Harvest Festival report

So here’s what you’ve been waiting for….it’s the long awaited Harvest Festival report!

Number of people through the gate                                                   =362
Cash taken in total                                                                                 = £366.10
Cost of a hot drink                                                                                 = £1
Number of complaints about cost of hot drink                               = 2 (but one of them complained for quite loudly and repeatedly so it felt like more)
Number of free pieces of cake given to volunteers                          = 46
Number of gazebos/tents/yurts up on the day                                 = 5
Number of gazebos/tents/yurts that collapsed on volunteers       = 1
Number of morris dancers in attendance                                           = 8
Metres of bunting                                                                                    = 78m
Number of wheelie bins converted into water butts                        = 34
Number of musical acts rocking the Shed Stage                               = 3
Number of people who superglued their fingers together               = only 1!
All in all it was a lovely day. Thank you to everyone who came and ate cake and batted the rat and enjoyed the music and made harvest crowns and a special thank you to all the lovely volunteers who promised an hour and then stayed all day. Also if anyone wants to weigh in on the £1 for a cup of tea controversy please do! Is £1 too much!?!
I’ve attached some photos and tried to put a load up on the website but having a few problems. ANY one who has any understanding of wordpress websites and galleries – please get in touch!!
The festival was a timely good bye to summer as despite the recent sunshine this Wednesday definitely had an autumnal crispness to it.   We still have plenty of harvest coming in and it won’t stop.  We’ll be busy growing indoors over winter and will be on site every Wednesday rain or shine.  We’ve plenty of exciting projects in the pipeline and lots of work to do on our infrastructure, bed building, rainwater harvesting etc
I’ve just come back from learning how to grow oysters mushrooms in recycled coffee grounds.  An exciting winter project!  We have our first small bag inoculated and tucked up somewhere warm and we should have our first harvest in 5 weeks!  Potentially we’ll run a workshop making bags for people to take home like this   http://www.fungi-futures.co.uk/category/grow-kits/. Places will be really limited so let me know if it’s something you’d like to do.
And finally a big welcome to our two new arrivals – the gorgeous bench that Matt the volunteer made our of recycled wood that is given our pond a classy Westonbirt Arboretum feel, and Max the gorgeous little baby who just missed out on being born in the polytunnel! Congrats Nicola and Alistair!
See you in the garden,
Lucy