The Funky Allotment October 8, 2008

About a year and a half ago I applied to my local council for an allotment. I thought this would be a great way to eat fresh vegetables for cheap without the need for any chemicals, transportation, etc. I subsequently forgot all about my application until some time in March this year when I received a letter asking me if I still wanted an allotment and that I could have one on Perth Street West if I so desired.

Lou and I went down for a gander, it was a big patch of weeds and grasses but we thought we’d be able to handle it. I sent off the form, signed the tenancy agreement and within a week or so it became the Funky allotment.

It all started out really well, we got digging, built a compost bin and got really enthusiastic about the whole thing. My work donated some pallets and water drums and various other oddments that were lying about the yard. Before long we had a makeshift shelter too.

After digging quite alot, turfing up no end of buried carpet and broken glass from the earth we had something that resembled a functioning allotment and we were proud. Then came the breif English summer, people went away and we found ourselves less and less motivated to be allotmenteering.

We haven’t visited the allotment for a while. We’re so lame. We intend to go back soon and try and get the ground ready for next season. I will blog more about this when it actually happens. Digging is hard. It’s okay when you have people to help you but as a hobby for a girly who works full-time it’s hard. I need to retire, get a shed and sit on my allotment all day. Then it would be brill.

We have some amazing plans for the allotment and hope to get lots of people involved and introduced to growing their own food, it’s supposed to be part of the Common Ground collective which is a new social enterprise project set up by my friend Matt, it was also named after Funky, an awesome night out in Hull also run by Matt.

We really need a shed. Somewhere secure to store the tools, a place to sit down and make tea, somewhere to shelter from the rain. Anyone got a shed? I’ve spent hours trawling Freecycle, the Hull Daily Mail and GumTree and nothing has come of that yet. I will keep looking though, I will have my shed.

The Funky Allotment

A Funky Allotmenteer

A Funky Compost Bin

The Funky Allotment

The Funky Allotment

The Funky Allotment

You may be wondering why we decided to take on such a project, being the busy, young people we are, the answer is pretty simple; Good, healthy, fresh food that is cheap and is a product of your own hand. How much better can you get? It also brings people together socially in a way, that in my opinion, is slowly disappearing in today’s society.

With the rising prices of everything surely the obvious answer is to return to growing our own? With the threat of global warfare always in the media we should take some lessons from the days of yore when Victory Gardens were a must for the common man to live a better life.

I know our allotment story to date isn’t pretty inspiring at present, but all aspects of life have their down times. It will get better and I will show to you all the joys of growing your own. A guy I know got an allotment the same time as us, dug it single handedly as has been enjoying lots and lots of tasty veg he’s grown himself. We will get there eventually.

If you have any allotment stores to share, please let me know by leaving a comment!

Links about Allotmenteering;

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dig_for_Victory

www.yougrowgirl.com

inmykitchengarden.blogspot.com

www.farmgarden.org.uk

www.allotment.org.uk

Why Clothes Swap? October 4, 2008

Every year in England alone, 1 million tonnes of useable fabric goes into landfill sites. This means thousands of perfectly good clothes rot in a dump, whilst irreparable damage is done to the environment to fill quotas for new ones. Fashion is also renowned for its sweatshops and child labour, whilst conditions for many cotton pickers have not become any better since the slave trade. Read on to find out more.

Places such as Topshop, H&M and Primark sell clothes dirt cheap. But what are the real costs of our obsession with fashion?

• In many countries people work up to 80 hours a week (there are only 168 hours in a week). Overtime is often unpaid and compulsory if you want to keep your job. In Bangladesh, a living wage (which really still only means having enough money to feed someone, their family, pay rent and have a tiny bit left over) is calculated to be about £22 a month. Most companies only pay legal minimums, which means that in Bangladesh, people are only earning around £8 a month.

• Conditions in factories can be shocking – little light, regulated toilet breaks (if you want to go any other time, tough shit…), beatings for being late, 14 hour shifts with little or no breaks…Many adults work 7 days a week to meet big business demands, even though our high street companies have strict guidelines that say that they shouldn’t be doing that. All this for £8!

• Cotton picking is still renowned for its terrible, back breaking working conditions, long hours and terrible pay. The one huge difference now is the amount of people left permanently debilitated or even dead by strong, cheap pesticides and insecticides used on cotton plants. In Uzbekistan a reported 8 children died from chemical exposure in two years cotton picking.

• More and more clothes being made uses more and more resources. In developing countries water and land can be taken away from local communities to instead produce cotton for our huge amount of cheap clothes.

Taken from an article about the ethical considerations of clothes swapping,

by Rebecca Brierley.

Links about Sweat Shops and Shopping Ethically;

www.labourbehindthelabel.org
www.waronwant.org
www.sweatshopwatch.org
www.nosweat.org.uk
www.oxfam.org
www.buynothingday.co.uk
www.buylesscrap.org
www.savethechildren.org.uk
www.pan-uk.org
www.myspace.com/ethicalconsumer

Book Mooching October 3, 2008

Stumbling around the internet, I discovered this wonderful website called BookMooch.com. It’s a site for ridding yourself of unwanted books and getting new ones in return. All you have to do is sign up, register your books and start mooching!

The signing up is pretty straight foward, it asks you for all the usual information, you will have to have a postal address so people can send you books. If you don’t want to put your home address then you could use your work address or set up a Post Office box.  You can also request where in the world you are willing to send books to, bearing in mind postage for heavy items is expensive. I have my settings set to “Ask me if I will send a book to your country” so I can see how much postage is before I send a book.

To register your unwanted books you enter the book’s ISBN number (usually located above the barcode) into a form and the website adds the book to your inventory so people can mooch it. For each book you register you get 1/10th of a point.

Points are used to mooch books from other people. You get 1/10th of a point for registering a book, 3 points if someone from abroad mooches a book from you and a lower amount of points if someone local mooches a book from you.

You will get an email when someone mooches a book from you, it will give you the option to accept or decline the mooch. Once accepted you will have to parcel up the requested book and send it off to the Moocher.

To mooch books off other people you just search for books or authors you like and then when you have found the perfect book you click the “Mooch this book” button and follow a few steps and the book you want will hopefully be winging it’s way to you. If the book you want isn’t available you can add it to a “wishlist” and the website will email you when someone puts that book up for swapping.

It’s so exciting about getting my mail these days, I never know what’s going to come through my letterbox next, so far I’ve managed to get my hands on some great books I’ve been wanting for a while, for free! If you like books this is a great site to get free (or the cost of posting out your unwanted books) books if you don’t mind them being second hand.

Books I have Mooched

Links about Book Swapping;

bookmooch.com

www.nothingbutbooks.co.uk

www.bookcrossing.com

Clothes Swap! October 3, 2008

Back in June of this year I found myself wanting some new clothes, but having minimal funds and mountains of clothes already it wasn’t really an option to go on a spending spree. I put up a message on Facebook, announcing I had bags of clothes I no longer wanted and asked if anyone wanted them. People got back to me pretty fast and before long Clothes Swap! was born.

Clothes Swap! (or Swishing as it is sometimes called) is basically a group of friends/people, getting together with their unwanted clothes and swapping them for something new. It’s an idea that’s been gathering strength for a while now, with clothes swapping parties going on all over the country. Even glossy magazines have picked up on the trend and are offering Clothes Swapping Packs for readers to apply for.  Swishing offers people a fun afternoon of getting rid of the old, enjoying themselves and going home with a new outfit at the end of it. It’s more or less free too! What more could a girl want?

A few friends helped me aquire one Sunday afternoon in Lamp to hold the event, I made up a few flyers and posters and we put the word about.  The original plan was to hand out tokens for the clothes that people brought in and then they could use the tokens to get new items of clothes.

When the big day arrived this wasn’t an option, we had so many clothes! Everyone brought bags of things, by the time we’d finished hanging them all up we’d covered the front section of the Lamp. We abandoned the idea of tokens as the ratio of clothes to people was significantly bigger and it was a free-for-all, grab what you want affair.

Everyone was very relaxed about it all, no fights broke out and we all got a bag full of pretty new(ish) clothes to wear. It went down really well considering it was the middle of summer and there weren’t so many students in town, we even had surplus clothes at the end of it all which were bagged up and taken to the charity shop afterwards.

We’re hoping to hold another event in October and see how it goes down with all the students back in town. We’ve learnt alot from this first event, it’s popular, it’s doeable without much cost involved and people enjoyed it. We need to think up a strategy of swapping if more people attend, a free-for-all may not work every time. Thanks to everyone who helped out and all those who atteneding for making it a great success! Watch this space for news of the next swap!

Pictures from our Clothes Swap event, 29th June 2008 @ The Lamp, Hull;

Clothes Swap!

Clothes Swap!

Clothes Swap!

Clothes Swap!

Clothes Swap!

Clothes Swap!

Links about Clothes Swapping;

www.capessa.com/members/storyactions.aspx?g=126784&m=73442

www.new.facebook.com/group.php?gid=16272996505

www.swishing.org

Is this thing on..? September 29, 2008

Hello..?

Is this thing on..?

*tap, tap, tap*

So, where to begin? Do I need an introduction, or do I just start blogging?  I don’t do introductions well so the basic idea is that “Mushy Peas” is intended to be a blog about living a happier, greener, cheaper life and showing people that it is possible for the average person to make a difference to the planet.

I’m just a girl from England, I live in a shared house and have a full-time office job. I earn an average (if not below average *cough*) wage for someone of my age in my country. Since being independant and living on my own and looking after myself (and a cat) I have found the ever increasing need to downsize my life due to financial reasons.

All the stuff in the media lately about climate change, the credit crunch, rah rah, doom and gloom.. Has made me think a little more about the way I live my life and have been looking at all the different ways I can help the planet and my purse but still enjoy life.  I’ve seen many people whinge and moan about all of the above for many different reasons, mainly about how difficult it is. You’re all wrong. It’s not hard.

It’s actually quite easy and you learn a lot about the world in the process.

Yes even you could do it.

This blog will help you out, using myself as a guinea pig.

One last thing, it’s called “Mushy Peas” because they’re green, innit.