Eating Purple Tomatoes & Digging up Trees : Part 1

Students from Newcastle University have been growing vegetables and eating flowers at the Student Eats Allotment since October 2012. (Yes, edible flowers). And they have encountered many other new and unexpected things along the way. 500 students in total have been involved.

I interviewed the current crop of volunteers on Saturday 31st January 2015, at a time when most of the hard work involved demolishing, retrieving salvagable things, and moving them to new sites. Snow was on the ground and one student talked wistfully about "Spring, when plants will grow again..."

Background:
The Freemen of Newcastle have decided to level the entire site, mix in the good with the bad soil, the toxins with the glass, and while there are hopes that they may then allow the allotment site to reopen in future, for now the volunteers are having to evacuate all they can. It's not the best recipe for happy thoughts but I discovered the volunteers in very good spirits, huddled in the last remaining shed where they were warming up by the stove.

A video recording their voices can be listened to here. This blog records their experiences in writing.

Reasons for first getting involved :


“A way to relax and get away from exams.”

“My major in University is agriculture so I’m interested in plants and vegetables, fruits.”

“I thought it would be nice to get involved with some organic food and get a change of scenery from exams and lectures, get out on a weekend - it was just a nice break from everything else.”

Two students were first told about SCAN by their tutor in the INTO department. One was told by her friends, one found it via the website and three first heard about the allotment after visiting the SCAN office. Stalls at freshers fair and refreshers fair sent three students our way.

Stuart said : “I knew that I wanted to volunteer in some capacity while in Newcastle so I went to the SCAN office and looked through the humungous file of potential options. It was difficult to choose but Student Eats immediately stood out as something that combined my interests and, on the plus side, it was an internal Newcastle Uni project."

Reasons for coming back :


“I guess I’d been looking to volunteer at the university for a while but I’m only really free at the weekends and I found about the Saturday sessions down here and thought I’d try it out and really enjoyed it so I kept coming.” (Jack)

The overwhelming reason identified was the fun and friendliness of the other volunteers at the allotment.

"I have been having fun here and I really like the environment and also people … peaceful and sociable."

"The place, the people are really nice. People come from different sectors so I can expand my social network."

"I found that everyone was really friendly and it was really fun and I just kept coming back."

"Everyone here is very friendly so I like to go here every week."

"And I found everyone really friendly and really nice"

Two also highlighted the novelty of the things they were up to : "I never did this kind of work in my country so I think I am still learning lots of things. And I like this because I never have this kind of experience – it’s interesting."

Examples of the tasks being worked on in cold January


"Helping to take apart the greenhouses, taking the doors off its hinges and taking the framework apart - really good fun I really enjoy DIY - so that was great. Using spanners and the odd hammer."

"Last week we moved a lot of pots to near the gate and we started to tidy some things: we threw lots of glass and we tidied some things in the small shed so it looked tidier when we left last week."

"I have been helping move stuff up there [to the entrance] – like the whiteboard that was in the greenhouse last time and the frames we had to carry out - they are so heavy though."

"Last week me and Folla dug out some trees and that’s quite physically demanding but so much fun as well. Coz we’re moving away so basically we’re just taking things down and moving stuff. Sometimes we pot plants so they will be ready to move with us. Apple trees, and some herbs and some other things – all those we value we move with us. And there are lots of those stuff so we have to move a lot of things!"

"Luckily the apple tree, I got told, flowered really well last summer and there were loads of apples so hopefully we’ll get that again this year."

Several comments recognised the value of group effort, and the efforts made to avoid waste:

“A good thing is that we have many people to help. At the beginning there were just two of us and then there were more and more people coming so we could take turns and it’s not that demanding." 

“The wood will be used again – recycled.”

“Because in our daily life we produce a lot of leftovers, including those vegetable parts that you don’t eat - or sometimes you’ve got spoiled fruits or something. So I can collect them at home and then bring them to the allotment to the compost so I feel better about it. Instead of just throwing them away I produce less rubbish.”

Finally, remembering back to the growing season, I asked what foods were planted, harvested and eaten before winter came?

"When I first came here there were so many different kinds of vegetables and fruits - I could get apples and I could get leeks and - what’s that - kales. So any kind of popular vegetables you can get it here from the allotment and they are all really nice and fresh and tasty!"

"The fresh produce was just fantastic –the tomatoes we had in autumn were some of the nicest things I’ve ever eaten they were absolutely incredible!"

“Sometimes we sell things from the allotment. In summer there were things on sale at the Students’ Union.”

"Sometimes people from other allotments also offer us vegetables. I remember last time [an allotment holder] got flowers and he just gave me some and that’s really nice. It’s really nice to get that fresh vegetables and you know where they come from and there’s no pesticides and that’s very important as well. Because if you have any artificial stuff on your vegetables I don’t think it’s very healthy for our body. So I’m really glad that I can work at the allotment and benefit from it both materially and in terms of experience, and also psychological health [laughs] so that’s very good!"

"Coming into the Autumn I discovered kale for the first time - I don’t think I’d ever tried kale before I came here - but I absolutely loved it and was having some every week and cooking some lovely dishes with it. It’s really satisfying to grow something yourself and see it bear fruit and eat it, it’s brilliant."

"I think one of the best things about it is eating seasonally as well. I think people really don’t have much of an idea of seasonality in their food because they can get everything from abroad in supermarkets and being forced to eat stuff that’s actually growing at the time and fresh is a really great thing. And it’s probably better for the environment and it forces you to cook with some foods that I think you might not buy necessarily. I’ve cooked with a lot of cabbages and things like that which I might not buy myself from the supermarket  but when it’s here and it’s seasonal - it makes you a better cook!"

A second blog post will review the top 3 things that these students have got out of their experience volunteering at the allotment.