Apple juicing and carbon footprinting

Our household took our turn with the Transition Leicester Apple Press last weekend, and after a busy and fun day of activity we ended up with litres and litres of bottles of delicious apple juice to see us through the year ahead. Being a carbon nerd, I also seized the chance to work out the carbon emissions associated with each litre of juice we made, which led to some fascinating and surprising results. This post takes you through the process of making our juice, what the emissions came out as, and how they compare to alternatives to home-made juice.

Making our juice

So here’s the apple juice making process in short…

First, we picked lots and lots of apples (5 or 6 boxloads), which we scrumped from a disused allotment site in Leicester.

We picked up the Apple Press from its most recent port of call and took it over to a friend’s house in Sileby where they had a good spacious kitchen and garden for us to do the crushing and pressing.

Preparation involved two steps – quickly washing the apples (picture a sink full of water and bobbing apples) and chopping off any bad bits, and sterilising our juice bottles (glass bottles with jam jar style lids) in the oven for an hour on a low heat.

A production line at work

Community Supported Agriculture project update

Below is the latest Community Harvest Whetstone newsletter, courtesy of Mike from the CHW core group…

Welcome to the September edition of CHW Newsletter.

In this newsletter you’ll find:

- Progress update on setting up of CHW as well as work on the polytunnel and small field.
- Social Events and dates for your diary
- Membership subs explained again
- Shares explained
- Volunteering with CHW

Review of East Midlands Expo by Andy Brooks

EAST MIDLANDS EXPO:

GREENING THE ECONOMY

Visited a very full, day long exhibition at the Leicester City Football club about Greening the East Midlands Economy. Apart from three mini conferences running concurrently, there was a big hall with about 70 exhibitors and a series of events in a mini theatre. Too much to do in a day really.

Some things resonated ‘Transition’ in amongst the rest of the stuff. Here are some ideas that got the imagination going and contact details for you to follow up.

Soft furnishings made from stinging nettle fibre:

x0,000 plants grown in Desford and cut 3 times a year. Commercial crop. Looking for land to expand to many times the size. What about Castle Hill Country Park and Aylestone Meadows? Will grow on amenity land since small quantities of crisp packets and other litter can be separated out before manufacture, unlike crops for animal bedding or fodder.

Replanted after a number of years: can uprooted nettle roots be roasted and ground for ‘coffee’ substitute or as flour for baking?

www.camirafabrics.com

Timber pod construction modular housing

Single storey, 65 square metre prefabricated, ‘new skin design’ timber framed houses built on 12 pods on a levelled site. Coming in at £90,000 complete with installation, plus site mains connection costs. Good for wildlife. Build within treed areas without root disturbance and intrusive building operations. High energy efficiency.

www.peacelovehomes.co.uk

www.cloudnineliving.com

Local Food Days

Put together locally by the Federation of Small Business.

“Keep Trade Local” Manifesto.

www.fsb.org.uk/leics-northants-rutland

Maiyango Hotel and Restaurant

Farm in Rothley provides food for this local trading company.

www.maiyango.com

Appearances by existing ‘friends’ of Transition Leicester included the Energy Saving Trust and Whetstone Pastures Farm and Groundwork.

fOR tHE fUT=URE

The day was completed by a thoroughly interesting talk about the history of and guided ‘tour’ of English Wines and the 416 wine producers now growing grapes and making very excellent sparkling wines and white, rose and red wines. Climate Change Global Warming is allowing grapes to be grown in England and Wales again. There is even a possibility they will get to Scotland before long.

Andy.

This

This review was put together by Aylestone Transitioner Andy Brooks…

The East Midlands Expo was a very full, day-long exhibition at the Leicester City Football club about Greening the East Midlands Economy. Apart from three mini conferences running concurrently, there was a big hall with about 70 exhibitors and a series of events in a mini theatre.

Review of Bishop’s Climate Change Panel by Andy Brooks

This review of the Climate Change Question Time event was put together by Aylestone Transitioner Andy Brooks…

A panel of politicians assembled by the Bishop of Leicester in the Cathedral on Friday 2^nd October for a “Climate Change Question Time”, chaired by the Bishop of Leicester, the Rt. Revd. Tim Stevens, was listened to by an audience of over 70 people, but some of those attending were not satisfied with the politicians candour and credibility.

Why it’s worthwhile to install solar PV in Leicester right now!

In the last Transition Leicester newsletter I argued that right now could be the best time ever to invest in solar PV in Leicester, because of the unique combination of the new “feed-in tariffs” (FITs), Government grants and Leicester city council grants. I recently got hold of some figures on installation costs and grants from a friend who recently installed PV in Leicester, so below are some calculations to prove that now is the time to put solar PV on your house!

Transition Leicester drop-in work days – starting Monday 31st August

A message from Zina…

What is a work day? It’s a day when anyone who is working on any Transition Leicester related work – be it writing leaflets, making displays, collating recipe books, whatever – can drop into someone’s house and do it in company.

Update on the Community Harvest Whetstone CSA project

See below for the latest update from the CSA project, courtesy of Simon…

Change is afoot!!
Since the last update huge amounts of work and effort have been put in to moving the Community Harvest Whetstone project forward to try to get things off (or rather into) the ground this coming Autumn.  However, with the Summer season quickly racing past and despite work progressing on so many fronts all at the same time there has been a realisation that we were unlikely to hit deadline of taking over the 2 acre field by October.  The second phase of our funding application for the Big Lottery Local Food Programme is proving to be a bigger task than initially thought.  It’s quite re-assuring in some respects though, that the Lottery doesn’t just give away their money willy-nilly, but it does mean a lot of work and research into all aspects of our business plans, community involvement, legal structure etc.

Whilst the work for the formal funding continues in the background we are taking advantage of a new parcel of land that Anthony and Sandra have available at Whetstone Pasture Farm.  This area is already fenced off against the rabbits (so we’ll get to eat our lovely fresh veg. instead of them), and although in need of some tlc, will enable us to get the first share-holdings up and running in line with our initial plans.  Naturally we forecast we will now be working to a smaller number of shares initially, but in combination with the large polytunnel we are still making preparations for getting the first autumn sown crops in the ground.

Update on Leicestershire County Council’s support for Transition

On the 28th July 2009, the Leicestershire County Council cabinet will be meeting to discuss the recommendations for how the council supports local Transition groups, and other community-based climate change initiatives in the county – it looks like they’re going to be pledging to provide increased support and more funding for carbon reduction projects.

This follows on from the council’s motion of support for the Transition movement and the county’s Transition groups in December 2008, which you can read about here: http://transitionleicester.wordpress.com/2008/12/03/leicestershire-county-council-declares-support-for-transition/

Skyride Leicester needs you!

A message from the Skyride organising team who are looking for volunteers…

—

On Sunday 30^th August 2009 Leicester will host a mass participation bike ride in and around the city on traffic free roads.

www.goskyride.com

We’re looking for people to volunteer their Sunday to help make the event a success.

What we need from you:

• A commitment to be an official event marshal from 9am to 5pm

• A spare couple of hours in the evening the week before to have a little training and to get to meet the people you’ll be working with

• A smile and willingness to help out

What do you get for all your hard work?

• Travel expenses paid (up to a reasonable amount agreed before the event)

• Food and drink throughout the day

• A great experience

Can we count on you?

If you’re interested or would like some more details please email: Gareth AT gdheventsolutions.com

Community Supported Agriculture project update

Below is a summary written by Dani from the Food Group of the Open Meeting of Community Harvest Whetstone (CHW) on 15th June 2009 …

The meeting was attended by around 30 of you, coming from different parts of the county (+ Rugby) but mostly from neighbouring villages and the southern part of the city. For the benefit of those who couldn’t be there and to refresh the memory of those who were this is what happened…

After a few words of welcome from Sandra and Anthony Herbert – who own Whetstone Pastures Farm – we had a short introduction to the ideas behind Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) schemes in general and CHW in particular.