Events | Canalside Community Food

It’s been a busy January on the farm as we work to get the new season underway – our tunnel potatoes are now planted in tunnel 1 into the remnants of last year’s hotbeds spread over the bed thanks to a great couple of volunteer mornings.

At the same time a new load of muck has arrived from a local farm plus we’ve supplemented it with a load of chicken muck from Skye Orchard Eggs (the egg scheme for anyone who gets eggs from the egg shed)  to make our new hotbeds this season so we can generate some heat and sow our first seeds next week.

Despite the challenges we’ve harvested lots of lovely veg from the fields – our carrots have been great this year and we’re still trying to add as much diversity as possible to your share with things like black Spanish radish, cabbages and Jerusalem artichokes. It was great to get a share of fresh claytonia (winter salad) thanks to some serious weeding that we did on the last day before we closed for Christmas.

Meanwhile, rest assured the orchard is thoroughly wassailed (!) as we had a great turn out for our social and orchard work morning, pruning lots of the soft fruits ready for re-growth and abundance later in the year. Many thanks to everyone who came along.

Eleanor, grower

(All photos Eleanor Brown unless credited otherwise)

This year’s summer party – the first since the pandemic – will take place on Saturday 16th June 2022 from 6pm. For full details, including ticket sales, click here!

Please donate to Canalside Community Food

Canalside Community Food has always relied on the rent of neighbouring Leasowe Farm’s land for our fruit.

Canalside now has the opportunity to purchase an adjacent field of 2.25 acres (see map below) so that we can plant an orchard on land that we own, and safeguard the availability of our own fresh fruit for the future.

At our most recent AGM, we agreed to put £10,000 of our reserve funds towards this purchase. That still leaves us short by between £15,000-£20,000, so we agreed to appeal for donations from the wonderful community that we serve.

We would therefore appeal to anyone who shares our vision and passion for Canalside Community Food to donate what they can for this investment in the future of Canalside and the diversity we can offer.

Not only will this purchase enable us to plant and maintain an orchard on our own land in perpetuity, but it will also increase the value of the current land, and provide a wonderful new area for the entire community to enjoy.

We need to finalise this wonderful opportunity by Spring 2021, and would be extremely grateful for any donation you can make before then.

For further information, please contact Gareth Davies.

To donate, please complete the donation form and we will be in touch with you about making your payment. And as a thank you for donating, you will get a beautiful poster of images from Canalside.

It was the final big seasonal workday of 2020, my final one as head grower here, and hopefully the last one we’ll ever have to do under lockdown, fingers crossed… and it was wonderful, with eager beet-pickers of all ages defying the wet weather forecast and ripping red roots from the earth from sunrise (well, it was 10am and there wasn’t any sun, but I’m pleading artistic licence). All in all we picked 990 kilos of which about a quarter is the golden variety. They are all tucked away clamped in sand at the back of the barn – huge thanks to the clamping team, the unsung heroes of the day. Beets store well in this way until June, so there’ll be lots to look forward to in 2021!

This year’s onion planting will happen in a slightly different way to usual, to make sure this big annual task can be completed whilst at the same time enabling members to get out in the fresh air and still maintain the recommended social distancing measures.

Come and help plant the main onion crop – a task suitable for all ages! The work will continue for as many days as needed (Tuesday-Saturday) and any member who is well and symptom free, and has not been advised to self-isolate, is welcome to come and join in – the work will be arranged so that social distancing measures can be maintained.

Due to COVID-19 we will not be providing any refreshments or arranging shared food during onion planting work sessions. You are encouraged to bring a flask with your own hot drinks, and are welcome to bring a packed lunch if you want to work both sides of lunchtime.

We will be contacting members to let them know when the work can start (dependent on the ground being dry enough for the land to be prepared). Saturday 4th April or 11th April onwards – to be advised

Tickets are now available to buy:

Through this website – click here.

In Gaia, 7 Regent Place, Leamington Spa. Please ask whoever is at the till.

£7 for anyone 16yrs or over who isn’t a Canalside member, £5 for anyone 16yrs or over who is a member. Under 16s get in free!

Come and visit the farm for a tour with our head grower and a picnic (bring your own) this coming Sunday! The gates of our farm will be open between 11am and 3.30pm.

• Find out about Canalside Community Food
• Have a tour of the vegetable fields and fruit orchard – tours start at 11.30am and 2pm
• Speak to staff and members
• Bring a picnic to enjoy in our family friendly social area

We are now in the final phase of our community investment opportunity and we want to say a HUGE MASSIVE THANKYOU to everyone who has come on board to be part of this amazing project that we’ve been working on for the last 2 years.

WE ARE NOW HALF WAY THERE!! We are thrilled that over 60 of you (households and individuals) have invested and become part of the community in this way and we have raised around £55,000 already! THANK YOU SO MUCH and WELCOME to being a share holder!

**The offer period runs from 19th MAY – 29th JUNE and so with 17 days to go we are ramping up the energy so we can meet our goal. We can only make this happen if we make our total of £105,000.

We invite you to invest and become part of our successful, inspiring and sustainable CSA as we enter our second decade and be part of this unique and exciting opportunity for us to share the ownership of the land co-operatively (that we currently rent) and secure and preserve it for the use of community farming for the future.

Visit: https://www.canalsidecommunityfood.org.uk/share-offer/ for all the information on what being a share holder means.

You can invest anything from £50 for one share up to £10,000. You can also simply donate if £50 is too much of a stretch at this time. You do not even have to be a member – this offer is open to anyone who would like to make an ethical investment in this way, so please tell your friends, families and networks who would be interested.

Why should I invest?

– to safe guard the land for local organic food production until the end of time!
– to be a steward of the land and care for the natural environment, to offset your carbon footprint!
– to support a space that provides local, seasonal and organic food production
– to support a space that provides community education and access to local green space

Here’s a video from our four fab Canalside founders, Caz and Tom Ingall, Gareth Davies and Judy Steele, telling us about why they think this kind of ethical investment is the way forward.

How can I help?

– INVEST!
We need to raise another £50 K! It’s a 2 step process –
1) Visit this link https://www.canalsidecommunityfood.org.uk/share-offer/ read the document and click on the relevant application form
2) You will be contacted by us to then make your payment into the bank account. SIMPLES!

– DONATE – if you don’t wish to buy a share, or the stretch is too much at this time then any amount is very gratefully received.

– SPREAD THE WORD – you don’t have to be a member or even live locally to become a share holder. Anyone interested in ethical investment can partake – we have flyers, leaflets and all the information is on our website.

– Help us create SOCIAL MEDIA MOMENTUM – like/comment/share the posts from us – it really helps! We will be posting mightily over the coming days and the more momentum we can build up online the better. Please share our posts, and tell your networks about why you love Canalside/CSA’s and why you are investing.

Thank you so much for reading and for all your support!

Three weeks to go and we are half way to our target of raising £105,000 to buy the land! Thanks to all those who have so far invested generously helping to ensure that Canalside is secure into the future. However we still have some way to go (the carrot is only half full) so if you haven’t had a chance to apply for shares why not come along to our BBQ on Sunday (10th June) where there will be an opportunity to do so in good company! And Dom will be giving tours of the farm so apart from food and drink there is a great chance to see how the season is going and how the veg is growing.

If you can’t get down to the farm don’t panic! You can apply for shares online at https://www.canalsidecommunityfood.org.uk/share-offer/buy-shares-in-the-land/