By sam dodd

A warm welcome to our June newsletter.

Volunteers’ Week (June 3rd to 9th) celebrates the amazing contributions volunteers make to communities across the UK. While we participate and celebrate, it is important for a small charity like us to acknowledge our volunteers contributions are for 52 weeks of the year.

Spitalfields City Farm has over 50 regular volunteers. They give their time across a variety of areas of the Farm, including looking after our growing spaces, animals, and helping the maintain the two acre site. These are 50 people who believe in our mission and give their time and expertise to directly support it.  

The newsletter also gives information about our biggest fundraiser of the year - Champions for Children. This helps support our school holiday provision over the year for local children and young people.

The Farm is open to visitors from Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00am to 4:30pm. Do come down, we look forward to welcoming you!

Phil Nichols: Chief Executive, Spitalfields City Farm

ANNUAL FUNDRAISER! Champions for Children 2024

Between June 4th and June 18th, the Farm is participating in The Childhood Trust's Champions for Children online fundraising campaign. This is our biggest single fundraiser of the year and we need your help!
 
Champions for Children utilises the Pledge Model of match funding. This offers supporters of participating charities the opportunity to double their donations with match funding provided by The Childhood Trust, up to the value of £7,500 – meaning we’d receive a maximum of £15,000 through match funding, plus any more on top of that we manage to raise.
 
We use this money to fund our school holiday provision for local children, and every year we are so grateful for the generosity of you, our supporters. As of Thursday 6th June, we have raised £11,084. A fabulous company we regularly host for team challenge volunteering days just donated £5,250, which has netted us £10,500. Big shout-out to Donna West and Louise Welch of Antares Global!
 
Through our holiday programmes we support local children to build independence, confidence and resilience at an important time in their lives, providing provide opportunities for them to have for fun and relax, as some transition from primary to secondary school. We provide opportunities for children to socialise and develop new relationships with other local children by spending time together in nature, enhancing their health and wellbeing whilst establishing important relationships.
 
You can only donate to the campaign between June 4th and 18th by following the button below. We hope you can support the Farm by donating or sharing.

Donate to our Annual Fundraiser here.

IN-FOCUS! Interview with Ursula on our volunteer programme, and Volunteer Week 2024

This edition, we have an In-Focus piece on our volunteer programme, the history of volunteering here at the Farm, the changes that our Volunteer Manager Ursula Carey-Jenkins has brought in with her redesign and overhaul of the SCF offering, and our future plans.

Hear her thoughts also on the value of volunteering generally and why it is so important, both to us here at the Farm and culturally on a national basis. Click the button below to go through to IN-FOCUS: June 2024.

Click here to read this editions In Focus.

GARDENS! This season's plant arrivals

Our brilliant Head Gardener Chris tells you about the unusual and interesting varieties currently poking their heads up from the soil:

This year we are growing tiger nuts for the first time, a type of nut that is really popular in Spain. It can be made into a milk or eaten raw, amongst other uses. Tiger nuts are very easy to grow, educational and super interesting for kids. They are grown from seed nuts, like how potatoes are grown. These seeds came from Caribbean communities in North London, which they shared with our friends at Wolves Lane.

We are also growing loofah this year! You can use this incredible vegetable in two ways – either harvest the fruit small and eat as a type of marrow, or allow it to mature and use it for washing the body or to do the dishes. I got these seeds last year in Barranesti, Greece, from a seed festival. They were originally taken there from South America.

And lastly, we also have a new variety of tomato that we’ve never grown before, called Zlatava. It is orange-skinned and red-fleshed – so looks like a tiny blood orange when cut in half. Beautiful.

SUMMER HOLIDAY EVENTS! Watch this space…

The planning for our holiday programme of events for kids and families is in full swing, and we are really looking forward to hosting you all. They will go up on our What's On page two weeks before school holidays begin, and on our socials. Make sure you give us a follow (buttons below) so you don't miss out!

SITE WORKS! What is happening across your Farm...

Our Site Manager Steven gives us a brief update on works in the pipeline:

We have now cleared the area for our new greenhouses, and booked the contractors for the groundworks. By the end of summer 2024, we hope to be ready to begin using these to grow some beautiful produce.

We have also finished the new goat paddock fencing and begun to build their new house, using reclaimed wood from the old fences from the same paddock. We have also unofficially opened our lodge, which we are naming Emily’s Lodge after a much-loved and deeply valued previous staff member who passed away. We have already hosted a needle felting workshop in there and had some great feedback on the cosiness and layout.

Lastly, we are reaching out to corporate companies for funding to rebuild and improve the education hut at the top end of the farmyard. If any of our readers know companies who are looking to fund educational spaces in biodiverse community sites, please send them our way.

So your Farm is going through a lot of change to make it more welcoming and usable by all, and it’ll take a little while, so please excuse us if we look a little messy this summer! More news on this will come out in our August newsletter.

That's it for this edition! See you at the farm soon.