Open day - 2009
Our 2009 open day took place on the afternoon of Sunday 28
July. When we were setting up in the morning, the sun was
blazing down and it was so hot. It remained hot during the
afternoon but, luckily, there was a little cloud to make things
much more comfortable.
There many things going on including
- Music
- Sales of crafts and brick-a-brack
- Face painting
- Crafts for children including dough sculpture and glass
painting.
- Search game for children
- Demonstrations of woodworking and metal forge work.
- Ladies dressing in Japanese clothes
- Story telling
- Raffle
- Refreshments
- Healthy eating food preparation demonstration and recipes
- Live hawk on show
- Garden tours
- .............or just enjoying the beautiful day and great
setting
These various activities raised just over £1000.
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| Some of the gorgeous cakes on sale |
Sale of crafts and cards |
Books on sale on the brick-a-brack stand |
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| Hawk presentation |
Our Japanese volunteer showing how to dress
in a "yukata" |
Face painting was not just for the children |
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| People admiring the garden |
Our impressive range of raffle prizes |
Story teller in full flow |
The Trustees thank all those who helped make the day a great
success.
| Special thanks must go to Highworth Gardening
Club (see picture on right) who came to help us make the
garden ready for the open day by strimming, trimming,
weeding, doing groundwork etc. They have helped us in
this way for for several years now. They also recently
made a small cash donation, and one member gave us some
wood. |
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Faringdon gateway sign
Faringdon Joint Environmental trust (JET) commissioned Root and
Branch to forge the letters Faringdon to be placed at the
Lechlade Road gateway to the town. Work started in November
2008.
The Bridewll Organic Garden blacksmith Steve, ably assisted by
volunteer Gordon and R&B gardeners, cut forged and textured
the lettering.
The finished lettering in place
Root & Branch people proudly holding up the
letters.
Steve, the Bridewell blacksmith is on the far left.
Winter 2008/09
Gosh, it has been a cold, miserable winter with so many people
down with nasty illnesses. But, life goes on at
R&B. Keeping warm is vital which means having lots of
fuel for our wood-burning fires.
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Store of fire wood |
Burning waste |
Poly-tunnel plants |
Obviously, work in the garden is limited to clearing up and
preparing for spring. So burning non-compostable rubbish is
a priority along with planting early crops in the poly-tunnel.
| A major local company has also been supplying the person-power
to insulate the kitchenand the office, to build a new shed for our
bee-keeping equipment and to help with major tidying up and
refurbishment around the site, and much more. We are
extremely grateful to them for their help.
We are also
grateful for the £1000 funding form the Faringdon Rotary Club for
the insulation panels used to insulate the kitchen ceiling. |
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Autumn 2008
Some pictures of Root & Branch in autumn.
Halloween
So, this is what we did with the last of our squash harvest on
31 October, Halloween. Scary!
Uchi kuri and orange soup
You can see that we have had a bumper crop of squash
including uchi kuri. So, the race is on to find uses. I have
tried roasted uchi kuri with some
success. Cathy, our garden supervisor, suggested uchi kuri
and orange soup.
This is my recipe to serve 2 people.
- I peeled, deseeded and chopped half an uchi kuri and cooked
in a pan for a while with a knob of butter. This is just
to soften the flesh and bring out the flavours.
- I added a finely-chopped knob of root ginger and a
finely-chopped clove of garlic.
- I added the zest of an orange which I then pealed, chopped
the flesh and added to the pan along with some orange juice
from a carton.
- I simmered the mix gently for a while to soften the chunks
of uchi kuri, then blitzed and added water to get the right
consistency.
- Finally I seasoned with a salt and pepper and melted in a
knob of butter.
In addition to the beautiful colour, this soup is
very refreshing. Do email
us if you know any other great recipes using this squash.
Uchi Kuri - Root & Branch at the
end of August
Uchi kuri
What, you might ask is Uchi Kuri? Well, it is a gourd
which is now growing in profusion at Root & Branch.
Those of you that have visited us at local farmers markets may
well have bought an uchi-kuri plant and are having fun growing
it. We hope that you get as much fruit as we have. I
had fun cooking some. I chopped the flesh into bite-sized
pieces, coated the chunks with duck fat (you can use vegetable
oil), seasoned with salt, pepper and fresh rosemary, and roasted
in a medium-hot oven for 25 min. Delicious!
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| Utchi kuri growing in our
garden |
Roasted utchi kuri |
Totem pole
We have started work on a totem pole which will form a dramatic
feature in our garden. Keep checking back here to see how
the work develops. Work on the totem pole is part of a green
woodworking project led by Chris Park. It is amazing to see
how Chris and his team are able to produce such fine work using
only simple, traditional tools including an Heath-Robinson looking
lathe.
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| Virgin totem pole |
Work starts on cutting the snake pattern |
Making a tool handle
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| Rough shaping |
Turning on a traditional lathe |
The finished tool handle.
Finished in Root & Branch bees wax.
Crop circles
The other bit of excitement we have had is that a local field
has been invaded by really intricate crop circles. These
crop circles are just by the Westmill
Wind Farm and the two make a dramatic picture as can be found
from the pictures
here. As an interesting piece of background, Adam Twine
is one of the founders of Root and Branch and is a leading light
in the wind farm.
New kitchen
We started work on our new kitchen in August. Our old
kitchen had a certain rustic charm but some might say it was
getting rather dilapidated. We were particularly keen to
upgrade our kitchen having obtained a major contract to lead a
healthy eating project funded by NHS
Chances for Change.
The refurbishment project included clearing the old kitchen, screeding the floor, purchasing
and assembling the units, cladding and insulating the rough stone wall,
tiling, installing the cooker hood and insulating the
ceiling.
The major funding for the new kitchen came from the Oxfordshire Primary
Care Trust. We are also extremely grateful for donations to this
project from
- Faringdon Rotary club (cooker hood and ceiling insulation)
- Sing Faringdon (new pans)
- Abingdon Kitchens and Bathrooms (basic first design)
- Vale of the White Horse District Council
- Steventon Parish Council
- Kennington Parish Council
- Drayton Parish Council
- Blewbury Parish Council
- Shellingford Parish Council
- Watchfield Parish Council
- Buckland Parish Council
- Grove Parish Coumcil
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Our new kitchen takes shape |
Our dear old kitchen |
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Cladding the wall to take our new units. |
Assembling the units |
Open day
Our 2008 open day was held on Sunday 29 June. It turned
out to be a lovely sunny day, although somewhat breezy and it did
try to rain at one point.
The day provided fun for all the family in addition to letting
visitors know about what we do. Activities included
- Sales of bric-a-brac and books, plants and crafts,
and cakes/preserves
- Demonstrations of crafts and workshops, woodwork,
metalwork, art and pottery, beekeeping, organic gardening and
complimentary therapy
- Plus stalls and games, storytelling and music, raffle
and refreshments
- And much more
We made nearly £1000 from the event.
All change at the top
We are pleased to welcome Faith Mitchell as our new manager who
took over from Liz Clarke in March. Faith was originally
from Manchester but has lived in London and Norway, and has lived
in Faringdon since 1995. She has worked in teaching
and tourism and, since 2000, managed a charity supporting refugees
and asylum seekers in Swindon.
Faith Mitchell - our new manager
Liz has been our manager since the start of Root & Branch
so it is with sadness that we see her go and we wish her
every success in her future career.
To mark the change of manager, we held a party at Root &
Branch. During the event, Faith and Liz planted a tree to
mark the event.
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Tree planting. Liz on the right and Faith
(centre) lowering the tree into the hole. |
Liz thanking everyone for one of her
presents - a traditional broom! |
Post script - August 2008
The tree planted in March is already bearing fruit with
three bright red crab apples (see right). This is a
good omen for Root & Branch! |
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Strategic review
Our strategic review exercise started on a beautiful sunny
Saturday morning in November 2007. Clients, staff,
volunteers and trustees got together and formed two groups to
consider our values and future plans. The various ideas were
brought together and developed further at meetings of trustees,
staff and key volunteers. Our plan, which covers 2008 - 2010
can be found here.
Archive of our news letters
You can download our old newsletters as pdf files by clicking
on the links below.
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Archive or annual reports/reviews
You can download a pdf file of an annual report/review by
clicking on the link below.
Note that the later reports are called "Annual
Reviews" because they do not contain the detailed
accounts. However, our latest accounts, for the year
ending March 2009 can be downloaded as a pdf file here
(89 kb). Earlier accounts can be be found at our
entry in the Charities Commission web site. |
PDF means portable document format. You will need Adobe
Acrobat Reader to read pdf files. You can download this free
here.
Email us if you
want to go on our email distribution list. We will send you
future newsletters when they come out and send you notices of
events.
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