I just love coincidences!  Last Saturday Dave Richards gave a really interesting talk about permaculture at Minstead Study Centre.  He illustrated his points with a brilliant range of slides and one of them showed some strange looking tubers that looked a little like Jerusalem Artichokes.  When the audience was asked if anyone knew what they were someone called out Oca.....  No I hadn't heard of them either.....  When I got home afterwards I checked my emails and there was one entitled…

Well, my letter has finally been published. No responses yet, but I wasn't expecting a flood of interest straight away. I need to create a poster version to put on the village noticeboard, and get the contact details for the garden club and the village show secretary. For now, in case anyone is interested, here is the letter:

Local food and growing your own…

Please check out my page I have uploaded photo's of cakes I have designed! Please leave me feedback!

We are now taking orders for turkeys and geese for Christmas. These birds are raised in Martin at Chalk Hill Farm. They are reared in small numbers and grow to maturity over several months. They graze on grass and feed on locally grown mixed cereal while turkeys benefit from additional vegetable protein. There are no growth promoters or additives.

The birds are free to roam, forage and socialise in the fresh air of the great outdoors. At maturity, all the birds are prepared on site to…

After a week of publicity, Lymington now have seven (yes! 7!!) new gardens for sharing, one in Hordle, and more in Lymington.

So, if you live in the SO41  postcode and looking for more growing space please contact Emily or Rachel on the numbers below.

However, they will…

We now have a new supplier of fresh bread and cakes for our Saturday market. We were getting bread from the Winterborne Bakery, which was proving very popular but unfortunately they are no longer able to supply us so we have found a new supplier called "Indulge" in Shaftesbury. This is a small artisan bakery which bakes a range of delicious handmade bread (including sourdough loaves) and cakes.

We will also have…

If you watch Countryfile, you may have seen a feature on Futurefarms that was shown on the programme last night. If you missed it, you can still see it on iPLayer: …

The Food Challenge are giving away 50 rhubarb plants over the next couple of weekends, so come and find our stall.

We have 50 Rhubarb tubers to give away to anyone who would like one in exchange for writing something up on our website next year, when they start grow (eg swap a recipe, upload a photo etc...)

We will be at the Sway Village Market on Sat 26th November from 9 -11.30am at Sway Village Hall and

The…

hi all - I have joined forces with veggiebox.com who are going to do our marketing for the veggiebox.  The first box is up and running and is on a special deal on lymingtondeals.com. We have also got other local growers working with us and supplying us with other crops we are not growing at the nursery.  We got kholrabi, salad leaves, very late strawberries and raspberries, tomatoes, aubergines, peppers, cabbages, chard, potatoes, pumkins, squashes.  Cucmbers are finished now, this week I…

In this week's email to Food Challenge members I mentioned that I had spotted some daffodils coming up in our garden and asked if anyone else had similar out of season things happening.

One reply put my daffs in the shade reporting that two daffodils had already flowered and were now dying while another reported a current crop of strawberries!

Anything else of note to report?

Hi all,

Rosie Lea Tea House & bakery will be opening very soon in BRockenhurst. We are keeping with our ethos of keeping our produce as local as possible and are currently sourcing our suppliers so if anyone would like to help please feel free to drop me a line! We are also aiming to keep a good proportion of our menu Gluten Free so if anyone knows of a good bread supplier do let me know.

We are also looking for local crafts to display for sale on our cradft…

At yesterday's New Forest Transition Hub meeting we talked about the availability of grants to support projects.  In these times of austerity you'd think it would be even harder than usual to find funding but actually that's not the case!

Locally the NPA's Sustainable Development Fund has a fairly large pot and is looking for suitable applications and there are several other possibilities.....

So......if you have an idea for something that you'd like to do in your community and…

Rob Hopkins has just published The Transition Companion.  It's an updated version of the Transition Handbook and builds on three years of experience across the worldwide Transition Network.

It's an inspiring read full of wonderful ideas and details of things that people have tried out.  One of the…

If you haven't already logged into the NatWest CommunityForce website, please could you do so this week?

We have plans to buy some more fruit and/or nut trees this winter, and would like to give them to as many individuals, groups, schools, community gardens across the forest that we can.

You can go on line, sign up and vote at

     You get three votes.

We may not win all the money we have asked for, but…

Hi all,

As things move on for our company we are really pleased to be opening our first vintage Tea Room & Bakery at the end of Novemember. We will be focusing and good home baked produce & patissere, taking on the challenge of making our menu fit for all including gluten free, dairy free, low sugar etc.

We want to continue using as many NEw Forest ingredienets as we can and are therefore trying to locate a good local brad baker, preferably one that also producwes…

Here is some of the harvest from my two apple trees. The first is a Fiesta, that I had from the food challenge in 2009. The second is a Greensleeves, that I bought from the from Deacons on the IOW in 2008.…

Celebrate British  Sausage Week by designing your own!

To celebrate British Sausage Week (31 October – 6 November) the New Forest Marque is teaming up with Oakwood Butchers, New Forest Marque Sausage Champion 2010, to bring someone’s…

This summer's gorgeous tasting honey - only 7 jars left £5 per lb jar.

Call Viv on 07768 420138....  collect from Hordle.