horticulture

Sustainable Urban Food Production

Kindling's Chris Walsh gave a presentation to several hundred Manchester School of Architecture students on the issue of sustainable food in Manchester in mid-November 2009. As part of the students’ first year project they are exploring urban food production and consumption and the talk raised the many and interlinked problems with our present unsustainable food system and offered some potential solutions.

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A History of Feeding Manchester

This chronological narrative of how Greater Manchester has been fed through the ages, looks at each decade from 1750 to the present day: looking at how a changing Manchester was fed, we can see our changing relationship with the countryside. How the ‘urban’ has come to dominate the ‘rural’ to make the most of market opportunities. A detachment from and disregard for the pastoral, and a reverence for the metropolis.

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New Smithfield Wholesale Market Report

Report into Manchester's New Smithfield Wholesale Fruit & Vegetable Market (NSM) and its’ role in the city’s food supply. The report aims to: • Illustrate how New Smithfield Market works, defining the roles of traders, agents, transporters etc. • Locate the source of fruit and vegetables sold on NSM, how they are transported to NSM and who they are sold to. • Identify good practice as well as potential and innovation of local growing. • Summarise the interest in and demand for locally produced fruit and vegetables. • Provide detailed information about how waste is managed at NSM.

2009 Food Heritage Calendar

A 2009 calendar produced by the pupils of St. Margaret's Primary School as part of a local food history project where Kindling worked with staff, pupils and local residents to explore the heritage of food growing, cooking and selling in Whalley Range, South Manchester. Topics explored include the turning of 'The Moss' (bog) into fields and roads; Villa kitchen gardens; Digging for Victory during World War Two; the history of allotments, bee-keeping and orchards in the area as well as the cultural influences of Caribbean, Pakistani, Sikh, Polish, Somali and Arabic communities.

Farmers Markets: a case study of local food supply in Greater Manchester

This brief study was undertaken by Kindling in the summer of 2008 to explore a range of questions relating to food production, supply and distribution in Greater Manchester. This snapshot of three Greater Manchester Farmers' Markets took place to examine where food producers were coming from and to begin to explore traders' experiences of the markets studied. This study was informed by the Ricketts-Hein's work which developed an index of food re-localisation (2006) in which Greater Manchester was ranking of 59 out of 61 counties.

Sieben Linden Eco Village

Sieben Linden (Seven Limes in English) is an eco-village in the heart of Germany. It is home to over a hundred and twenty people and is an inspiring example of sustainable living. Established in 1997 it has been growing steadily with the aim of housing 250-300 residents.

Chris visited the village in July 2010 as part of a permaculture design course and returned with photos, stories and information to inform Kindling's development.

FeedingManchester #4

We are going for a fundamentally different format for this event, with Hulme Community Garden Centre hosting us in their garden and polytunnel: FeedingManchester #4 starts at 4.00pm with workshops, followed by food and refreshments at 6.30pm, proceeding with discussion groups and a bar opening at 7.30. The event will finish at 9.30pm.

The aim of FeedingManchester #4 is to:

1. Update each other with our news and progress since the last FeedingManchester in February (2010)Read more

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Growing Manchester Launched

Date:

29 March, 2010

Growing Manchester is a new programme to support community growing projects in the city to become more sustainable in the long term and covers a wide range of issues such as maintaining soil fertility, your legal responsibilities, micro-trading and involving more people. The Programme offers a unique package of support including:Read more

Forgotten Fields Secures Support

Date:

25 March, 2010

Kindling has secured Heritage Lottery support of around £40,000 to support its food heritage project: Forgotten Fields.

The project focuses on the heritage of food production and availability in Manchester from 1750’s to present day. It concentrates on six communities from across Greater Manchester that have expressed a need to explore a particular food heritage.Read more

Apple Grafting Course

Over a weekend in March 2010, Kindling in partnership with Abundance Manchester and OTAGS ran an introductory course on Apple Grafting (cutting & combining a shoot of one tree to the rootstock of another and binding them together until they grow into each other).
The following gallery gives a simple introduction to apple grafting with photos from the Sunday course at Parrswood Rural Education Centre kindly run by Adam Davies.

horticulture

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