Transition Bedford

What are you doing on Saturday May 15 2010? Nothing much?

Think again – you could be helping to reshape the future of your town.

Transition Bedford is hosting an event that will bring together different groups of people to create a vision for a sustainable Bedford in 2020.

If you belong to a group that’s interested in what our town looks like in a decade’s time, you need to be at this event – I’m not just talking about environmental groups, but also everyone from allotment societies to local history groups to walking groups and all points in between! We’re looking for as many interested groups as possible to get involved, both before the event, on the day itself and on into the future (and the year 2020!) and we’d love to know who is interested in participating.

So far we’ve created a list of topics that we’d like to explore at the meeting. If you – either a group or an individual – are willing to participate in some way in one or more of these topics, please add a comment below, saying who you are and which topic(s) you’re fired up about. “Participation” could mean helping with a demonstration, giving a talk, or simply sharing your ideas with others.

The topics are, in no particular order:

• Food
• Transport
• Energy
• Education
• Building and housing
• Local government
• Heart and soul
• Health and wellbeing
• Waste and recycling
• Community and culture
• Economy and business
• Media and communications

Once we’ve compiled a list of the people who want to take part in this inspiring event, we’ll post that onto this blog so that you can tell us if we’re missing out anyone crucial.

Still confused? If you’re wondering what on earth this whole “transition” thing is about, check out Transitiontowns.org

To learn more about what we’re doing to make Bedford a transition town, and watch a video about the transition movement, click here.

Green alkanet grows everywhere and its flowers are edible

In the last few years I’ve become rather attracted to the idea of foraging for food. Having had an allotment in the past, and knowing the time and work that goes into growing veg, the idea of going out into the wider environment to find sources of food which have cost me nothing in monetary and effort terms is very, very attractive.

On a recent trip to Conwy in Wales, the bushes alongside farm lanes were dripping with sloes, rosehips and blackberries. But what about here in (sub)urban Bedford, what’s to be found for foraging?

I’ve lived in the town for a year now and found a few places to find wild food: sea buckthorn, damsons, blackberries and rosehips at Priory Marina; crab apples in the streets around Castle Road, elderberries on the footpath off Caves Lane and green alkanet (pictured above – you can eat the lovely blue flowers) and hairy bittercress all over the place. if you’re a forager, please share your haunts below in the comments…

So, let’s say everyone gets into the idea of foraging – what then? Will there be enough to go around or will we be fighting over those damsons, rowans and bittercress? I suspect we’ve got a while before this is a problem, but it’s worth thinking about.

Right now, though, the difficulty is getting people to pick even the obvious fruit outside their front doors. There’s a street off Castle Road (I can’t remember which one: maybe Pembroke?) with a apple tree that was full of little red-skinned, red-fleshed apples in late summer: I think I’ve identified them as a variety called Red Devil: great to eat and produces beautiful pink juice.

I nearly cried when nobody touched them: the sweet little red apples dropped and were mashed under feet and car tyres, probably driven by people driving to a shop to buy – you guessed it – apples grown half way across the world (and not half as tasty). I’d have brought a ladder and picked them all, but I was a bit worried about how people in the street would react: maybe next year.

If you want to read more of my stuff on organic gardening and ethical consumerism, visit my personal blog, Horticultural, and follow me on Twitter.