Titles of conferences

Storing and Preserving

Friendly gardens

Crop for the shop & meal assembly

Market Garden

Water

Other than veg – where will our grains and proteins come from?

High yielding, Low maintenance home gardens

From here to there – can we map the change process?

Dealing with pests

Fairtrade Town

Wisdom of all ages – elders and youth working together on learning and remembering frugality in a fun way

Community orchard

Purely plant food

How to involve the wider community, tackling inequalities and being inclusive

Capturing experience

Enroling the local producers in TTL vision

Optimising nutrition and health through food processing including cooking temperature

Composting

Honey and bees

The future consumers (and gardeners and cooks) of Lewes

Summaries of conferences

Storing and Preserving

Host: Kristina Staley

Participants: Chris Rowland, Elena Eliott, Alan Wyle, David Harvey, Jenny Webb, Sean Williams

Main points:

  • A lot of skills have been lost, but are still out there. Where can you learn the skills? You need to experience and see it being done – not just read it in a book. Needs to be part of cooking classes in schools. Could run workshops for adults – pickling weekends.
  • On a small scale, people will preserve and store their own food. Need information about which veg store well, how to store food in sand, boxes etc to preserve over winter – onions, apples etc. As well as how to treat the food so it will last longer, smoking, curing, salting, chutney, pickles, wine, juice.
  • Making sauerkraut is a healthy, easy way to store food. Done in Germany and Poland – we need to learn how to do it in the UK.
  • Grow veg for storage – e.g. beans for drying.
  • Will we still have freezers and fridges – if we do how can we use them best?
  • Could develop central resource with recipes, instructions etc
  • Could have central co-ops where exchange knowledge and skills as well as produce or people bring their apples/pears etc to be pressed.
  • Lots of produce is wasted in gardens – set up teams to harvest apples and make juice/cider or wild fruit e.g. blackberries.
  • Could have small businesses which offer to can, preserve people’s produce for them. Would need small communities – built on trust and knowing the people producing the food to know they are reliable and have done it well (e.g. used good food hygiene).
  • New houses are too hot – all central heated – where so we store our produce? Bring back larders and make them part of all new builds.

Friendly gardens

Host: Polly

Participants: Chris, Adrienne, Clare, Jean, David

Main points:

How to use our available gardens to produce a yield and give support and integration to community members, single, elderly, those with no land etc.

Focus areas:

  • Map available space
  • Promotion of ideas
  • Getting started – just do it
  • Group having a database of volunteers – lets scheme

Crop for the shop & meal assembly

Host: Alan Wyle

Participants: Kristina Staley, Eleisha Newman, Jane Durney, Maggie Harvey, Mireille Norris, Elena Eliott

Main points:

Plan and co-ordinate the growing of seasonal fruit and vegetables, in people’s gardens and allotments to sell in a community outlet. Fruit & veg would be grown organically and for taste, not for colour size and appearance. Think food yards not food miles.

Focus areas:

Get a group to brainstorm and plan.

Market Garden

Host: Kate

Participants: Jane Durney, Rachel Pose

Main points:

  • What to grow? – mixed farming, salads, tomatoes, beans etc
  • Land availability – unused, privately owned land, Laughton, Firle, Glynde, allotment land in Lewes, rich houses with walled gardens
  • Design – permaculture?
  • Labour – wwoof – working on an organic farm
  • Distribution/selling – local shop, market stall
  • Education – cookery with the seasons, resource, schools, Plumpton College
  • Café
  • Skills/ resource to plan/oversee

Focus areas: - land – talk to people about sites available - talk to and involve local agricultural college - decide how food will be distributed

Water

Host: Dawn

Participants: Elesiya, Dirk, Pippa, Giles, Patrick, Polly, Kristina, Rob, Emma, Susan.

Main points of discussion:

Individual Action:

  • Rainwater butts
  • Grey water piping – we need local plumbers able to carry out this work or would be willing to be trained
  • Conservation
  • Loo flushing minimal
  • Bathing minimal

Wider Community

  • Localised small reservoirs
  • Methods of channelling water into aquifers to replenish
  • Water access – meters versus efficient shower systems
  • Drinkable tap water – aim to ban bottled water
  • Ouse River water for flushing loos
  • Reed beds

Agriculture/gardens

  • Irrigation – drip irrigation, swales

Research

  • Current supply and resources – ask Southern Water and the Environment Agency

Focus areas: Encouraging individual action Researching current resources/supply

Other than veg – where will our grains and proteins come from?

Host: Pippa

Participants: Polly, Amelia, Amanda, John & several others

Main points of discussion:

  • Protein – fish, nuts, meat and dairy, small scale growing, local slaughter house and/or mobile abattoir
  • Eat less meat
  • Look at food combining for optimum nutrition
  • What staples can’t we grow? Rice, bananas, coffee, tea, cocoa
  • But we can grow wheat, corn, barley, rye
  • Investigate possibilities of millet, quinoa, and other less common grains
  • Train our palettes to different tastes
  • Do we need a lot of high protein foods? Maybe not.
  • Nuts – nut orchards in schools, nut projects and training to grow nuts
  • Experiment on allotments and then ask local growers to trial grains

Focus areas:

  • We can grow enough diversity to eat well
  • Teach growing and nutrition in schools
  • Experiment – possibly on a TTL allotment with more unusual crops and if successful approach a local grower and ask them to try on a bigger scale
  • Communication with farmers and growers

High yielding, Low maintenance home gardens

Host: Pippa

Participants: Roger Murray, Kathy Vagg, Ian Donald, Amelia, Susan Murray, Penny, Wendy, Dirk, Emma, Polly

Main points of discussion:

  • We will need to grow as much food as we can within Lewes
  • Permaculture design – provides some useful tools for designing high yielding, low maintenance gardens
  • Training is needed – a reskilling – a buddy system – matching those with experience and those who want to learn
  • Lots and lots of unused land in Lewes e.g. school grounds, parks, traffic islands – map all this land as a first step towards using it
  • A community garden – equipment share system
  • Gardening is a game you can eat – it’s fun
  • Publicity – perhaps a regular column in the local paper on gardening

Focus areas:

  • Training in permaculture
  • Training in food growing
  • Mapping all unused land in Lewes

From here to there – can we map the change process?

Host: Amanda Geary

Participants: 6 people

Main points of discussion:

  • Implications of slow/medium/ fast descent
  • The values that will sustain us
  • Staying positive – tips and tools
  • The questions we need to be asking – thinking outside the box, identifying blind spots

Dealing with pests

Host: Jane Durney

Participants: Wendy, Jenny, John Webber, Sweet Running Water

Main points of discussion:

  • If we’re going to be growing most of our own food, we’ll have to deal with the pests
  • Identified key pests as slugs/snails/aphids/ants/caterpillars/birds/rabbits/badgers/foxes/cats/carrot fly
  • Outlined some solutions – e.g. encourage predator, rotational planting, companion planting, create barriers, snail farm, slug/snail patrol

Focus areas:

  • Set up a snail patrol to collect slugs, snails, even caterpillars on a daily basis

Fairtrade town

Host: Susan Murray

Participants: Rob Shepherd, Gilly Smith, Dirk Campbell, Hermione Elliott

Main points of discussion:

Fairtrade goods could still be brought in by wind powered ship, but would inevitably become a more luxury good.

And problem of how to reduce populations – not sustainable in an oil-less future.

Focus areas: How many people can Lewes support?

Wisdom of all ages – elders and youth working together on learning and remembering frugality in a fun way

Host: Ali Campbell

Participants: Ali, Chris, Francesca, Polly, Maggie

Main points of discussion:

  • Open-ended intergenerational practice – broadly themed on food/growing/diet
  • Recruitment by attraction/fun
  • Buddy schemes/recipes/10 top tips for life
  • Exhibition/feast/performance
  • Recipe book
  • South Malling and Day centre near Tescos are geographically close and good site for pilot
  • Working in the present tense
  • Skills swap

Focus areas: Intergenerational work, piloted locally, could model capacity building, ‘the past, recreated in the present, can transform the future’.

Community orchard

Host: Patrick

Participants: Adrienne, sweet running water, Jane, Pauline, peter May, hazel, Kristina, Carolyn, johnny and others

Main points of discussion:

  • Peter May as main adviser to other groups – Stanmer, Ringmer, Plumpton
  • Crops – are apples/pears not good in a heating climate – vines and nuts?
  • Multi-level growing – trees/bushes/ground cover
  • Biodiversity
  • Social fun activities
  • Soil needs to be free-draining, deep and site frost-free
  • Maybe many small areas/ individual trees are better than a single orchard
  • Sharing of produce – juice, jams, preserving, sales
  • Educational aspects for others and training for us

Focus areas:

  • Audit of existing garden fruit trees
  • Harvest this year’s crops
  • Identify land needed
  • Increase public awareness of fruit sharing
  • Link to honeybee group, water group, preserving group
  • Identify public and institutional land for planting
  • Link to schools for planting, eating and education

Capturing experience

Name of host: Johnny Denis

Who took part: Mireille Norris, Jane Durry, Krisitina Staley, Adrienne Campbell

Main points of discussion:

  • creation of resource list for food group
  • learning from food group meetings
  • building on existing projects
  • projects need to do write-ups so we can all learn: diary, video diary, fund sharing of learning

How to involve the wider community, tackling inequalities and being inclusive

Name of host: Johnny Denis

Who took part: Dawn Boxall, Claire Murray, Wendy Jackson, Roger Murray, Chloe Anthony, Giles Dickens, Amanda Geary, Padraig Breatnach, Pippa Johns, Amelia

  • introduction from host – how to make food accessible and affordable to people on lower incomes, how to be inclusive (also in Transition Town project in general)
  • sharing small gardens – sharing responsibility for growing – growing crops and sharing them
  • community orchards, community gardens
  • linking people who can grow, have skills with those who would like to
  • Landport allotments linking with Pells Primary School – in general schools linking with allotment holders – intergenerational
  • permanent farmers market, travelling farmers market (one day per week in Cliffe, one day per week in Landport, etc) – issue of threatening small shops
  • local producers having ways of selling their produce in local shops
  • perception of farmers market being more expensive than supermarkets
  • education as a key issue
  • education in growing, cooking and eating
  • children’s education in growing, cooking and eating, improving government targets and national curriculum, DES already has a compulsory Healthy Schools Programme and an optional Sustainable Schools programe
  • next academic year is the Year of Food and Farming very child should have an opportunity to visit a farm
  • reskilling needed
  • Food and Health Partnership has a community chef, Robin, who offers cookery classes
  • problems of perception and food culture: buying (affordability, seasonal food), cooking (skills, time), eating (family meal)
  • sharing meals in the home, friends and wider community – Saturday lunch in primary schools
  • starting lots of projects to engage the community
  • how to engage the community: specifically target/market to lower income areas, inform lower income areas
  • Healthy Start vouchers for farmers market
  • work with local butchers, fishmongers, etc to welcome in the community, open days, etc
  • farmers market marketing – similar to supermarkets, ie offers, simple veggie bags for a fixed price
  • veggie bag collection points at schools linked with classroom projects (recipes)
  • projects should be targeted universally
  • the 4 a’s of access: availability, affordability, awareness (skills and knowledge), acceptability
  • information available about existing projects, resources

Purely plant food

Name of host: Eleisha C Newman

Who took part: Eleisha C Newman, Sweet Runing Water, Dirk Campbell

Main points of dicussion: Lessons of experience, science and other soures of wisdom show that in the given order of creation choices need to be made in favour of pure plant food diets. Areas in which this can be shown include: potable water availability, land availability and its potential for degeneration or regeneration, soil fertilisers including human waste processes, climate change factors, sustainable energy sources and loss of oil, health and nutrition, spirituality and wellbeing, biodiversity and knowledge classification systems.

Questions arise in response to reasons in favour of pure plant food diets, which need answers:

  • who, and how many people, are vegan/vegetarian/fruitarian?
  • who would gladly be so but are not?
  • what are the obstacles preventing people from being so?
  • what nutritious crops could be grown in Lewes and district to sustain a nutritious diet for all?
  • which plants that grow naturally in Lewes and district are edible and which are poisonous?
  • which plants can be eaten raw or with minimal use of energy/fuel/labour?
  • how can the human strengths required for an agrarian/plant food culture be developed and sustained in time and over time?

Focus areas for the food planning group: extensive knowledge about plants, their optimal growing requirements and their nutritional uses, values and dangers where they exist

Enroling the local producers in TTL vision

Host: Gilly Smith

Who Took Part: Dirk, Rob, Susan, Pippa, Pete, Janet, bees

Main points: The needs of the producers and farmers market – sustainable. Pete from Ashurst Organics gave us projected acreage for the needs of feeding Lewes and surrounding community – conclusion: we need to enrol local farms locked into supermarket contracts and exports into the idea of supplying locals. Bulk buying between communities. Big idea = must have farmers market.

Focus ideas for the food planning group:

  • Raise funds for survey among farmers.
  • Lobby for permanent farmers markets Council, Martin Eliot
  • Brand Lewes foods: added value.

Optimising nutrition and health through food processing including cooking temperature

Host: Mireille Norris

Main points: Effects of food on our metabolism Digestion and assimilation Processes out of our hands. We can do this at home through cheap and simple processes.

Composting

Host: Jenny Webber

Who took part: Roger, Kate, Rob, Wendy, plus others

Main points:

  • Encouragement and support (education) for home composting.
  • Use local wisdom.
  • Guidelines and protocols – cooked vs uncooked
  • Flats? Collection? Pig bins? Council?
  • Compost exchange mechanism
  • Buddy schemes/mentoring schemes
  • Compost doctor
  • Work with residents’ associations
  • Hearing from older perople
  • Wormeries/green cones
  • Neighbours collecting unwanted kitchen waste from others in the street.

Focus ideas:

  • Education
  • Collections from flats of kitchen waste
  • Offering green waste to those with compost bins or large gardens/allotments
  • Work with residents' associations

Honey and bees

Host: Adrienne

Who took part: Amelia, Patrick

Main points:

  • Sweeteners: No sugarcane but sugar beet can be grown in UK.
  • Honey better than sweetener.
  • Bees important pollinators of tree crops etc.
  • Urban beekeeping: Lots more variety in urban gardens.
  • Suppliers: Paynes of Hassocks.
  • Problem: disease (varroa), exhaustion (rapeseed foraging), sudden collapse. No wild honeybees any more.
  • Need training: Plumpton (Netherfield), bee inspectors, Lewes Beekeepers association.
  • Need to increase colonies, breed local bees adapted to local conditions.
  • Bees to be part of a community orchard/forest garden.
  • Identify areas for beekeeping in Lewes.
  • Need to encourage other wild bees and pollinating insects – and provide habitats – preserve dereliction – stop tidying up and overdevelopment of gardens and public spaces.

Focus area: Action: Set up reskilling in Lewes in autumn/spring – high profile, inclusive.

The Future Consumers (and gardeners and cooks) of Lewes

Host: Giles Dickens

Who attended: Sean, Jenny, David, Polly, Francesca, Giles, Amelia and others

Main points:

  • Key question: how can we ensure today’s kids have the skills, attitude, knowledge… they will need (for food in a post-oil world)?
  • It’s all about education – through schools and elsehow.
  • Families can share and transmit growing and cooking skill s, as well as positive attitudes – the inspiration and satisfaction.
  • Primary schools are key community links and resources – local, inclusive, accessible. School gardens (fruit and veg, poultry) and kitchens. Opportunities for parental involvement.
  • Secondary schools too – as well as through school meals (thanks Jamie!) and work experience/vocational courses for some/all year 10+ (see below) ‘Make it real’ eg ‘Cook and eat a pizza’ rather than ‘design packaging for a pizza’.
  • Tertiary Colleges (Note: Kinsale FE College was the start of the Energy Descent Action Plans) Plumpton and Sussex Downs College have a huge role to play.
  • Common Cause have blazed a trail to schools.

Focus areas: Top Priority: work in and through Primary Schools. In addition to above ideas, they could host communal meals (?use of kitchen may be an issue, with school catering contracted out…) eg Saturday lunch, all parents invited, inclusive, also maybe distribution centre for fruit, veg bags, parents collect when they come for the children, children could have been taught how to cook ‘strange veg’, and could have already enjoyed eating the end result at school lunch.

Converging at the end of the event

Feedback Possibilities – what struck me?

  • I found an incredible amount of expertise and creative thinking in the room/in Lewes. The youngest people are our greatest hope.
  • Possibly overwhelming/start small now.
  • I felt I was being part of something – people working together.
  • Whoever turns up/open space principles inspired me.
  • Like-minded people and ideas.
  • People felt enthusiasm for subject. Want to be involved and help see things through.
  • Enjoyed dynamic Open Space approach.
  • Existing resources as community resource.
  • I felt a sense of community/common goal. Inspired to get gardening.
  • Something’s happening; it’s unstoppable. All we need is love, veg and a sense of humour.
  • Idea about involving/contacting other people doing related things - schools – communications.
  • We are all learners and we are all teachers.
  • Local farmer turned up who had done an analysis of how much land would be needed to feed Lewes.
  • I loved the sheer volume of ideas.
  • We need to involve and partner with local authorities and developers.
  • We need to survey current resources – land – producers.
  • We need to make everything we do accessible/communicate to everybody.
  • Planning groups could identify a realistic, accessible, realisable first step.
  • Commitment to social inclusion in the group, esp needed in challenging times, and include people who drag their heels.
  • So many ideas; maybe the first step for me and many is to be the change we want to see.
  • I enjoyed Open Space and possibility for discomfort/difficult feelings, and not being bogged down by them.
  • Loved Open Space. When we listed the overseas produce we depend on there were only 5 items; we can grow most things and so my diet in future Transition Town Lewes will be very varied.
  • Keep links with Africa and others less fortunate. The trees are happy we are here – they need us as much as we need them.
  • Light on oil makes a beautiful rainbow. We are facing chaos through oil’s misuse and abuse – today we saw how our lives can be made beautiful and light – a ripple to spread out.
  • So many ideas - we can make the difference and get the ball rolling.
  • I’m amazed at how Transition Towns are now entering the public debate in Lewes. A lot of Transition Town ideas can make the difference and get the ball rolling.
  • I’m glad not to have moved out of Lewes – excited about what’s happening.
  • The wide-ranging debate ranged from peeing on compost to whether tea will arrive on clippers. We are sowing the seeds for our children and grandchildren. Transition Town Lewes is a great vision for the future.
  • The result of what we are planning will make all our lives better.
  • I was bagging up the food and talking to people - talking and doing is what Transition Town Lewes is about. Inclusiveness – remember who is not in the room.
  • I want to put people in touch with each other to share gardens, skills, compost. Match up needs with resources.
  • I got a lot out of the day – action: I am limited as one person but I feel I can take action with other people – I’m excited about the potential.
  • I want Transition Town Lewes to do Open Space days on other issues.
  • The potential was being harnessed and people were working together. Society post peak oil is not a bad thing but a saner society – I feel optimism, not fear.
  • I was moved by the cooperation, creativity and enthusiasm in the room. It felt poetic.

One step I can take

  • Help with the core group of Transition Town Lewes.
  • Compost kitchen waste.
  • Farm snails for fertiliser for allotment.
  • Work towards creating a permanent farmers’ market.
  • Be the link to Lewes Town Council for TTL.
  • Get local/ no more flying.
  • Continue to expand growing for self and others.
  • Help gardening buddy. Set up email list for gardening buddy.
  • Idea of sharing gardens.
  • Being the change I want to see.
  • Take the permaculture course next month.
  • Help gardening buddy.
  • Global awareness group in Newhaven.
  • Turn back yard in to a veg garden.
  • Try new foods and discover what I eat. Gather info.
  • Gardening club.
  • Show film about coffee in Lewes.
  • Gorilla gardening – nut and fruit seeds.
  • Get compost bin from council.
  • Continue working for Transition Town Lewes.
  • Persuade school teachers about this.
  • Carry on being involved in Transition Town Lewes.
  • Permaculture and organic gardening.
  • Raised beds. Commited to TTL.
  • Collective use of gardens.
  • Compost waste.
  • Get involved in planning groups.
  • Be the link to Common Cause.
  • Learn more about trees/give them away as presents.
  • Talk to people/Quakers about TTL.
  • Gardening with other people in their gardens.
  • Shop your crop – selling produce I grow.
  • Create cookery books and festivals with children and elders.
  • Help Transition Town Lewes to be the lens for District Council Planning.
  • Learn about water recycling.

Get involved: contact hello [at] TransitionTownLewes.org.uk