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