Canalside events | Canalside Community Food

Come and visit our farm for a fun autumn day out!

10am-12noon: Join in with a volunteer morning in the orchard
From 11am: Apple pressing – suitable for all ages. Bring your own apples if you have spare from a tree in the garden and/or bottles to take juice home in.
Bring a picnic lunch to enjoy in the social area/pole barn.
Time TBC: Take a farm tour to find out what we grow.

Event details on Canalside’s Facebook group

Buy your summer party tickets now! Click here to go straight through to online ticket sales.

Full details about the event here and on the poster below.

On Sunday 9th June, we will hold our open day as part of the national event ‘Open Farm Sunday’, when the farm will be open from 9.45am until 3pm. It’s an ideal opportunity to be taken round our fields and find out what’s growing on the farm at the moment. It’s also a great opportunity for a rare volunteering session open to the public, led by the growers.

Sunday 9th June, 9.45am – 3pm
Volunteer morning, bring-a-picnic, children’s activities, tour
In the morning, join in with the volunteer morning to help the growers progress a seasonal task at this busy time of year when all the crops for the coming year need to be planted out.

Come and have a tour round the fields, polytunnels and orchard and bring a picnic to enjoy in the social area.

There will be hot and cold drinks available and children’s activities to enable their discovery of the farm. The Willows Project will also have a cash stall selling herbs their participants have potted and grown and skin products they have made. They are also going to be firing up their pizza oven (pizzas available while ingredients last and cash donations appreciated).

What the day will look like:
9.45am – open day starts
10am-1pm – volunteer morning led by the growers, with tea break around 11.15
1pm onwards – bring your own picnic lunch, time to socialise
1.30pm – farm tour for about an hour, starting at the pole barn/social area

We hope to see you there.
With bright summer wishes, Ali

It’s been a busy January on the farm as we work to get the new season underway – our tunnel potatoes are now planted in tunnel 1 into the remnants of last year’s hotbeds spread over the bed thanks to a great couple of volunteer mornings.

At the same time a new load of muck has arrived from a local farm plus we’ve supplemented it with a load of chicken muck from Skye Orchard Eggs (the egg scheme for anyone who gets eggs from the egg shed)  to make our new hotbeds this season so we can generate some heat and sow our first seeds next week.

Despite the challenges we’ve harvested lots of lovely veg from the fields – our carrots have been great this year and we’re still trying to add as much diversity as possible to your share with things like black Spanish radish, cabbages and Jerusalem artichokes. It was great to get a share of fresh claytonia (winter salad) thanks to some serious weeding that we did on the last day before we closed for Christmas.

Meanwhile, rest assured the orchard is thoroughly wassailed (!) as we had a great turn out for our social and orchard work morning, pruning lots of the soft fruits ready for re-growth and abundance later in the year. Many thanks to everyone who came along.

Eleanor, grower

(All photos Eleanor Brown unless credited otherwise)

Come and visit our farm for a fun autumn day out!

From 10am: Join in with a seasonal work morning in the fields/polytunnels.
From 11am: Apple pressing – suitable for all ages. Bring your own apples if you have spare from a tree in the garden and/or bottles to take juice home in.
Bring a picnic lunch to enjoy in the social area/pole barn.
1.30pm: Take a farm tour to find out what we grow.

Event details on Canalside’s Facebook group

We’re opening our gates again for our annual summer open day with Open Farm Sunday.

Come and join us at Canalside Community Food, Southam Road, CV31 1TY

Sunday 11^th June 2023, 11.30am to 3pm

• Tours start at 12 and 2pm – look round the fields and polytunnels
• Find out how our community supported agriculture scheme works and what vegetables and fruits we grow
• Bring a picnic to enjoy in our social area
• Children’s activities and play area

Buy your summer party tickets now! Click here to go straight through to online ticket sales.

Full details about the event here and on the poster below.

Please donate to Canalside Community Food

Canalside Community Food has always relied on the rent of neighbouring Leasowe Farm’s land for our fruit.

Canalside now has the opportunity to purchase an adjacent field of 2.25 acres (see map below) so that we can plant an orchard on land that we own, and safeguard the availability of our own fresh fruit for the future.

At our most recent AGM, we agreed to put £10,000 of our reserve funds towards this purchase. That still leaves us short by between £15,000-£20,000, so we agreed to appeal for donations from the wonderful community that we serve.

We would therefore appeal to anyone who shares our vision and passion for Canalside Community Food to donate what they can for this investment in the future of Canalside and the diversity we can offer.

Not only will this purchase enable us to plant and maintain an orchard on our own land in perpetuity, but it will also increase the value of the current land, and provide a wonderful new area for the entire community to enjoy.

We need to finalise this wonderful opportunity by Spring 2021, and would be extremely grateful for any donation you can make before then.

For further information, please contact Gareth Davies.

To donate, please complete the donation form and we will be in touch with you about making your payment. And as a thank you for donating, you will get a beautiful poster of images from Canalside.

This year’s onion planting will happen in a slightly different way to usual, to make sure this big annual task can be completed whilst at the same time enabling members to get out in the fresh air and still maintain the recommended social distancing measures.

Come and help plant the main onion crop – a task suitable for all ages! The work will continue for as many days as needed (Tuesday-Saturday) and any member who is well and symptom free, and has not been advised to self-isolate, is welcome to come and join in – the work will be arranged so that social distancing measures can be maintained.

Due to COVID-19 we will not be providing any refreshments or arranging shared food during onion planting work sessions. You are encouraged to bring a flask with your own hot drinks, and are welcome to bring a packed lunch if you want to work both sides of lunchtime.

We will be contacting members to let them know when the work can start (dependent on the ground being dry enough for the land to be prepared). Saturday 4th April or 11th April onwards – to be advised