St Ives Community Orchard & St Ives Community Foodshare set up tent at the St Ives Food and Drink Festival 2021, 17 – 19th September to promote what we do, provide a space for other community groups as well as a venue for interesting talks. We had participation from Steeple Woodland Nature Reserve, St Ives Climate Action Group, Seeds of St Ives and hopefully picked up a few new volunteers for our activities.
We took along a press (loaned by St Ives Cider), a few crates of our windfall apples & gave people a chance to press and taste the juice.
We spoke to lots of locals and visitors from afar, quite a few were interested in setting up similar schemes like the orchard and foodshare in their own towns.
We had fascinating and well attended talks from Holly Whitelaw (from Cornwall Gleaning Network) on importance of regenerative farming and eating for the planet , Josh (Wild St Ives) on foraging & Josh & Will (Howl & Loer) gave a talk about their brand new business creating botanical spirits & the foraged ingredients they use. We were all given tasters of the delicious drink which went very well with our pressed apple juice.
Lancelot Eastwood added some excitement by doing raku glazing & firing and Lucy Davis provided a brilliant Kimchi / sauerkraut workshop.
All the volunteers enjoyed having a place to hang out and enjoy the festival, was a good to have a gathering place and we had a good view of the live cooking demos next door to us.
Big thanks to Jabula Stretch Tents who provided the stretch tent and to the food festival for giving us the free space to show what’s happening locally in the town.
