Allotments: now George Monbiot weighs in with a class analysis.

For god’s sake. I like George Monbiot’s writings, he sticks it to most of the right people in most of the right areas, but this is just twaddle: Why you’ll never find execution or eviction on a National Trust tea towel. In few: the National Trust is to be congratulated on carving out some of [...]

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Why allotments are a good thing.

Because global food production is falling. Read it, weep and be thankful if you live in a temperate country with decent soil and rainfall.

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Carole Cadwalladr writes about allotments in The Observer

and she rocks.  She gets it, unlike the recent sneering bilgefest in the Observer’s daily sister paper The Guardian.  Carole is on the local council’s allotment waiting list.  In her own words… I’m delighted to report that I’m 871 on my council’s allotment list. In 2008, 18 plots came up, so it’s just a matter [...]

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Bobbins.

Shambled to allotment, opened shed to get tools, a gust of Yorkshire’s finest wind whisted in and blew out the far wall. Now go an admire the folks at Grow Our Own and be envious of the fruit arch.  Their allotment is so neat and organized.  Frames, raised beds.  I feel pure ashamed of my [...]

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Today.

A good sesh tomorrow and we’ll be done, all the ground broken we need for this year.

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Zoe Williams writes about allotments in the Guardian.

There is less shit in this pile than her article.

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Excellent post about a farm in the US

where people are doing it right.  It’s a crie de cuisine called Respecting food, respecting ourselves, or put down that hot pocket before you regret it, about a place called the Polyface Farm. A thoroughly good and uplifting read.  (Ta Karen, who is sound on food, and Malbec.)

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Allotments are ‘not a passing fad’

and (I paraphrase) they contribute to the welfare of an increasingly inactive sedentary population.  A comment yesterday following the National Trust news?  No, a piece in The Times in 1919.  There had been 500,000 allotments in the UK before the first world war, a number that rose to 2 million during the war. The article [...]

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Food is political.

So, just as the Corn Exchange has lost its function, so this urban Government seems to have helped the countryside to lose its function. It has lost sight of where food comes from. It sees the countryside as a place for leisure, recreation, three million new houses and little wildlife. It fails to understand that [...]

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Congratulations to the National Trust

for releasing land to allow 1000 more people to have allotments. It’ll take until 2012 (for some reason) to release all the land, which will be available through the Landshare scheme.

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