The first meeting of the Farm crowd took place last night, with more than twenty people showing up for a pint and a chat about what we might do. While lots of things are still up in the air, one thing was decided very quickly; the social aspect of the project will be crucial, and absolutely central to its success.

With that firmly in mind, we're going to have a picnic event on Sunday 15th August, from 12.30 to 3pm at the site - there'll be some publicity between now and then, but put it in your diary and bring along anyone you can think of who would be interested!

We formed ad hoc groups to think about plans for

• growing areas including raised beds, fruit cage etc
• a wildlife pond
• livestock (chickens, bees, pigs etc)
• structures such as polytunnel, straw bale building
  
• social areas, such as picnic/BBQ zone, kids garden
• drawing up a first draft of the site's PLAN
  

And we identified the need for

• A 'steering group' (small number of people who keep tabs on the project as a whole)
• An official scrounger (one or maybe two people to badger local businesses and organisations for donations, materials, organic waste etc
• A funding finder, who can identify and apply for grants etc as the project develops
• A liason person, who can forge links with other local projects and organisations and act as a point of contact for them (may be part of scrounger job!)

The Next Step

Nobody likes waiting, so we need to get an outline plan done as soon as possible so that we can get the spades out. Next Tuesday (20th) we'll be meeting at the Dorset County Museum at 7pm sharp. The first hour is for the interest groups (the top list) to get together again and come up with a wish list of what they'd like to do, with some idea of the space needed. At the end of that hour a representative* from each group will talk to the planning group, and by 9pm we should have a first list of the elements that the Farm will include.

After the meeting the planning group will spend a couple of weeks (probably) putting a draft plan together - then we'll all get together and argue about it for a bit. Once that's out of the way we can agree a timeline for turning our scrubby field into somthing we can all be proud of!


*Everyone's welcome to stay, of course - the reps thing is just to keep things as short as possible!

7pm Tues 13th July, the Skittle Alley, Borough Arms (Goldies)

It's official! Transition Town Dorchester has secured a first plot of land for the Community Farm project, and the Farm & Garden is ready to move from paper to plot. There was a lot of interest on site at the Open Day, and 13th July will be the event where it all kicks off.

Lots of people will have something to say, and by the end of it there'll be a knot of folk ready to nurse the Farm into being: twelve months from now they'll all be old friends, and the Farm will be in the papers as the summer harvest comes in. There'll be quite a buzz. Why not be part of it?

The land, a two-acre plot at Parkway Farm (to the South of Weymouth College Construction Centre at Poundbury) will be used to establish a community garden and farm for Dorchester residents. The Duchy of Cornwall has been most helpful in making all this possible in a comparatively short time, and has given us some tremendously flexible and sensible guidelines for developing the plans. Making this happen is going to be great fun!

From this...

For more details, mail the project leader Ian at farm@transitiontowndorchester.org.

Nearly a year ago, I wrote a post about how Pat at the wonderful Ourganics in Litton Cheney was having to tackle the Council's Planning Department to get consent to keep doing what she was doing. Well not only was she successful, but now she has permission to change her shed into a multi-purpose barn - which will allow her to plan properly for future years. Pat has a really vital role in opening people's eyes to the possibilities of sustainable living in Dorset - you can read the original post here.