Category Archives: Food

Bees in the Backyard

Posted on July 29, 2012 by | 1 comment

The next Kitchen Gardeners’ Society meet is coming up and it’s all about bees.

Once again it’s at Steve and Elizabeth’s house, Marmalade Cottage (RSVP for address).

Sunday 5 August
1.30 – 4pm

Bees are an essential part of the productive garden – they pollinate for fruit production, and if you have a hive, give you honey.  Without them, life on earth starves.

As well as learning about bees and keeping them, we’ll have the sharing table – if you have something from your garden or kitchen you’d like to share, please bring it along, and take home something from someone else’s garden.

After the bee presentation, we’ll have afternoon tea.  If you’d like to bring something along yummy, please do.  Perhaps with a honey theme?

There isn’t a great deal of shelter in the backyard, so if it’s wet, bring your umbrella.  It isn’t a terribly kid-friendly place (there’s poo and rusty metal) so you’ll need to keep a close eye on any little ones.

Please email guildfordkitchengardeners@gmail.com to RSVP.

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Backyard Chickens with the Guildford Kitchen Gardeners

Posted on July 2, 2012 by | Leave a comment

On Sunday, 1st July the Guildford Kitchen Gardeners met at Marmalade Cottage to learn about keeping chickens. This was an inspiring and informative afternoon, which will hopefully have given some of our members the knowledge to go ahead and adopt some feathery friends with confidence.

Elizabeth spoke about the basics of chicken-keeping – housing and feeding them, and the many benefits of having chickens. She also discussed adoption of battery farm hens: where to get them, how they differ from ordinary hens, and how to help them adapt to their new life. Guests had a chance to see the recovering battery hens in their backyard home. The Kitchen Gardeners hope to stage a mass rescue of battery hens in the near future, if you are interested in being a part of this then please email guildfordkitchengardeners@gmail.com.

Steve spoke about the chicken run which he built from recycled and repurposed materials, and explained how with a bit of creativity anyone can create a home for chooks in the garden – it doesn’t need to cost a lot of money!

Barb discussed some common health problems which chooks can suffer from and how to treat them, where to buy chooks and how to decide on the breed that’s right for you.

If you are interested in finding out more about chickens, you may consider going to the Midland Junction Poultry Society Annual Championship Show – this will be held at Claremont Showgrounds on the 4th and 5th of August 2012. A variety of purebred chickens will be on display and there will be many opportunities to talk to the chook experts and purchase chooks.

The next meeting will be on Sunday 5th August, and we will be learning about beekeeping! Email guildfordkitchengardeners@gmail.com for more information.

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Can you live without Plastic?

Posted on June 29, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Plastic Free July

Could you live without plastic for a month? That’s the challenge from the Western Earth Carers.

Plastic is ubiquitous in our lives, but if you saw our screening of Bag It last year, or have heard about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, you’d be well aware, it’s not all plastic fantastic! Not to mention the needless waste of resources and contribution to land fill.

What can you do about it? Of course we should recycle, but it’s much more powerful not to buy the stuff in the first place. So here’s a great opportunity to give plastic the boot:

The Challenge

  • Attempt to buy no single use disposable plastic in July for 1 day, 1 shopping trip, 1 week or 1 month

The Rules

  • Between 1 – 31 July, attempt to buy no plastic packaging. (Remember it’s not going to be easy, but its a challenge, not a competition so don’t worry about being perfect.)
  • Collect any plastic packaging you do buy. Keep it in a ‘dilemma bag’ and share a photograph at the end of the challenge.

Are you up to it?

It’s not too late, sign up on the Plastic Free July website or Facebook page

There is lots of great advice, with events all month.

Also, check out the videos and tips by Olive on Blonde

We might even try to organise a local get together to share our successes and challenges in August

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