Busy being Compostwoman

Its been a busy week for my alter ego, Compostwoman.

On Wednesday I spent all day at  with 13 Herefordshire Primary Schools at an event to celebrate World Environment Day and Eco Schools, along with representatives from Water, Cycling, Waste minimisation, Healthy Living, Global Perspectives and other good stuff. I, and several other Master Composters , were there as "Others" which covered Green Woodworkers, Recycled crafts, h Energy, Nigel Hand ( again) with assorted wonderful reptiles and us with planting, bug hunts in the compost and the compost food chain.

It was a terrific day and the children seemed to really, really enjoy themselves :-)

I have also been preparing for a very busy weekend - I am at The Garden Festival, Hellens  this weekend, along with a team of Master Composters - yet again I am the organiser for the MC's, so have a lot of preparation and planning to do to make sure our stall is really good and everyone is happy with what they are doing :-)

I am also setting up the stall and taking it down again on Sunday.

And giving a talk on Sunday afternoon.

So my mind is FULL of compost at the moment :-)

But I hope to have time to look around the wonderful stalls there, and especially to go and listen to Brigit Strawbridge talk about Bees :-)

Off to take some of the stall to Hellens - it is a beautiful June summer evening here

Hope you have a lovely week end, whatever you do.

A very catch up post!

Gosh, I have not posted for more than a week!

The reason being, it is *that* time of the year! Like many of you I am madly busy in my veg patch, the first crops are now ready to harvest (new potatoes, carrots, broad beans, spinach, courgettes, shallots and onions, strawberries, cucumbers, salads.....) and weeding weeding weeding is a priority!

As is grass mowing and compost making...Compostman has been scything the long grass and the comfrey today, and I have been filling up the newly emptied compostbins.

The compost has been dug out of them to go in various raised beds, and I have been planting climbing french and canadian beans up beanpoles cut from our own woodland ( feel very smug about this!) as encouraged by the Small Woods Association, of which I am a proud member! and who I occasionally work for...If you want a great place to go, visit the Green Wood centre in Coalbrookedale, its wonderful!

In the last 10 days I have also done 5 full days of Master Composter stuff which I organised, booked, transported the display etc to and from (and made sure the lovely other Master Composters had a good time )



This is me joining in the drumming at the World Environment Day stands at The Big Event.

I spent Sat and Sun this weekend just gone at Hellens in Much Marcle, at The Garden Festival, which is the Hereford Waldorf School Summer fair. A wonderful place and a very worthy cause to help, and it is a pleasure to go and do a stall at such a lovely event.

While I was there I did an interview on BBC Hereford and Worcester..click here to listen...go to 45 mins into the programme.

Last week I started the first session of a new Eco Club I have been commissioned to run at a school near Bromyard and I went to a meeting of the new Transition Town Ledbury group and have been asked to join the Steering Group, to help get things "transitioning".

So lots of outside activities going on here, must be because it is approaching Midsummer! I DO feel energised and buzzing with life at the moment, I must say, despite still feeling a bit rough from the nasty flu bug thingy.

At Compost Mansions, as well as all that harvesting and weeding and compost moving and making, I have earthed all up the spuds again, harvested a lot of new ones, planted out climbing beans, mowed(with the push mower!) around the edge of the veg patch and I have cleared all round the clearing and log circle in the wood. I have potted on numerous brassicas and salads both for home and for the school garden use.

I am preparing for a couple of days of school party activities in the wood at the end of this week which is very exciting. I have also been writing course notes and brochures and web pages for my environmental activities in the wood and I have planned a series of courses to be held here in the wood in 2010, training early years practitioners in "having fun in the woods" type of stuff.

AND we now have a house wreathed in scaffolding, as we are having a few bits of work done/doing a few bits of painting on the roof and up the top of the walls and Compostman is going to be putting up THE SOLAR PANELS !!

Yes, the ones which he was going to do last year, but then he had to have an operation so couldn't . But now he is well again and we are SO excited about the fossil-fuel-free hot water we will be getting.

Having scaffolding and building work going on does make it more "challenging" to try to get on with anything, however......

And sadly as a result I have been unable to do much in the way of housework AT ALL as there is too much other stuff to do..

So thats a shame ;-)

Fri 5th June The Big Event and more composting advice given out

Today (Fri) was very successful in Hereford High Town, we had lots of visitors




and children planting seeds,




and I had a good look around The Big Green Bus. It was full of very interesting stuff! I also met up with someone I haven't seen for a long time, the dynamic originator behind the Big Green Bus and its charity The Big Green idea . the lovely Brigit Strawbridge. (yes, Brigit from the TV programme)

Brigit handed over 2 Bokashi bins she had very kindly collected from another friend..so I now have a "full house" of different composting methods (compost bins, wormeries, bokashi, green cone, green joanna....)

The rest of the various stands were also really interesting and I learned some new stuff ( always a good thing...)

On Sat 6th June I shall be in Hereford on the King George V meadow doing my Compostwoman bit to promote composting at home. I am doing this (with other Master Composters) as part of Hereford Earth Watch, a 2 day event celebrating World Environment Day.

Saturday's event is more of a general festival, with a big music event !

I shall be there from 12 noon until the end so if you are in the area come and say "hello"

World Environment Day Fri 5th June 2009

On Fri 5th June I shall be in Hereford High Town doing my Compostwoman bit to promote composting at home. I am doing this (with other Master Composters) as part of Hereford Earth Watch, a 2 day event celebrating World Environment Day.

ABOUT World Environment Day

World Environment Day (WED) was established by the UN General Assembly in 1972 to mark the opening of the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment.

Commemorated yearly on 5 June, WED is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. The day's agenda is to:

Give a human face to environmental issues;
Empower people to become active agents of sustainable and equitable development;
Promote an understanding that communities are pivotal to changing attitudes towards environmental issues;
Advocate partnership which will ensure all nations and peoples enjoy a safer and more prosperous future.

The theme for WED 2009 is 'Your Planet Needs You-UNite to Combat Climate Change'. It reflects the urgency for nations to agree on a new deal at the crucial climate convention meeting in Copenhagen some 180 days later in the year, and the links with overcoming poverty and improved management of forests.

This year’s host is Mexico which reflects the growing role of the Latin American country in the fight against climate change, including its growing participation in the carbon markets.

I am at the Earth Watch event as one of a group of Master Composters. Master Composting training is provided by Garden Organic. Garden Organic is the UK's leading organic growing charity, has been at the forefront of the organic horticulture movement for 50 years and is dedicated to researching and promoting organic gardening, farming and food.

I am very proud to be a member and am a passionate supporter all they do, especially their Composting and School Gardening programmes!

And Garden Organic have some very good ideas on how to celebrate WED!

Organic gardeners have a carbon footprint a third smaller than regular gardeners, which is why Garden Organic is urging more of us to go organic in the garden for UN World Environment Day.

Adopting an organic approach to the way we garden, farm and eat could massively contribute to protecting the planet for generations to come. And on Friday 5 June, it hopes more of us will look at how we can be greener in our gardens, for the sake of the environment.

At present, we are living well beyond our means, with the world requiring the equivalent of 3.4 planets to sustain it. However in research conducted by Garden Organic, which looked at the gardening and lifestyle habits of its members, the charity calculated that the figure could reduce to 2.5 planets if we were to simply garden organically and grow more of our own food.

Garden Organic's Dr Gareth Davies, who headed up the research said, “We monitored a sample of our members, some of whom were keen organic gardeners, others that had only just started out. What we found when we looked at each member's gardening habits, was that those who were the greenest in the garden and grew their own organic food, made a bigger reduction to their carbon footprint.”

“There are so many bad practices used in the average back garden, from spraying weed killer, to laying a garden full of concrete slabs, right down to burning rubbish. On UN World Environment Day, we hope to inspire people to think about what they can change to be more sustainable in the garden and in doing so we hope to raise awareness of how growing and gardening organically can help to protect the planet.”

So...some ideas to help you celebrate on Friday :-)