A Victoria sponge birthday cake

Tuesday was my birthday.  Mr Rigg and I took a day off work and had a lovely relaxing day pottering in Knutsford, drinking thick hot chocolate with a spoon at an Italian cafe, and eating cake for supper.

We also had a delicious lunch at The Victoria pub in Altrincham – but I’m going to save that for a separate post as it was so good!

Mr Rigg made my birthday cake – a Victoria sponge with raspberry jam and butter cream icing.  Yum.  It was our first attempt, we bought new sandwich cake tins in Knutsford and set about making Hugh’s recipe from his Everyday book.  It turned out pretty good.  We certainly aren’t complaining!

Rescuing a lapwing chick

Image: mikasuncle

Today on our way out we came across a tiny lapwing chick stood in the middle of a very busy road – two of his siblings sadly squashed beyond recognition.  I immediately stopped and jumped out and managed to catch the tiny chick as it hid in the grass on the verge.

I could see its parents wheeling overhead calling for their chicks, so I attempted to leave the chick in a field hoping the parents would find it.  But there were so many busy roads around that I decided that the best chance we could give the chick was to take it to a local wildlife rescue centre.

Thankfully the chick seemed quite a tough little thing and apart from peeping all the way to the rescue centre it seemed in fighting condition.  We left it in the hands of Lower Moss Wood – an educational nature reserve and wildlife hospital outside of Knutsford.

We wish the chick lots of luck and hope that it survives.  I have its patient number at the wildlife hospital so hope to call back in a couple of weeks and find out if it made it through. 

A big thanks to all the dedicated volunteers who run wildlife rescue centres.  I was lucky enough to work at the Wildlife Rescue Association of British Columbia whilst I was studying there for a year.  It was an inspirational place with incredible people.

Some pictures from my time at the rescue in Canada…

An evening of local food

Tuesday night was the event that I’ve been working towards for the past year.  The culmination of a year’s volunteering for my local branch of CPRE(Campaign to Protect Rural England), single-handedly running their local food work.  We have been running ‘Buy Local’ Food Awards to celebrate the fantastic work of businesses in Cheshire that grow/sell us great local food. 

The event was a combined effort from myself and Helen Meade, who is the Regional Co-ordinator for the CPRE ‘Mapping Local Food Webs’project which is being rolled out across England.  Helen has been running a pilot project in Knutsford, and with my local food awards coming to an end, it was a perfect opportunity to join forces and put on a lovely event. 

We have been busy advertising the event through our different networks, but we still didn’t know how many people would turn up – I think we were hopefully for 30 (my secret goal was 50 though).  We had a number of interested businesses who offered to bring along samples of their food, and all five of our award winners were able to come.

So Tuesday evening finally rolled around.  My car was filled with tablecloths, earthenware vases, chalkboards and hedgerow flowers (a mixture of elderflowers, daisies, grasses, and cow parsley).  We had about an hour and a half to set the room up, with the normal hiccups (no glasses or cutlery…aah!). 

Businesses started arriving and setting up their displays of food, leaflets and samples of food – yumm!  We had Riverford Organic:

One of our ‘Buy Local’ Food Award winners – Riverside Organic – brought some baskets of the seasonal produce grown on their farm.  We also had sausage rolls from another of our winners H Clewlow Butchers, homemade gooseberry fool (I really want this recipe!) from the Walton Lea Project also an award winner, homemade cakes from Abbey Leys Farm, and chutneys and jams from a lovely company that I don’t know the name of! 

Over 50 people turned out for the event, which is more than we ever imagined, so are so pleased and hope that people enjoyed the evening.  It was so lovely to see my local food awards come a glorious end with the winners accepting their awards.  I have really enjoyed running the awards but it has been exhausting at times, so I’m looking forward to a month off from volunteering before I start planning my next project.

There should be some professional photographs available soon as a journalist from the local paper came along to the event.  If and when they are available I will post them or a link to them.

Local Food Celebration Event!

I do quite a bit of volunteering in any free time that I have.  Most of it is to do with local food.  On Tuesday 16th June I am helping to run an event in Knutsford, Cheshire to celebrate the local food grown and produced in our county.  If anyone reading this happens to live near to Knutsford and is interested in local food, we would be delighted if you are able to join us.

There will be a project update on the Mapping Local Food Websproject that has been taking place in Knutsford, which is funded by Making Local Food Work and CPRE.  The ‘Buy Local’ food awards that I have run for CPRE Cheshire over the past year will see the presentation of the awards to the winners – I will add another post in the next day or so to let you know who are winners are.  There will also be local produce to try, and some delicious cakes, tea and coffee.

We’d love to see you there!  For more information contact Helen Meade on 07833 250 134 or leave me a comment.

Cheshire Farmer’s Markets

I thought it was about time I created a list of the farmer’s markets in Cheshire to share with everyone.  I have only been to a handful of these that are closest to me, but if anyone has any recommendations on others that are worth the drive I would love to know.  If I’ve missed any off, or the details need updating, please let me know.  For a printable version, click here.

~ ABBEY LEYS FARM ~
1st Sunday of the month
9am – 2pm
Abbey Leys Farm, High Legh

~ ALDERLEY EDGE ~
2nd Sunday of the month
10am – 2pm
The Festival Hall, Alderley Edge

~ ALTRINCHAM ~
1st Friday of the month
7am – 2pm
Covered Market, Market Street

~ CHESTER ~
1st Wednesday of the month
10am – 4.30pm
Chester Town Hall Square

~ CLOVER BANK FARM ~
3rd Saturday of the month
8.30am – 12.30pm
Shellow Lane, North Rode, Macclesfield

~ CONGLETON ~
1st & 3rd Tuesday of the month
9am – 2pm
The Bridestones Centre, Congleton

~ CREWE ~
3rd Saturday of the month
9am – 3pm
Municipal Square, Crewe

~ CRONTON ~
2nd Saturday of the month
10am – 1.30pm
Cronton Nursery, Cronton

~ ELLESMERE PORT ~
4th Saturday of the month
9am – 4pm
adjoining Market Hall, Ellesmere Port

~ GOOSTREY ~
3rd Saturday of the month
10am – 1.30pm
Methodist Church Hall, Main Road, Goostrey

~ GROSVENOR GARDEN CENTRE ~
2nd Friday of the month
10am – 3pm
Pulford

~ HALE ~
3rd Sunday of the month
10am – 1.30pm
St Peter’s Assembly Rooms, Cecil Road, Hale

~ KINGSMEAD ~
4th Saturday of the month
10am – 1.30pm
Kingsmead Primary School, Northwich

 ~ KNUTSFORD ~
1st Saturday of the month
9am – 2pm
Silk Mill Street, Knutsford

~ MIDDLEWICH ~
1st Saturday of the month
10am – 2pm
Boosey’s Garden Centre

~ MOBBERLEY ~
4th Sunday of the month
10am – 2pm
Mobberley Victory Hall

~ MOLD ~
1st Saturday of the month
9am – 3pm
St Mary’s Church Hall, Mold

~ NANTWICH ~
Last Saturday of the month
9am – 2pm
The Square, Nantwich

~ NESTON ~
3rd Saturday of the month
9am – 2pm
Neston Town Hall

~ NORTHWICH ~
2nd Saturday of the month
9am – 3pm
Market Way, next to Northwich Market

~ POYNTON ~
1st Sunday of the month
9am – 1pm
Poynton Civic Hall, Park Lane

~ RODE HALL ~
1st Saturday of the month
9am – 2pm
Scholar Green, Allsager

~ VALE ROYAL ~
3rd Saturday of the month
10am – 2pm
Eddisbury Fruit Farm, Yeld Lane, Kelsall

~ WARRINGTON ~
2nd Sunday of the month
10.30am – 4.30pm
Walton Lea Project, Walton Gardens Heritage Yard

~ WIRRAL ~
2nd Saturday of the month
9am – 2pm
New Ferry Village Hall, Grove Street, New Ferry

~ WOODFORD ~
3rd Sunday of the month
9am – 1pm
Woodford Community Centre, Chester Road

Mapping Local Food Webs

Abbey Leys Farmers Market :: Cheshire ::

I am still defrosting after spending the morning in a draughty barn at the local farmers market.  I am a volunteer with the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and am the sole volunteer responsible for their local food work.  I had a stall at a number of farmers markets in Cheshire over the summer, handing out leaflets and gathering nominations for a ‘Buy Local’ food awards we have been running. 

This time I was helping with a project that is being piloted round the country called Mapping Local Food Webs.  It sounds confusing and it is quite – but in brief it’s researching and documenting the relationships between farmer/producer, retailer and customer, and if there are any challenges.  If you’re interested more information can be found at http://www.makinglocalfoodwork.co.uk/.

The pilot project in the North West is being centred around Knutsford (if you’re reading this and from Knutsford (!) and are interested in getting involved please leave me a comment).  We had a great map of Knutsford and the surrounding area of about a 15 miles radius.  We asked people to put a coloured sticky dot on the map to show us where they had come from.  It was really interesting to see where people had travelled from – from the really local who had walked down the road, to those who had travelled over 15 miles and had to stick their coloured dot on the edge of the map. 

For me, I consider ‘local food’ to be food that is grown/produced within about 10 miles of where I live.  Nationally I believe it is defined as food that is produced within 30 miles of you, which is actually quite a distance if you look at it on a map.  It was a pretty quiet market today, the first of the year, but we are aiming to go back in a month when it should be back to its busy self, and hopefully the map will come with us and we should start to build up a really interesting picture of where people travel from to visit the market.