It’s lovely to see the leaves just starting to pop out on the trees once again, giving a hint of green to cheer up the winter grey. I was in Haggerston Park last weekend where the white blossom of the wild plum trees near Hackney City Farm was coming out beautifully.
After a very busy summer of mapping and autumn of harvesting around the Stoke Newington area, culminating with the Growing Communities Apple Day at Stokey Farmers Market, things have been fairly quiet at Hackney Harvest over the winter but that’s going to change.
We haven’t been entirely dormant this winter though as we’ve been helping our friends at the London Orchard Project. They’ve been busy planting community orchards all over London, including one in Haggerston Park, and have big and exciting plans coming up (all of which will be explained in a post from Carina very soon).
Now that the blossom is coming out, we can start up some gentle mapping. If you spot any trees with blossom anywhere in Hackney, please let us know – it might be difficult to know what kind of fruit tree it is, but we can make a note of it and come back later in the year to check it out when it’s fruiting. In the summer we’ll get properly stuck in to the mapping and then before we know it we’ll be back into the harvesting again.
This year we are looking to cover other parts of Hackney and we would be very interested to hear from individuals or community groups who are interested in mapping and harvesting their local area. We’ve made a good start in Stoke Newington and our friends up at Transition Finsbury Park have been adding their trees to the fruit tree map, but Hackney is a big borough! We can help out with tips on how to go about it, equipment and volunteers, so drop us a line if you would like to get this started near you.
Equally if there are communities out there in Hackney interested in planting a new orchard or if you have a fruit tree in your garden that produces more fruit than you can deal with, then please get in touch. We’d really love to hear from you.