8 March 2012 Orchard Meeting

Abundance meets regularly to plan activities, discuss progress, and distribute tasks. This is usually a core group of about 7 people, and we are always keen to get a few more people involved. Next meeting will be Thursday 8th March, 7.30pm. Our meetings are open to anyone who’d like to get more involved or just wants to find out more about what we’re doing at Kenworthy.  The meeting will be at the Work for Change offices in Hulme, M15 5RF, in the Yellowbricks (same building as Kim by the Sea).  Facing Kims, head to your left to the end of that building and turn right around the corner onto Geoge Parr Road. The entrance to the offices is a red door on your right about halfway along the building. If no-one’s there to let you in, buzz the buzzer. We’ll probably have a drink round the corner afterwards at Kims.

All Welcome!

Who We Are

Abundance Manchester is a voluntary project which picks surplus or unwanted fruit from gardens and public trees around South Manchester and distributes it to local groups and communities. We also collect and distribute surplus vegetables from allotments and have our own Abundance allotment to grow food for groups who can make good use of it. We are also currently looking after Kenworthy Community Orchard in Chorlton. Below you will find the latest updates on the project.

To get in touch please email abundancemanchester@yahoo.co.uk

Watch the clip  here  from BBC’s North West Tonight programme to find out more about what we do.

Kenworthy Orchard Project

We’ve just had two incredibly productive days clearing and replanting the raspberry beds plus planting 11 new trees! Then pruning the apple trees. See the Kenworthy Orchard page for more details.

Making Local Fruit Work

28 January 2012, Todmorden

Abundance Manchester attended this fantastic event meeting and sharing ideas with loads of other like-minded projects involved in everything from co-operatively produced cider to Community Supported Orchards.  We also had a look round some of the growing sites of Incredible Edible Todmorden. Inspiring stuff! Thanks to Making Local Food Work for running the event.

Picking over for 2011

We’ve had a great season with tonnes of apples and veg harvested and delivered to appreciative local projects. But now apple season is all but over we’ve called it a day on that side of our work. If you have surplus fruit you can always take it directly to a local hostel or community project – or even offer it to your local school. We’re now being kept busy with orchard maintenance activities at Kenworthy Community Orchard, see that page for more.

Veg Plot Update

In the Spring of 2011 we decided to turn the plot over to fruit production rather than veg growing, and to no longer run it as a community plot. It’s a sad decision but we have had serious problems with a colony of biting ants that have invaded the site, making it an unpleasant working environment. We have been unable to get rid of these despite trying  various organic methods. For this reason we will slowly be turning the land over to lower maintenance perennial crops – mostly tree and bush fruit that requires little soil disturbance. We will manage the site as a small core group. Thank you to everyone that has participated in growing veg at the site, we hope you’ve enjoyed it and if anyone is interested in helping out with looking after the plot regularly that would be great – but we are no longer holding open plot sessions on Sundays. However the plot will continue to provide  local, organically grown produce to people who can make good use of it.

Picking Sep 17th 2011

There truly was an abundance of fruit to be picked on Saturday with just 2 gardens containing a total of 8 fruit trees! Mostly apples, some cooker and some eaters although each garden had a pear tree as well. Some new faces joined some regular pickers and despite a slight drenching we had a great day. Thanks to everyone who came along. Join us next week, details will be emailed out on mailing list.