Sims Hill Shared Harvest

To be held at 7.30pm at Horfield Meeting House, 300 Gloucester Road, BS7 8PD

This is an open members’ meeting, so please bring along any of your friends and neighbours who might be interested in learning more about Sims Hill, and especially in how we plan to move the project forward!

1. Update on growing, membership and finance
The vegetables in the glasshouse continue to flourish and yield in abundance, and we are in the process of agreeing another year of use with Feed Bristol, so that is great. The leeks, cabbages, kale, cauliflowers, and broccoli have survived that vulnerable time of being transplanted to the field, so that is a relief. On the downside, there are very few carrots and potatoes and no onions to harvest, which is serious.

It has been extremely difficult to get anything done in the field this year, which also explains why there have been no community work days – the field has been that wet.

Community celebrations have been quiet this year (our next Community Celebration is on Saturday October 13th!). We have held steady around the 40 shares (60 households) mark now for quite some time. We had planned to grow to 60 shares by July, so our income now is down against the budget. We have managed to keep our expenditure lower than budgeted so far but we have little reserves to draw on, so this is also concerning.

Last year we had an exceptionally dry spring; there was no water supply at Sims Hill. We were amazed at the soils’ capacity to hold moisture.

Over the winter, Jay and Kenton dug a pond at the top of the field and laid 600m of mains pipe.

Photo: The 60,000+/- litre pond full to the brim!

This year we had a damp winter (in Bristol) and an exceptionally wet spring (growers everywhere are struggling); there has been too much water at Sims Hill!

To have one a dry spring and then such a wet one in our first two years presents two challenges:

There is the immediate challenge of growing crops this year and next. The wettest April-June on history has made life very difficult and leaves us vulnerable.

A small band made it to Sims Hill on June the 9th to play their part in the city wide, get growing trail. The weather was surprisingly warm and the cake predictably tasty! A couple of new members signed up with a couple more expressing interest.

Since then we’ve tango’d with a succession of cold fronts and somehow managed to get more carrots sown into a soggy sims hill soil. The winter squash are still sat in their trays glad to be out of the incessant wind but longing to have their roots in warm soil. Hopefully the start of this week will be as sunny as the forecasters promise and give us a planting window before the next low tracks in.

The few days since we were last at Sims Hill can be a long time horticulturally. It can represent an age in a wind swept field but can be surprisingly helpful when under glass. Our 6000 leeks (yes we will be planting them by hand) are fattening up by the day and our monster brocolli plants are just begining to develop buds. If we keep the irrigation constant the next few days of fine weather will be much appreciated, especially by the tomatoes and cucumbers who have not enjoyed this years weather so far.