Chateau Tooting SW17
The Urban Wine Company needs your grapes! Working as a collective, the company harvested 1.5 tonnes of fruit from gardens across London to create a vineyard-quality wine for members to share (known as ‘Chateau Tooting’). For the 2011 harvest in September, Urban Wine is appealing for more grapes. Members’ contributions are pooled and the rose wine will be ready March 2012. If you have grapes, join the cause - ‘Vino for Tooting’.
Waterloo Quarter Food Festival SE1
This summer, from the end of June to the end of July, Waterloo will become a major food destination. The festival programme includes free tastings at Greensmiths, home to the Ginger Pig butcher, baker and greengrocer on Lower Marsh, on 6 July. And the Three Stags Restaurant, a member of the Sustainable Restaurant Association, will be paying tribute to paella on 13 July, along with sangria and evening sunshine, of course!
Colne Valley festival UB9
The Colne Valley Local Food Festival on 25 September is a celebration of local food and farming. Schools involved in the Love Local Food project will be proudly exhibiting the produce they have grown and hoping to impress the judges. You can also buy a ‘Meal Box’ online from Colne Valley, made up of produce from local farmers. Try the Flexmore Farm BBQ box with their famous Water Buffalo Burgers, award winning Chilli and Coriander Sausages and Wingrove Farm’s salad.
London’s own Community Farm? SM7
Have you ever dreamt about owning a place in the country? An amazing opportunity has come up for people to club together and buy some land in south London: 35 acres including an existing veg farm and nursery, woodlands, farm shop, bungalow, glass houses and polytunnels. The land is £1.15 million to buy, and as of the beginning of June £860,000 worth of pledges have been made!
Contact anna.francis@bioregional.com
Urban Root Camp N16
Root Camp is a field and cookery school for teenagers, aimed at creating a generation of thoughtful consumers and cooks for the future. As well as two courses available in Devon, Root Camp has recently moved into Hackney. Students will work at the urban market garden Allen’s Gardens, and honey producer The Golden Company, and have cooking sessions with chef Anna Colquhoun, preparing seasonal dishes in her teaching kitchen nearby. The course runs for two intensive days on 28 and 29 July.
FoodCycle Café E3
This fantastic charity reclaims surplus food from supermarkets and then, with the help of volunteers, the ingredients are turned into healthy and delicious meals for people in the local community. FoodCycle’s second community café has opened in Bromley-by-Bow (there is already one in Haringay, see member feature on p21), and is particularly suited to often socially isolated elderly members of the community, who can come together and have fun with some friends, whilst getting some cheap, nutritious food which might otherwise be absent from their diets.
Think you can BBQ? SE10
Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency offers accredited and unique training courses in food, health and sustainability. One of this summer’s courses is a day devoted to healthy sustainable barbecue cooking. Other courses include ‘More than Mince’ - how to use cheaper and more sustainable cuts of meat, ‘Raw Chocolate Treats’ - how to use Fairtrade Cocoa to make your own chocolate indulgences, and ‘Community Café Training’ - basic principles of menu planning to maximise the financial opportunity of sustainable, healthy food.
Contact 0208 269 4880 or mel@gcda.org.uk
London Honey Festival SE1
At the Royal Festival Hall on 21 August, Capital Bee in conjunction with the Southbank Centre will celebrate urban beekeeping and honey harvesting as part of the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain. Stalls will be free to beekeeping organisations and individuals, and the public will have the opportunity to taste and buy local honey, against a backdrop of films and music that celebrate urban bees.
Urban Green Fair SE24
This year’s Urban Green Fair in Brockwell Park will be held on Sunday 4 September. In its fifth year, this independent event has some impressive green credentials, being powered by solar and wind energy. The Brockwell Bake Association will be at the fair doing some baking and processing their grown-in-Lambeth heritage wheat crop: threshing out, winnowing, milling, sieving and baking it in a new mobile wood-fired oven. There will also be workshops, a speakers’ marquee, children's activities, and food.
