In the beginning...

Welcome to the FareShare Cymru Allotment blog 

Who are FareShare Cymru?

FareShare Cymru are a wonderful charity who provide a solution to two major issues currently being faced in the UK. Food poverty and food waste. FareShare redistribute donated surplus food from food manufacturers and supermarkets - which would otherwise needlessly go to landfill (saving the supermarkets £65 a tonne to dump as well by the way!). Then they take that food and deliver it to their community food members, consisting of homeless shelters, community churches, schools and other third sector projects across South Wales. 

FareShare have been very successful in having long life food donated to them from the manufacturers, supermarkets and various food drives across the country. Unfortunately there has been a distinct lack of fresh produce available. 

FareShare thought they should do something about that..........

...... and FareShare Allotments were born! 

FareShare Allotment Blog

So, I've never made a blog before, so forgive me if its a little rough round the edges. I aim to use this to record the journey and the progress we make down at the FareShare allotment project and use it as a tool to try and get people interested and involved with helping out. Our aim is to turn the piece of land we have into a thriving community allotment which will provide volunteering opportunities and fresh produce for FareShare Cymru community food members. 

My name is Katie Nevitt and I used to work for FareShare Cymru. I fell in love with what the charity do because it just makes sense to me. When I heard that FareShare were looking for someone to take on the allotment project management I said that I would 'help out'. I knew that my friend Liz Diffley had also worked for FareShare and likes to get her hands dirty as much as I do, so I called her to get her on board.......

Help Out we said! 

I wasn't thinking that our first meeting would consist only of the FareShare guys handing Liz and I the keys and wishing us luck with the project! 

Will we regret saying we would help........

Watch this space!!

Day 1 

06/10/12: Volunteers - Liz, Dwayne & Katie

This is what greeted us on our first visit! Since we have no prior allotment experience and all our knowledge so far has come from books, this appeared a little daunting! 

Still, we were excited and optimistic that we could clear it in a weekend...........

Keith had bought us a petrol strimmer (fun!), some forks & spades, so we set to work.....

Four hours later and three of us had only managed to clear a patch the size of my kitchen. We had SERIOUSLY underestimated the amount of time it would take to prepare the land. But with spirits still high we went back to the drawing board.....and the volunteer list! 

Liz and I went away and spent a lot more time talking to people and researching exactly what the best plan of attack was. We quickly learnt that allotment owners LOVE to give their opinion, so we had plenty of useful, but extremely conflicting advice as to how we should tackle preparing the land.