers.
We are grateful to The Childhood Trust and to everyone who donated to our Champions for Children fundraising campaign in June. The monies raised allows us to deliver a varied programme of free school holiday activities for local children and young people.
The Farm is open to visitors from Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00am to 4:30pm. We look forward to welcoming you!
Phil Nichols: Chief Executive, Spitalfields City Farm
IN FOCUS! Farm Bees & Honey Production
For our summer In Focus piece we have an interview with Salvatore, our incredible local beekeeper, who tells us about 'the girls' in our current farm hive, their behaviours and habits, a bit about honey production, overwintering, rescuing swarms, and risks to honeybees and pollination such as the varroa mite and Asian Hornet.
Can you spot our Queen bee in the photo of our colony above?
Click here to read our full interview with Salvatore!
Image credit: Salvatore Scotti. Can you spot our queen bee?
Sheep & Wool Fair - 18th June
On the 18th June, we held our annual Sheep & Wool Fair at the farm. This is an event we've been running for over a decade, and is aimed at engaging and educating local schoolchildren, although the general public are welcome to watch. It is generously funded by the Worshipful Company of Woolmen, covering our operational and material costs.
This year we had approximately 90 children from various local primary schools, taking part in separate staggered groups, which is a wonderful turnout. They watch a shearing demonstration, which is narrated with a Q&A section, then they're taught about sheep health including why they only have teeth in their bottom jaw, why their eyes have rectangular pupils, their ear tags, their feet, and lanolin - the oil found in sheep wool.
Finally, we wash some of the fresh fleece, card it (brushing it to get all the fibres to lay in the same direction for crafting use), and we look at sheepskins, different breeds and types of wool, and discuss other uses for sheep and lamb (for example, meat). One of the crafts this year was wet felting; and the kids had a go on our tabletop loom. This popular schools event will return next year!
FRUIT OF THE MONTH - Strawberry Spinach
Our Fruit of the Month for this newsletter is the fascinating Strawberry Spinach - scientific name: Chenopodium Capitatum, also known as 'Strawberry Sticks'. It is an annual spinach, sweet tasting, with a earthy beetroot flavour. Part of the goose foot family which includes spinach chard and beets, and a valuable source of Vitamins A & C. Some indigenous Native American tribes used this as a skin dye. It makes a great salad topping.
EVENTS! Summer Activities
This summer, come and enjoy the wide variety of family-friendly activities we have running at the farm in a jam-packed holiday schedule. All these events are free of charge.
Click on the button below to full listings and to book your places! Check back on a weekly basis as our events as so popular they book up quickly, so we add fresh listings every week to keep up with demand.
GARDENS! Our local produce partnerships
Since the beginning of the year, we have been working with the Dennis Severs House to provide fresh produce for their daily living art display, part of their wonderful immersive experience on the edge of the city that the farm team highly recommends. Their displays are hyper-realistic and very arresting, and fresh veg adds to this effect. The produce we supply them changes with the seasons, and can range from salt bush, tomatoes, and cardoon leaves (artichoke thistle) - to chard, apples, cucumbers and oddly-shaped squash.
We are also proud to supply St John's restaurant in the heart of Spitalfields, who buy from us weekly or fortnightly, ranging from rhubarb, basil, courgettes and chard - to radishes, cucumbers, runner beans, and mulberries. Their menu changes day-to-day, and they prefer to use seasonal, organic, ethically sourced (zero carbon footprint) produce.
Lastly, we recently built a new relationship with St Hilda's East Food Co-op in Bethnal Green, who supply locally grown and reasonably priced fresh fruit and veg to our East End community. So far they have sold our salt bush, apples, and spinach.
We deeply value these partnerships and find them enormously positive and community-enriching, as well as being a source of income for the Farm, a registered charity. We love that the food the farm team and volunteers grow with such care and consideration, ends up on local plates.
Image credit: Sam Dodd
The Green Care Quality Mark
We are very proud to announce that we have just recently been awarded the Green Care Quality Mark by Social Farms & Gardens.
The Quality Mark shows that an organisation is run in a safe, professional manner, and looks after the people and animals in its care. The award might be held by a care farmer, a community garden offering Social & Therapeutic Horticulture, or a City Farm engaged in community referrals to volunteering, like us.
This will help us reach the minimum standards we need to meet as a green care provider. It will also help us to understand the requirements of commissioners, referral agencies and service users.
There is a wealth of published evidence on the links between nature, health and wellbeing. The hope of the Green Care Coalition is that "Green Care becomes widely recognised as an effective option in health and social care."
That's it for this edition! See you at the farm soon.