A WEEK IN THE LIFE OF THE FOREST GARDEN

shampoo
Our work doesn’t stop at the allotment gates but carries on every day of the week across Moulsecoomb and beyond.
Last week we helped forage for ingredients to make home made shampoo at Moulsecoomb Primary and the Bevy community pub for an event run by House of Cultural Curiosity as part of the British Science Festival.
shampoo
prizes
We entered fruit and veg, cakes and jams at the Bevy garden show and cooked a Harvest Feast at Moulsecoomb Primary while Stephan from Brighton Permaculture Trust got children to squash the apples and pears grown and harvested by the children at the school to turn into juice.
picking apples
apples
apple press

Now in its 8thyear, the Harvest Feast has become part of the school calendar with children serving up the food for parents and carers at the end of the school day.

harvest feast
harvestfeast2
We ran our first lunchtime gardening club of the new academic year with Year 4 discovering a newt, a frog, some anemiccarrots, coriander seed and slug eggs which the children fed to grateful chickens – all while harvesting a bed of garlic. The chickens eggs go to the breakfast club (but not the slug eggs).
The after school club made a pasta dish using yellow courgettes from the school and our giant tomatoes – or zombie tomatoes as the children named them – which were grown by pupilsin the heated greenhouse. Carly also uses the veg for the family cooking club she runs.
zombie tomatoes
At the Bevy we help look after the edible pub garden and a lot of the fruit and veg was used by Friday Friends to make jams and pickles to raise money for their seniors Christmas party – as well winning lots of prizes in the garden show. Apples from the school also went to the Friday Friends for their puddings while the rest where taken by the Permaculture Trust to their juicing shed at Stanmer Park.
While Carly was teaching pupils to cook at Brighton Aldridge Community Academy Pat was delivering lessons that included tool safety and techniques, microcosm of wood land ecology using magnification and microscopes, horticulture and the hidden language of trees!
Over the weekend Pat also ran another session at the garden and in the woods with Sensing Friends – a group that works on building stronger more meaningful friendships between blind, partially sighted and sighted youngsters.
This is on top of welcoming over 60 people a week to our workdays including organisations that work with adults with learning disabilities such as St.Johns College, Autism Sussex, Outlook House and Brighton Mencap.
And after such a busy week, its always good to sit round the table with everyone and eat some of the amazing food that is cooked up at the garden every week 
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