2017 newsletters

Our community orchard was certainly woken up from it’s winter slumber at it’s very first Wassail. Lovely to have so many people turn up for the event. Quite a sight to see especially when we all went weaving around the orchard in a long snake making lots of noise with instruments & pots & pans. Adults and children got so involved with all the activities, hanging up wishes on the trees, building the massive bonfire, making head wreaths out of willow & leaves & enjoying the food & drink we had out for everyone to share.

It was great to have Alan Jones (arch Druid, mind reader, performer amongst his many talents) & members of the Cornwall School of Mystery & Magic leading the ceremony with blessings & song, they certainly added a mystical air to the event.

So lucky that St Ives Cider donated us lots of their delicious ‘Montol’ ready made Mulled Cider for the event, it was enough to go around to everyone and we all enjoyed it including the trees. We had a beautiful wooden Wassail bowl, hand made & donated by James Glastonbury which was used to pass around the warm mulled cider to everyone & then we dipped pieces of actual toast in the dregs to hang up in the trees, all part of the unusual tradition.

£40 in donations were raised and we got a few new people who say they are keen to come help us look after the orchard, so that’s great. Maybe if we started advertising cider at our work parties more people would turn up!!

A lovely film was made of the event by Tony Mason, have a look on //youtu.be/EI7zrMmw2YM and you can all see photo’s of the event on our blog //stivesorchard.co.uk/apple-wassail-event/

Work parties – we having a break this weekend, so next work parties are Sunday 29th January and 5th Feb at 2.30pmm. Please always check for updates though on our website in case plans change.

Skatepark – A few of us are extending our energies & fundraising abilities to the skatepark that is right next to our community orchard & is desperately needing an upgrade. It’s a very old-fashioned skatepark made from wood, steel & tarmac, is very expensive to fix and most local kids who can travel go to other skateparks instead of using St Ives. So we are setting up the ‘St Ives Skatepark Project‘ to raise funds for a fantastic new concrete skatepark which will appeal to a much wider range of users.

To gather support and to form a separate committee group,  we’re having a SK8 EVENT in the Guildhall on the 12th Feb 2017. We’re hiring a half pipe from Mount Hawke and they’re coming in to run the skate competition and free skate sessions. The wonderful St Ives Community Fund has just donated us £450 to pay for the half pipe so it’s definitely on. Peter Curnow & Tamsyn Williams from St Ives Town Council are also fully supportive of the project & we should be getting extra funding from the town council for this event too. See //stivesorchard.co.uk/skatepark/ for more info and visit the brand new skatepark  facebook page

More fruit trees – we were given £450 from St Ives Town Council to plant more fruit trees so we will be looking at ordering trees soon. We have a great list from Cornish Garden Nurseries.

best wishes
Elise
www.stivesorchard.co.uk

29/1/17

Just a reminder that we are having a work party tomorrow, Sunday at 2pm where we will be mostly planting trees and pruning, nice change from just tackling brambles, though we’ll still be doing a bit of that too. 

We have 15 new trees to plant, bought with the planting fund from the St Ives Town Council. Kevin from Cornish Garden Nurseries brought us the trees on Wednesday and gave us a great lesson on how to prune our trees. We have a lovely selection of 8 Apple trees, 5 plum and 2 pear trees – don’t you love some of these names….  

Meeting: We are also having an impromptu meeting this Wed at 10am in Cafe Art to discuss our Skate Event being held on Sunday amongst a few other things.//www.stivesorchard.co.uk/skatepark/. You are welcome to join us. We will set a date there for the next orchard meeting which needs to be soon as we have lots of plans to discuss for the orchard too. 

 

Timebanking – St Ives Community Orchard are registered with Timebanking for volunteers, so if you or your children are between ages of 11 – 19, every hour you work at the orchard, you can earn one Time Credit. A great way to encourage our kids to help out. These credits accumulate and you can spend them on an activity of your choice. My kids are keen to get credits for the Lusty glaze activities, zip line, banana boat rides, giant swing etc and it would fun to all go as a group once they’ve reached the target. See more examples on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/timebanking ).  To get registered you just need to fill out the time banking form and send it off or give it to us. I will have forms with me on Sunday. If they get the forms next week then this Sunday’s hours will count. 

 

best wishes

Elise

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16/2/17

Just to let you know that we are having a work party at the orchard this Sunday & 5th March at 2pm. Updated times are always on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/get-involved/

The skatepark event went really well, lots of people with enthusiasm, support and ideas for a new concrete skatepark. It was so much fun having the ramp from Mount Hawke in the Guildhall and great to see all the skating talent we have in St Ives.

Senara has made a fabulous film of the event, have a look

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgXyo32fJgU

​ ​Hope to see some of you on Sunday at the orchard.

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27/2/17

Various bits of news….

Big development is trying to get approval again…..

Just in case you haven’t heard, they’ve put through an application for the development of 165 residential units right for the 3rd time so if you have any opinion on it, do let them know. Go to //planning.cornwall.gov.uk/online-applications/ – enter this number: PA15/08967 (Land SW Of Joannies Avenue Halsetown Road St Ives Cornwall TR26 2HW) and you’ll see all the comments and you can add your own or you can email them a letter.  Even if you’ve sent in your opinion on the previous application, you need to do it again.  You can see comments from the first application here which might save you rewriting it if you commented before. Hopefully, the St Ives Neighbourhood plan will have a say in it this time.  See the picture below the area in red that the buildings would cover, it’s right next to the orchard and nature reserve (Carnstabba Hill). The nature reserve would barely feel like a nature reserve when it’s totally surrounded by all those houses.. I know more affordable houses are needed but not to this huge scale & it should be 100% affordable like the rest of the recent development in this area. Does anyone know aprox how much these houses will sell for? (as I’ve been told even the ‘affordable’ is not very affordable to most, so would love to know)

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We’re looking official….

St Ives Town Council have linked to our website from theirs – see //stivestowncouncil-cornwall.gov.uk/palemon-best-recreation-ground/ and have even put up a new sign at the park that mentions the orchard and nature reserve.

Trees have their own map….
Nearly all of the trees that we planted a couple weeks ago are now on an online google map – marked by their GPS co-ordinates. How cool is that! Visit www.stivesorchard.co.uk/tree-map/. I can add photos and descriptions of each tree to it. Hope to get them all on eventually (although sadly we lost most of the labels that were on the original trees that were planted)

Work party next Sunday 2 – 4pm 5th March.
We hope to get some more fruit trees to plant this week and we might have some trees for the nature reserve as well from Rupert. Come along to help us plant.

 

Adopt a tree……
We are offering to the public an opportunity to support the orchard by adopting / sponsoring a tree.

//www.stivesorchard.co.uk/adopt-sponsor-a-tree/

Would you like to adopt or sponsor a fruit tree in our Community Orchard?

Adopting a tree is a fun and easy way to help the environment and makes a unique and long-lasting gift.  Great for celebrating birthdays,  anniversaries, or as a memorial for a family member or loved one.

You will have the opportunity to either come plant a new fruit tree or we can plant it for you or you can adopt an existing tree.

When you adopt a tree:

• You will receive a Tree adoption certificate which will be personalised with a photo of the tree, an optional special message & the GPS coordinates of the tree.
• We will write your name on the stake that supports the tree.
• Your tree will also appear on our online map with your name on it as well as photos of the tree & it’s GPS coordinates.
• You can come and visit & care for your tree whenever you like as well as picking some of its fruit.

This is your chance to contribute to this amazing community project and leave a lasting legacy for St Ives. 

Cost for a fruit tree in the orchard is £50 and a tree in the nature reserve would be £30.
Alternatively if you volunteer 10 x at the orchard, you can get the same deal.

Click here to have a look at the online tree map where your tree will appear. If you click on the marker of your tree there will be a picture of your tree with your name in the description.  Contact us if you’re interested.

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29/3/17

Happy Spring

Now the evenings are a bit lighter, we are switching our orchard work parties to every Thursday 4 – 6pm, starting tomorrow!

The following week however we are having a Friday session 10 – 2pm on 7th April (instead of Thursday) as we have a grou p of volunteers coming down to help from Newquay Community Orchard.Please let us know if you’d like to join us on that day.
After that it should be every Thursday but keep a check on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/get-involved/

Meeting – 19th or 26th April?
We need to have another meeting to discuss how we are going to spend our £2000 from the Tesco grant and various other decisions. The last couple of meetings we have only had one or two people come along which isn’t enough to constitute a meeting, so please let me know if you can come and which dates are best for you? Wed 19th or 26th April?

Tree Planting
We had a great planting session last work party. See our blogfor photos- //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/tree-planting-6th-march-2017/.
We bought 9 new apple trees from Cornish Garden Nurseries with the money that has been donated from Tesco / Groundworks ‘Bags of Help’ fund. Great names Apple Sops in Wine / Hoary Morning / Apple Tom Putt / Apple Farmers Glory / Apple Egremont Russet / Apple Cox’s Orange Pippin / Apple Ashmeads Kernal / Apple Chiver’s Delight / Apple Charles Ross.
Rupert Manley also brought up about 20 homegrownoak, ash, horse chestnut & sweet chestnut for us to plant on the borders of the orchard to screen out the factories that lie alongside us & for wind protection.Thanks Rupert.
We’ve also raised £200 from our ‘Adopt a tree’ program.

More trees
Tassy Swallow, a local professional surfer who runs the Surfhouse on the Island applied for and received about 400 trees and bushes from the Woodland trust. She is bringing some of her young surf club to plant some of them up at the orchard soon, as well as planting them in other places, but she has more than she needs so if anyone has a good place for them, please get in touch with her or her Mum, Rowena on surfhousestives@hotmail.com.

Wild Food foraging
A number of the orchard volunteers were given a lovely treat by Josh from ‘Wild St Ives’ who took them on a wild food foraging walk up by Steeple woods. It sounded amazing- they searched and tasted a wide variety of edible plants & flowers and at the end enjoyed his homemade nettle samosas & Beech leaf liqueur (with ice!) Sadly I was away but I plan to book a walk with him soon. Have a look what he has to offer or contact him on //www.facebook.com/wildstives.

Grow Wild & Bees
I applied for and received a big box of wild flower seeds from //www.growwilduk.com/so we will need to prepare a bed & sew them soon. Be lovely to have lots of flowers for the pollinators. Duwayne has built some beautiful bee hives for the orchard so they will be going onto the site soon.

Hope to see a few of you tomorrow at the orchard.

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10/4/17

Work parties are now every Thursday 4 – 6pm! It’s looking so beautiful up there, we had such a fantastic work party on Friday with 20 volunteers which included 9 children and they all worked so hard in the glorious sunshine. A few volunteers came up from Newquay Community Orchard as well which was great. See photos on our blog //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/april-work-party/

Tara & I want to have an easter egg hunt + bonfire + baking potatoes at the orchard? Would any of you like to be involved? I was thinking of doing it on Easter Monday at 3pm. Or is another date better for any of you?

 I’m sending an article to the Echo tomorrow morning to ask them to advertise our Thurs afternoon work parties – 4 till 6pm as well as the Easter egg hunt so let me know asap.

I was thinking £3 per child or is that too much? Free for children who volunteer with parents (which includes kids who’ve volunteered with us this year)

I also want to buy a camping kettle like this for our orchard to cook over the fire //www.amazon.co.uk/d/Camping-Hiking/Camp-fire-kettles-Fire-Kettle-5L/B008R86LHI – unless someone has one to give us?

​

Also any suggestions on where we could get logs to sit on around the fire?

Re meeting most people said either date is fine and one person said 19th April is best so going to go for that date I think – 7pm possibly at the Art cafe if that’s ok with Lucy (I’ll check) and let you know.

If anyone is interested in blogging on our website, please let me know. I can show you how, it’s easy. Articles about anything connected with the orchard / trees etc would be great, or if you’re a keen photographer you could upload photos that you take together with a description.

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16/4/17

Happy Easter everybody!

We having a big Easter egg hunt and bonfire at the orchard tomorrow, Monday, 3pm. Everyone welcome, invite your friends. Suggested donation 50p – £1 (totally optional). The lovely Jay has organised us lots of free easter eggs through her son at the local Co-op & I’ve bought some too.

(Psst – if you’re child free, come help us hide them between 2 – 2.45 &  if the easter bunny bring you too many eggs to eat bring them along too, more the merrier).

I’m going to print a few of these posters & put them up at the park later today.

Orchard Meeting 19th Wed evening 7pm to discuss plans for spending our £2000 funding & other things (still to confirm venue but if you let me know you’re coming I’ll let you know where we meeting….bit disorganised I know, suddenly realised it’s this week coming!)

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16/5/17

Hi & happy Summertime!

​We are having a meeting ​this Wed ​ (tomorrow)​, 3rd May at 7.30pm. It’s going to be at my house in Penbeagle, lots of parking space. 5 Porthia Crescent, St Ives, TR262JA. ​Let me know if you can come & whether you’d like better directions.

​Also Cornwall Today magazine are coming to take photos of our work party this Thursday so please come along at 4pm, it would be nice to show we have good community support. Orchard work parties continue to be weekly from 4 – 6pm.

The orchard is looking the best it ever has, with loads of blossom & grass. We seem to have almost beaten the bracken as it’s not coming up where we now have grass so we really excited about that as it will mean we not constantly trying to keep the fast growing bracken down.

We have one beehive installed in the orchard. It’s a Kenyan Top bar hive made by Duwayne and he’s nearly finished making another 3 level Warre top bar hive which will go in soon. We are hoping a swarm will simply find the hive and have put in a little bit of old honeycomb to attract them, but a local swarm removal guy has said the next swarm he collects he will bring to us. We have a great secret location for the hive, well hidden and separated from the orchard, so it won’t make anyone nervous of coming there & hopefully the bees will be left undisturbed.

We’ve been quite worried about our new trees not having enough rain water, so got permission from Mathew Stevens Cornish Fish to use their water. On Thursday we connected up a hose pipe and watered all the new trees. Hose pipe wasn’t quite long enough so we had to carry watering cans around so hope to connect a longer pipe this week, unless some decent rains come!

​best wishes

Elise

​Please also read this message from Rupert in case you’re interested.

​We are hoping to rekindle the Wellbeing Facilitator scheme at the surgery. In the absence of any funding we are wondering if anyone might be interested in helping out in a voluntary capacity.

Dear All

Wellbeing Facilitator Scheme at Stennack Surgery

In the past we hosted a “Wellbeing Facilitator”  at the surgery and the scheme ran successfully for a few years until, inevitably, funding ran out. The Wellbeing Facilitator saw patients who might benefit from social activities such as volunteering for conservation groups, joining a play reading group or walking group, or a support group or sports club, and extended to offering some support and advice about various social problems. Our Wellbeing Facilitator saw people, often referred by their Dr, who might benefit from a social activity or more exercise and found out what their interests and aspirations were before signposting them to suitable community activities or resources. The scheme seemed to work well and for some people it transformed their lives.

With the increasing financial constraints on the NHS which are unlikely to improve until this period of austerity is worked through or there is a change of government, it is unlikely that mainstream funding will be found within Cornwall to support this “social prescribing” type of work. However, nationally (including Cornwall) there is a growing ground swell movement behind a “social prescribing” approach to health and wellbeing and in some areas clinical commissioning groups (CCGs) are supporting social prescribing within primary care. It seems we were ahead of the curve here at the Stennack Surgery!

So, whilst there may not be any money to support it, there is a lot of interest! I recently attended a conference on Social Prescribing at the Eden Project and off the back of this have met with Rachel Murray of Kernow CCG and Sheena Arthur and Emily Downs of Age UK. The proposal is that we explore the possibility of having one or more volunteer Wellbeing Facilitators who would fulfil a role similar to the previous Wellbeing Facilitator and engage with local voluntary organisations to promote “social prescribing” in St Ives.

We are meeting again on Friday 12th May, 9am, at the surgery and would very much like to include anyone who might possibly be interested in helping with this initiative in any way.

I am very keen to discuss with anyone who might be interested, so please get in touch,  and hope to see you on the 12th of May!

with kind regards

Rupert

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23/5

Hi

ITV news called yesterday to say that they are in St Ives this Thursday & would like to pop into the orchard during our work party to chat to local people about issues they care about in the election.

Am hoping that we have a good turn out, you don’t have to speak on camera but it would be great to show that our community orchard is well supported so do come along if you can. 4 – 6pm (I think they’ll be there between 4.30 and 5)

Please let me know if you willing to chat to them (on camera) – it’s a good opportunity to get a message out on what’s important to you & people around you. They said this is a ‘people’ piece – it’s not about politicians – it’s about what really matters to normal people.

Also please fill in this short survey for Steeple Woodland – click on this link – //www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/338NFVJ

They are launching an initiative for people with restricted mobility or in wheelchairs and plan to improve a path into the Reserve from Steeple Lane through the new woodland to a superb view across St Ives Bay. The Reservoir Path initiative is kicking off with fundraising and consultations with local people. Please help by answering a few questions these  few questions

thanks
Elise

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25/5

ITV have emailed to say that they can’t come now due to all the stuff going on in Manchester, but that they might come next week.

Don’t forget to do this survey for the Steeple Woodland group –  //www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/338NFVJ – they need it to get funding & it only takes a couple minutes to complete. It’s the least we can do for all the hard work they do up there keeping Steeple woods beautiful – rain or shine they are there every Wed morning. I think this is the spot they want to create a path through the forest to ​ for​  wheelchair users

– a photo from when Josh took us on a foraging walk & cooked us up an amazing stirfry at the end of it

– highly recommend booking one of his walks on

 

//www.facebook.com/wildstives/

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19/7

Just a quick note to say that the orchard work party will be on tomorrow (Thursday) 10.30 till 2pm as we have a group of work experience kids coming up to help us at the orchard. So there is no afternoon work party this Thursday.

All welcome to join us, be good to have some extra adults.

best wishes

Elise

www.stivesorchard.co.uk

Ps – a small swarm of bees have moved into our 2nd hive (a Warre hive) of their own accord which was exciting to discover.

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21/8

Hi & hope you’ve all been enjoying the summer. 

 

St Ives Community Orchard is thriving, we now have bee hives, an abundance of wild flowers, a lot of fruit on our young trees and far less brambles and bracken than previous years. It still gets really overgrown in the summer so we would really like to have more volunteers to come and help us. Do pass on to anyone you think might be interested. Latest dates are always on our website stivesorchard.co.uk. 

 

We also have exciting plans to build an earth / cob oven in our orchard which we can then use it to have bread and pizza baking get-togethers. Laurence from the Leach pottery is going to assist us and everybody is welcome to join us with the building of it. All volunteer helpers will get free pizza at the first firing of the oven!

 

Dates coming up

• Tomorrow Tues 23rd Aug 4.30 pm we will be choosing the location for the earth oven and starting to gather materials for the earth oven (rock collecting mostly) plus our usual bramble clearing.
• Next Tues 29th Aug 10am we will prepare the area for the earth oven & collect the materials needed to build it. Our regular volunteer Noah Hall has also kindly agreed to take us on a foraging walk through the orchard and nature reserve area – all welcome. We plan to end it off with a campfire in the orchard where we will do some campfire baking with some of the ingredients that we’ve foraged.
• Sat 2nd Sept 10am – the building of the earth oven with stone, sand, straw & clay. This should be a really fun & interesting experience, come join us. More info on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/earthoven/

Hope to see you at one of these work parties. 

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22/9

Here’s a few dates & updates for you:

Earth Oven:
All welcome to join us up at the orchard tomorrow, Saturday 23rd from 2pm​ ​to work further on our earth oven. We will be building a shelter for our new earth oven, plus​ ​adding on an extra covering of clay. If all goes well we may even fire it up. We had such wonderful times building this earth oven. You can see lots of photos of the build on our blog.​

//www.stivesorchard.co.uk/earth-oven-build/and on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/preparing-for-the-earth-oven-build-foraging-walk/

​Work Parties:
We are still having regular work parties. They are now mostly on Tuesdays from 4 – 6pm but sometimes we have them on the weekend instead. Please always check on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/get-involved/​ ​for latest times.
We will be there next Tues 26th Sept 4 – 6pm.

AGM:
We are having our AGM at Cafe Art on Wed 4th or Thursday 5th October at 7pm in the evening. Please let me know which evening suits you best and we will send the date through to the Times and Echo on Monday to hopefully go into the paper on Friday.

Apple Day:
​15th October 2 – 6pm will be our Apple day – anybody willing to help out, please let us know​ ​if you can help us with any of the following things.

• helpers to​ ​run the tea & cake stand
• cake donations for us to sell
• help at the campfire cooking area​ ​where we’ll be letting people roast potatoes, cook marshmallows etc
• kids activities like den building, apple bobbing, games etc​. Suggestions welcome.
• musicians (looking for volunteers to entertain us with their musical talents)

Corporate Volunteers:
We had a very hard working group of volunteers from Cornwall Council join us for the day from ‘Volunteer Cornwall’ and they completely cleared​ ​an area​ ​for us that was very overgrown. There was an old bath hidden amongst the brambles that they cleared out & filled with soil ready for planting. We fancy planting flowers & sweet smelling plants like lavender in it. I have one lavender plant & a nasturtium plant to go in but if any of you have some plants that would look good in our bath, it would be very welcomed.

Bees:
Our very busy bees are thriving in our Kenyan top bar hive, Duwayne is checking them regularly. We had a small swarm move into our other hive in the summer, they built a small comb and then left the hive, possibly because they didn’t have a queen, not sure why.

Skatepark:
Next Tuesday we will be meeting at the skatepar​​k​ ​just before our orchard work party at 3.30 to have an official presenting of a cheque​ ​​for the St Ives Skatepark project from St Ives Community Fund. An incredible £980.41 which was raised by their Secret Gardens​ ​of St Ives event.

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12/10

Just a reminder that it’s Apple day this Sunday 15th at the Orchard.  2 – 6pm

There will be lots of activities for everyone to enjoy;

The Leach pottery team will be there with a foot-powered pottery wheel giving people a go at making clay pots. Plus there will be some other arty crafts that you can try out – leaf printing with artist / printmaker Melanie Uys and making gods eyes & knitting with Jo McIntosh

St Ives Cider will be there with mulled & normal cider for sale. Josh from Wild St Ives will be taking anyone interested in a short foraging walk to show people what sort of things can be eaten in the wild.

There will also be lots of pizza baking on site in our newly built Earth / Cob oven and a chance to do some campfire cooking too.

Polly Jones has said that she would come up and play us some tunes too which should be very special.

You’ll be able to have a go at pressing apples yourself on an apple press and get a chance to drink the fresh juice, so if you know anyone who has a tree with apples aplenty, try bring along a bagful to press.

Plus …. apple games, apple food, hula hooping, den building, green woodworking, a big bonfire, bee talks & craft stalls with handmade produce.

Hope you can come along.

We’ve been very busy preparing the area & cutting grass & we’ll be up there again this afternoon 4 – 6pm. Next work party is Tues 17th October 4 – 6pm. Dates are always on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/get-involved/

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23/10

We had a wonderful apple day last weekend – have a look at photos on our blog //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/apple-day2017/ 

Lovely to be mentioned in another blog //www.kissphotography.co.uk/14326/apple-day-st-ives/

You can also watch a

film

of the day made by Tony Mason //youtu.be/6KEyCjrhZ_c

.

 Thanks to everyone who helped make it a great day & also for helping us raise £224, amazing!  It was great having so many people there, glad the mizzle didn’t put off too many people.

Work parties –  we are away this week; so there is no work party on Tuesday, the following Tues is Halloween so we’ve decided to make the next get together on Wed 1st November, 4 till 6. 

 

Exciting news is that our shed is up. Duwayne built it off site & put it all up last week with help from Carl. We still planning to clad it with pallet wood & finish off the roof and various other things but it’s secure and all the tools are inside. Its going to be wonderful not having to bring the tools every time and to be able to make a cuppa tea in there.

 

Best wishes

Elise

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6/11 

With the darker evenings we have now changed our work parties to 1 – 3pm​ ​every Tuesday.​ ​(although we do sometimes cancel​ ​so check website). It’s a lovely time of year to work in the orchard as we are given a break from the constant growth & can ​focus on various projects.

We are also going to be having work parties on Sundays about twice a month. This month will be Sunday 12th & 26th Nov 11 – 1pm.​ ​
Future dates will be posted on our website //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/get-involved/

​Our new orchard shed now has a proper roof, Duwayne covered the roof with fibreglass which is very long lasting and watertight. The plan is to turn this roof into a green roof so​ ​it will be pollinator friendly! We also now have some shelves – thanks Carl.​ ​Soon to be starting with covering the entire shed in pallet wood. Anybody with spare pallets, it would be amazing if you could drop them off in the orchard for us​​.

​We’ve also been donated a very cool sign for the orchard – the words are burnt on by Mez Merril – //www.facebook.com/BespokeHandCraftedSigns. Hope to get it up soon.

We have 4 new Duke of Edinburgh kids volunteering with us, hoping to get a few more.

Forgot to mention before the lovely surprise donation we had from the St Ives Ladies Darts Winter League. They came along to our AGM and gave £240. This group have been giving out 2 donations a year for the last 20 years to local charity & community groups.
Funny enough Senara, David & I have just had a meeting with an amazing couple who run Flashlight and found out that they were the recipient of the other £240 donation. Flashlight do so much for the teenage children of St Ives who need a bit of support as well as having helped develop an incredible space for young musicians to get together, perform, practice & hang out. //www.flashlightstives.co.uk/

Enjoyed going along to the opening of the St Ives Charter, meeting lots of other interesting groups & advertising our orchard. Hopefully, the St Ives Charter will help bring all the community groups in St Ives together more. //www.facebook.com/stivescharter/

With Christmas coming up, keep in mind that we offer ‘Tree gift certificates’ which allows the the receiver to plant / adopt a tree. All details on //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/adopt-sponsor-a-tree/. We’ve had 7 trees adopted already & we plan to plant more trees this winter.

best wishes
Elise

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11/12

Hope you all enjoying the Christmas festivities. We’ve been getting quite festive at the orchard, we had a session making decorations with natural materials and decorated our elderflower tree, it’s looking lovely. 

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The shed is looking really good covered in the recycled pallet wood and with shelves inside & very happy to now have tea making facilities. Duwayne has even made us a couple pallet tables and a pallet couch outside plus we have the benches (stored in the shed) so plenty of seating when we need it. We were also donated a lovely bench which is out amongst the trees so people can sit and enjoy the lovely view.

Tomorrow we have Chris Coldwell, from the AONB (Area of Oustanding Beauty Project) come through to chat to us about their ‘Wheal Buzzy Project’ – which encourages creating wildflower meadows & developing a Mining Bee guided walk from St Ives. He is offering training to anyone in our group who may have a long term interest in leading walks. He is also offering support and training to our members who may have an interest in identifying bees within the St Ives sites.

If you’re interested please come over, he’ll be there from 1.30. 

We are still there every Tues 1 – 3pm (tomorrow!!) although we do sometimes cancel so check website. 

We’ve also had quite a few Sunday sessions, often finishing off with baking pizza / bread in the cob oven. The DofE kids have done a lot of work on Sundays, mostly woodwork for the shed. 

This weekend however we will be there Sat 11 – 1pm. 

Future dates will be posted on our website //www.stivesorchard.co.uk/get-involved/

W​​ith Christmas coming up, keep in mind that we offer ‘Tree gift certificates’ which allows the the receiver to plant / adopt a tree. All details on//www.stivesorchard.co.uk/adopt-sponsor-a-tree/. We’ve had ​8​  trees adopted already & we plan to plant more trees this winter.  

 

Very exciting, we’ve been nominated for Coastline’s ‘Community Project of the Year’ & invited to the awards evening ​ this Thursday​. Crossing fingers ​ that we win the £1000 prize – it’s been narrowed down to 4 groups​!!