Ledbury Refugee Support Group

Today took some stuff ( tent, tarps, shoes, blankets, sanitary towels and toiletries) down to the newly formed Ledbury Refugee Support Group. Heartening to see the amount of useful stuff already donated. Many thanks to all who are involved smile emoticon

https://www.facebook.com/groups/498898986952076/

You can read about it here

I have a drunken Algy Serama chicken sitting on my computer desk.

I have a drunken Algy Serama chicken sitting on my computer desk. As you do. He has been at the over ripe fermenting sour cherries which are on the ground. 

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Algy the drunk Serama cockerel snoozing on the desk. He is making little hiccupping sounds now and shaking his little head .  I noticed he was looking a bit dopy and I thought he had blood on his comb - but when I cleaned it off it was cherry juice - alcoholic smelling cherry juice!

Hop Pocket crafts

We had a great afternoon out this week at The Hop Pocket, just up the road from Compost Mansions.

We met up with friends, had an excellent lunch and then did some shopping. I purchased some new clothes (as very little now fits me due to losing so much weight *grin*)






and I also bought Compostgirl a few items in the sale. Wow! She looks so great in them! But ... How did I get such a grown up daughter? Lol. Such a great role model for the younger ones she mentors at school and as a Young Leader at Brownies and

Modelling for The Woolly Pedlar :)

I feature in a lovely blog post from The Woolly Pedlar.

She says

Hi, I’m the Woolly Pedlar, upcycler of unwanted knitwear into fabulous and funky clothes, soft furnishings and accessories. I work from home, a stone’s throw from Hadrian’s Wall, in rural Northumberland.

 When you make one off pieces and sell them yourself at events such as The Green Gathering, each and every sale becomes a personal encounter. It is a joy to get to know my customers, some of whom I’ve forged real friendships with. I want to write about the moment depicted in this photo. It was Sunday night at the Green Gathering, 2015, and we had quite a crowd at The Woolly Pedlar’s tent. It was just beginning to get dark, I had a gin and tonic in my hand, the minirig was playing some good tunes and we were busy with lots of visitors to the stall.

Sue is so  lovely and strangely enough we both already followed each other's blogs but did not realize until we got chatting at Green Gathering! 


Thank you Sue for the mention and the lovely photos! I  LOVE  my recycled wool ponchos and that I have made new friends at Green Gathering due to them. If you go to Sue's blog post you can see some lovely photos she took of us in our finery. 
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Green Gathering 2015

One of the things I did this August was to volunteer to help at Green Gathering, the most amazing green festival ever. Some of you may remember I went to the last Big Green Gathering back in 2007,

Well this is its baby sibling, risen out of the ashes of  the sadly ( due to no fault of its own) defunct BGG which was cancelled at the last moment in 2009.

I traveled down to Peacefield Park, Chepstow during the last week of August, in beautiful weather, to set up camp for a week in the "temporary intentional village" which is the Permaculture area;

 I set up my tent and a spare one for Compostgirl and a friend, who were coming for the first two days of the festival proper. I also had Algy and Mrs with me as I was doing a workshop on chicken keeping during the festival. So my car was full to the brim as you can see! You can just see the pen that Algy and Mrs shared in the lhs tent  (it's the red thing)

I also helped to set up various structures - tents, yurts and helped with the chores in the Permaculture village.

I had fun with fellow Forest School Leaders, we were providing sessions for the festival goers and their children as well as any one else who wanted to have some fun :)



On Wednesday I was pleased to meet up again with John "Compost" Cossham and I spent a lot of time recording the process of setting up his compost waste reduction area.

The recycling areas dotted around the festival site are quite something! The dedicated recycling crew collect the carefully separated resources from the festival and all is recycled.



This is last years compost pile and the composting area on Wednesday morning, before John got clearing it up.

All the festival compostable waste was brought to John in bags and over the course of the week and the festival he (mostly single handedly!) created a huge compost heap which allows the festival putrecibles to compost down rather than going to landfill. The pile remains there unattended until next years GG.










This is a waste minimization process rather than a soil improver process, as the compost made is full of all sorts of stuff which won't decompose.

But is an amazing feat of work from the Recycling crew and John to reduce landfill from the festival site.


The composting area on Sunday








As well as helping John with the compost area and helping in the Permaculture village and with Forest School  I also gave three workshops over the course of the festival, on chicken keeping and composting.





Apart from working hard, I met up with loads of other friends I have not seen for a long time.
I went to some excellent talks, chatted to so many people, bought an lovely poncho from The Woolly Pedlar,

saw some amazing artists and craft people

and of course I partied hard :) Seize The Day, Martha Tilson and Sentient were excellent!




We had two days of terrible rain but apart from that the weather was kind to us - on Wednesday night I was able to watch the meteor showers for several hours lying on my back in the grass :)

I came home Tuesday tired and in need of a shower and with aching knees, but very happy :)