Carbon Co-op have successfully designed and installed their first solar PV array. The 12kw array was installed on the roof of Unicorn Grocery, a wholefood co-operative in Chorlton, South Manchester, in time to qualify for the higher rate of Feed in Tariff (FiT). The panels should produce over 8500kwh of electricity per year, significantly reducing both Unicorn's energy bills and their carbon footprint.
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Last night's FeedingManchester #8 took inspiration from a spectrum of sustainable food pioneers from local guerilla gardeners to Incredible Edible Todmordon to the campaign to stop global food speculation.
Attendees ranged from the University of Manchester and academics from Lancaster and Sheffield Universities; voluntary groups like Transistion Town Groups, Operation Farm & Abundance Manchester and businesses like Unicorn Grocery, with over forty people attending.
People came from Bolton, Aston Under Lyne, New Mills, Broadbottom and even London!
Well, we gave it our best shot but we didn't win the Energyshare vote, the £100,000 award went to Hexham Hydro, which looks to be a very worthwhile winner and we wish them every success. 1159 people registered with the site and voted for us, so a big thank you to everyone. We are very proud to have got through to the final 6 out of the nearly 1000 community projects from around the country that entered the competition.
The Land Army was in Glazebury on 28th October planting garlic for the Moss Brook Growers.
Conditions were perfect, the soil had dried out enough to make planting easy and it was a beautiful sunny day.
Of the 7,500 cloves they plan to plant this season we planted over 5000 with 6 volunteers.
There has been a lot going on for Manchester Veg People over the past few weeks.
Kindling's Chris & Chloe visited the Quaker's WoodBrooke Study Centre (in Birmingham) over two days for a Local Food Systems (LFS) Seminar.
There we meet up with four of the five other LFS projects being supported by the Making Local Food Work programme: Liverpool Food Alliance, Nottingham Food Partnership, Sheffield Regather Land and Colne-U-topia.
As well as networking and socialising with the other groups, we had a chance to study their projects, discuss the challenges we are all facing and share possible solutions.
We were accompanied by staff of Reason Digital today to Moss Brook Organic Growers as part of their volunteering commitment to good causes in Manchester.
The Forgotten Fields project has begun to explore the food heritage of Cringle Fields and the Highfield Park area of Levenshulme, which was well known locally for smallholdings known as the Piggeries.
Forgotten Fields is a project focused 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.
Building on the lessons learnt from the Land Army pilots in the Summer, we have now secured funds to establish it as a permanent entity. The Unicorn Grocery has kindly donated £1,200 to pay for a field kitchen and shelter and The Big Lottery Fund has (provisionally) granted us £9,400 from its Awards for All fund to cover our costs in the coming year.
From late September, Kindling's Helen will be spending seven weeks visiting Aragon, Southern Spain, Catalonia and the Basque Country as part of a research tour looking at alternative food systems and co-operative ways of increasing access to sustainable food.
The region has a proud and progressive history of co-operative working. For example, Mondragon - a federation of worker cooperatives is the seventh largest Spanish company in terms of turnover and the leading business group in the Basque Country.