The Good Life in Gateshead

Next year, our aim is to grow as much of our food as possible. And if we don't grow it, we aim to pick it wild. That is the intention anyway. It's our bid to cut down our carbon footprint. So we now have one and a half allotments which we need to get ready. They are quite a size and need quite a bit of work doing on them. Nevertheless, we have made a start.

One, admittedly small, corner has over the past 2 weekends, been dug over. We have planted onions, leaks, cauliflowers, strawberries and gooseberries. And I have dusted down my wildfoods cookbook which I haven't used for a while.

We have already had our first crops which, I have to confess were already growing on the allotments: last week I pick 6kg of rhubarb and the weekend just gone 3kg of gooseberries. Cowley St colleagues are now enjoying the first jars of jam to be made from these crops. We now have a stock of 27 jars of rhubard and ginger jam and 12 jars of gooseberry and elderflower. I suspect the jars I put in the Cowley st fridge will not last long. (Past experience suggests 2 days!)

So if David and I are doing a Geordie version of the Good Life, we haven't yet decided which of us is Tom and which is Barbara! We don't yet have a Margo and Gerry! Volunteers would be appreciated!