Food4Macc mentioned in the autumn edition of the Belong Care Homes in-house magazine.

"Belong Maccesfield opened its gardens to members of the local community as part of National Allotments Week. The Belong kitchen gardens are tended to by people living in the village, visiting Experience Day customers and Belong staff. 

Fruit and vegetables cultivated in Belong Macclesfield and harvested during allotments week were then served in themed special dishes in the village Bistro throughout August. Gardening not only serves to provide homegrown food for people living within the village, it also provides a focus for social interactions and an opportunity to engage in gentle exercise. 

A Gardening Club for residents meets at Belong Macclesfield every Friday afternoon, from 2:45pm until 3:15pm. The club has been running for over two years, under the supervision of Philip Shaw, founder of Fork-2-Plate, a local business aimed at helping people to grow and cook their own food in Cheshire, and a member of the community group, Food4Macc, which aims to have more food produced locally in Macclesfield. 

Caroline Ray, General Manager for Belong Macclesfield, said: "There has been great interest in our 'home grown' project, both from those who have had a lifelong interest in gardening to residents just looking to get involved in a new hobby or spend more time outdoors,
"I've seen so many wonderful foods coming into our kitchens, from lettuces and beans to fresh strawberries and raspberries. It gives us great satisfaction to eat fruit and vegetables that we've grown ourselves,"

Rowans Care Home Community Garden

After a very productive season, it was an autumn tidy up day at the Rowans Care Home on Westminster Road last week.

Apple Pressing

We are please to welcome a new Apple Juicing organisation to Macclesfield:-

We hate to see home grown fruit go to waste, so we decided to do something about it. Based at our HQ in Macclesfield, we started turning them in to a delicious healthy blend with a taste that can vary from bottle to bottle. I guess that makes us unique!
We want your apples & pears. If you bring them along to our juicing days, we'll give you half back, either fresh, or if you want pasteurised.
We then create a mixed blend from all the fruit that comes through the door, which we will bottle and make available to buy. That way everyone can enjoy locally grown fruit.

Read More on their Facebook page

Food4Macc Videos

First year Creative Media Production students from Macclesfield College have released promotional videos for both Garden Sharing and Food4MaccDirect. 
The work was undertaken as a coursework project, and involved students in meetings with us as 'clients' to hear what we wanted to acheive, with follow meetings where several possible storylines were offered.
Teams worked independently on the two projects, and filming was done at the Gilchrist Avenue Hub, Newton's dairy farm at Gawsworth, and at Garden Share sites in Poynton, Bollington and Macclesfield.

Click on the pictures below to watch the 3 minute videos:-
(you can make the bigger by clicking bottom right of the video)

Garden Sharing more info

Food4MaccDirect more info

Please help us publicise these videos by sharing with your friends.

Our First Potato Day

Despite high winds and heavy rainfall on Sunday, over 350 local fruit and vegetable gardeners attended the first Potato Day and Seed Sales hosted by Food4Macc in the town hall during Sunday’s Treacle Market. Gardeners from as far as Heald Green came in to Macclesfield to stock up with seeds and plants for the coming season.

 

Organiser Stuart Potter, 42, said “We were quite apprehensive about making the investment of volunteers’ time and money in sponsoring this sale. But we went ahead believing that it would be a valuable service to the local gardening community.

The dire weather forecast for the day was not encouraging, but in the event 350 gardeners turned out, and spent enough to cover our costs.”

“The town hall staff couldn’t have been more helpful.  I think they were pleased to see the community making good use of the facility.”

 

 

New Frontage at our Gilchrist Avenue Food Hub

Peaks and Plains Housing Trust recently completed renovation of the frontage of our premises on Gilchrist Avenue, Macclesfield. The new look has now been completed by new signage over the roller shutter..

 

Of course your food can now be collected from any of four pickup points:-

• Here, near Broken Cross
• Amuse Cafe, Chestergate.
• Adelphi Mill, Bollington
• Or St Dunstans Inn, Langley

Produce Show 2013

Ian Hampton, a regular volunteer at our community garden working parties, won Best Fruit, and the coveted Finest categories at our 2013 Summer produce show.

 

 Jess Berry won the Best Root Vegetable prize:

Yvonne Phillips "C" shaped courgette won the prize for the Funniest shaped vegetable

And Jane Lee, Fiona Taylor and Sara Wreford won the prizes for the Best Cake (but Sara was too fast for the photographer!)

 

Phil Poyser became the first British entrant this century to win all three prizes in our Jam category.

This year we were invited to move from All Hallows to be a part of the the August bank holiday Treacle Market, and set up several gazebos on the lawn of St Michael's Church.

 

The proceedings were concluded with an auction of produce conducted in Bill Pettipiece's inimitable style.

 

Full Results Table

We would like to extend our thanks to St Michael's for hosting, The Treacle Market for their gazebos, and the judges for their expertise.

Visit to Newton's Dairy Farm at Gawsworth

Food4Macc Direct's milk supplier Dennis Newton invited members to visit his farm on Sunday afternoon.
First we were introduced to the next generation heifer calves which in a couple of months will be big enough for their first pregnancy.

 

Then we returned to the yard where at this time of year the 40 or so milking cows spend most of their day, now that the ground has become soft with the rain, and grass is no longer so nutritious.  Instead they are fed on silage, and Dennis pointed out the light coloured strata of wheat that could be seen in the cut edge of the silage heap. The wheat is added to improve the nutritional value of the silage.

 

The visitors also heard about the difficult economics of milk production today, and how Dennis was only able to make it viable by selling directly to the public, rather than to the big dairies and supermarkets.

The bull kept a close eye the visitors, appearing wherever we went.

 

After a visit to some of the other pastures and an explanation of the grazing regime, we returned to see the milking parlour, where Dennis demonstrated how the cups are attached to the cows udder, and the safety precautions in place to ensure the milk was clean and the cows udders kept healthy.  The cows are milked twice a day, seven days a week.

 

We also saw several calves.  The females are kept for future milking, and the males are sold on.

 

Most dairy farms sell their milk to big dairies or supermarkets, so Newton's farm is unusual in having its own pasteurising and bottling plant.  Pasteurisation involves flash heating the milk to 72 deg C for just over 20 seconds - enough time to kill any bacteria without altering the flavour.

If you would like to try Local Milk from Newtons, you can buy it from Food4Macc Direct in pint bottles or 2 litre plastic containers.

Alternatively, give Newtons a call on 01625 423987. You may be on one of their doorstep delivery rounds.

Treacle Market: Apple Juice and Curry

The Treacle market organisers once again invited us to attend the Sunday market at the end of October to demonstrate how surplus apples and windfalls can be converted into excellent apple juice.

We had a great site just in front of the church, and despite the continuous rain, it was a really good day with lots of visitors and lots of interest in Food4Macc and Food4MaccDirect. Huge thanks to all the volunteers who braved the weather and made it a great success. 

Yvonne had made a fantastic vegetable curry which was was consumed with Ruth’s excellent Naan bread.
With the aid of a large mincer to chop the apples and a hand-operated press, we converted more than 120lb of apples into fresh apple juice. and had about 350 people tasting it - and everyone who tried it thought it was excellent!

Visit to Walk Mill

On Saturday 13 Food4MaccDirect members went on a Tour of the Walk Mill Flour Mill.  

 Their own grown wheat variety 'Solstace' is harvested, dried, cleaned, sieved and stored in large sealed containers. The grain is brought to the mill and lifted into a 1 metre cube holding box on the first floor, from where it is distributed to the grinding mill.

Outside the miller closed the sluice gate, preventing the millstream from bypassing the water wheel.

Once the level had risen by about 30cm, water was released onto the under-shot wheel and the mechanism began to turn the 2 large french granite grind stones and grain was fed between them with an intriguing shaker mechanism

 

The resulting wholegrain flour passes back downstairs where it is bagged or seived to remove the husks or "bran"  and produce "strong white" flour.  We were surprised to see that about 40% of the wholemeal flour is removed as bran - for which there is little use.
Alternatively flakes of malted wheat grain (grains that are wetted, germinated, converting some starches to sugars, and then dried) are added to convert white flour into 'Malted Flour' or baking powder is added to make 'Self Raising'.
The Mill can be working up to 12 hours a day, seven days a week and a half hour grind produces a 25kg bag of flour.

You can see more about the mill including a video clip of the process in action here

You can buy Walk Mill flour through Food4Macc Direct here
or try baking your own bread with our Baking Club

Food4Macc 2nd Show of Produce

There were over a hundred entries to judge at this year's produce show

Giving the judges quite a challenge to reach decsions in just one hour.

 

So contestants were given a tour of the farm animals that are cared for by the students at All Hallows.

Food4Macc Direct Bread Club in the News

 

Click on the image to read how Macc Express reporter Chris Slater fared at the Bread Club.

For more details see the Bread Club Flyer

Bourne's Cheese Visit

In 1931 Bourne's were one of 153 cheese makers in Cheshire.

Today they are the only one left. So we were very privileged to see the cheese making process here and have John Bourne himself explain it to us.

 Above, you can see the curd being passed through a mincing machine prior to being poured into the cloth lined moulds, before being taken for pressing.

After the tour we were treated to a cheese tasting, which included their soft "Camembourne", Cheshire Blue, and a ginger cheese designed to complement Christmas cake.
You can learn more about Bourne's and cheese making in general at their website, but note that it has not been updated for some time.

Visit to L'Endroit Honey, Congleton.

Today (Sunday 5th Aug) as one of the F4MD member events we were able to visit Eli from L'Endroit Restaurant in Congleton and his bees who make the L'Endroit honey on our produce list.
He has 65 hives, 6 of which are in Congleton and the others spread over 19 locations. 

We donned our protective clothing and started off near the restaurant where he has his young 'Nursery Bees' then walked just 5 mins away to see the other group of mature hives. As you got nearer you could hear the hum of thousands of busy bees.

The pics show the filled honeycomb which is very heavy and the queen bee with a blue marker on it. The queen can live for up to 5 years but during the summer the worker bees only live for 6 weeks and in winter, 6 months. The queens are pedigree and often sent through the post if purchased.
Last year Eli was able to produce approx. 2.3 tonnes of honey which is about 6000 jars! When the honey is harvested there is always plenty left behind for the bees to have, approx 25kg over winter. We all really enjoyed the visit and none of us were stung!

Teggs Nose Bilberry Pick

F4M were invited to join Ranger Martin James who took a group of nearly 40 people around Teggs Nose pointing out the Bilberry berries and the best sites where the berries can be found. It was easy to spot them once you knew what you were looking for. The black bilberries are quite small (a bit smaller than a blackcurrant) and taste a bit like blackberries. 

It takes a while to pick them, I picked 450g in about 1 hour and a half! See picture. They can be used in pies or for making jam. We met other pickers and one man who had made his own Bilberry 'comb' for faster picking. There are more pictures and events listed on the ranger blog via www.cheshireeast.gov.uk/rangers . We hope to join up with them again next year.

Official Opening at Gilchrist Avenue

Volunteers have been working with Cheshire Peaks and Plains Housing Association to convert the former café into a venue suitable for food distribution and also for a community bread club and cookery workshops to give people the opportunity to learn how to make tasty meals with local ingredients.
After refurbishment the hub was stocked with local produce and members of the community were invited to celebrate and sample the local delights.
The Mayor George Walton and Mayoress Veronica Walton of Cheshire East and the Mayor of Macclesfield Alift Harewood cut the ribbon and declared the hub officially open on 6th July 2012. David Rutley MP also commended the initiative and spoke of the benefits of supporting local farmers and suppliers, providing benefits to the local economy. David Gooda, Chairman of Peaks and Plains Housing Association, said that they were delighted to be able to support this social enterprise which combines community engagement with sourcing of local food, a cause he is clearly passionate about. Local residents attended the event and were interested to learn more about Food4MaccDirect.

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