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Project Report
April 2015- March 2016
Easy Peas-y
Easy Peas-y (CCF 3784)
The Ecology Centre Kinghorn Loch Kinghorn Fife KY3 9YG Tel. 01592 891567 www.theecologycentre.org
2. The Ecology Centre: Easy Peas-y end of project report (April 2016)
Background
2015 was a certainly challenging year for The Ecology Centre as we were ‘between homes’
operating from a workshop we created from three old shipping containers at Kinghorn Loch
and a rented office in Kirkcaldy for most of the year. Instead of the usual army of volunteer
gardeners and visiting school groups, the casual visitor was more likely to encounter a JCB or
a hard hat wearing building inspector on the lochside site as our Centre was being built on our
newly purchased land.
None of this stopped our dedicated team of staff and volunteers working in the community to
raise awareness on environmental issues and make a really practical difference in helping
local residents to reduce their carbon footprint. With the invaluable support of the Climate
Challenge Fund, we simply moved off site and into our community, clearing gardens, making
raised beds, constructing greenhouses and generally encouraging more people to grow more
food on their own doorsteps.
The volunteers brave enough to stay on site (mostly off grid even through the winter) worked
tirelessly in the workshop, refurbishing old tools to equip the growing community of new food
growers in and around Kinghorn and Burntisland.
Climate change was identified in a wide ranging community consultation in 2014 as a high
priority issue within the local community so we decided to develop a new project to address
this concern with a new, very practical and measurable project. We wanted to take people’s
ideas around growing local food and help turn
them into reality and so the concept of making
things ‘Easy Peas-y’ became our focus. A lack of
tools was identified as a common barrier to
individuals and community groups so the
workshop volunteers started to collect old
donated gardening tools and set about making
these as good as new and gifting them back to
the community. Along with growing more food
locally, refurbishing old tools became a main
strand of the Easy Peas-y project.
Figure 2: Raised beds were constructed over the course of the project
Figure 1: Easy Peas-y was initiated in response to climate change concerns
Figure 3: The Tool Shed took on the task of collecting and refurbishing garden tools
3. The Ecology Centre: Easy Peas-y end of project report (April 2016)
Growing Food
Our aim was to support 30 householders or community groups to grow 720 kg of food, saving
food miles and carbon emissions (and money) in the process. Starting in April meant that we
had to get off to a quick start to make the most of the growing season.
Over the course of the year we helped local 26
residents to either grow food for the first time or
significantly increase the amount that they could
grow. These ranged from an experienced allotment
holder who needed manual help in putting in some
new steps to her allotment after suffering from an
injury last year slipping on the steep access slope,
to an 82 year old great grandmother growing peas
in pots by her back door for the first time ever. We
also worked with regularly with 2 schools and 6
community groups to help them grow food in their
own grounds.
Each householder was visited by the Project
Manager to identify barriers to people’s growing
aspirations. A bespoke action plan was then drawn up and Ecology Centre staff, trainees and
volunteers carried out the agreed action. Feedback was gathered from householders several
months later to determine how effective getting a helping hand was to people growing food
and to find out what they had managed to grow.
The range of help varied depending on the barriers
identified and included:
Clearing overgrown gardens
Moving heavy objects
Taking green waste to the recycling centre
Digging over compacted soil
Creating safer access to growing plots
Purchase of peat free compost or topsoil
Supplying seeds/ seedlings
Giving specific growing advice
Making and installing raised beds
A lack of space
Linking growing to wider learning (for schools)
Making front garden vegetable patches more attractive
Supplying gardening tools
Figure 4: This is the new front garden of a full time carer who is growing food for the first time
Figure 5: Even small spaces were used to grow food
Figure 6: Raised beds were constructed using recycled scaffold boards and proved to be very popular- creating growing spaces and training opportunities
4. The Ecology Centre: Easy Peas-y end of project report (April 2016)
We also ran 8 community workshops, on our new site,
in schools, local parks and even in a shopping centre.
A range of gardening related activities were covered
including growing plants from seed, composting,
growing food in small spaces and making willow pea
supports.
We gave general advice to several local schools but worked particularly closely with
Burntisland and Auchtertool Primary schools. Pupils refurbished tools with our workshop
supervisor to refurbish tools and build up a stock for themselves. They also worked with the
Project Manager and Education team over several sessions to develop their school grounds
and participate in environmental education activities exploring the issues around climate
change and responsible citizenship. Practical help was also given in the form of repairing a
plastic bottle greenhouse, planting up around the playgrounds and moving tonnes of soil into
new raised beds.
By the end of March, 270 sq metres of new growing space had been established in our
community which had produced an estimated 750kg of food in the first year. Some
householders enjoyed weighing their produce and recording exactly what they had grown,
while others reported in more general terms what they had grown. One family with three young
children found it impossible to tell us how many strawberries they had produced, for some
strange reason they never made it as far as the scales!
Refurbishing Old Tools
A lack of gardening tools was identified at the very early stages of
Easy Peas-y so the volunteers in the Tool Shed, which is part of
the Scottish Men’s Sheds network, set about refurbishing hundreds
of old gardening tools and giving these out to local gardeners,
schools and community groups. We set out to collect enough tool
donations to enable the volunteers to refurbish 400 gardening tools
for people working on our new site and in their own gardens or
grounds. This target was exceeded with a total of 657 refurbished
and put back into the community for use while unsafe or
unrepairable tools were broken down into components and
recycled responsibly.
Figure 9: Saturday workshop learning how to make willow wigwam pea supports
Figure 7: A young grower painting up her own salad pot for her garden
Figure 8: Out of school club learning how to look after tools
Figure 10: Hundreds of tools were diverted from landfill and taken to the workshop
5. The Ecology Centre: Easy Peas-y end of project report (April 2016)
Highlights
The Shedders were so successful in collecting donated tools that they decided to celebrate
the end of Easy Peas-y with a huge tool giveaway which was held on the first Saturday of
March 2016, just in time to for the growing season. This also solved the storage problem of
having so many tools and a glut of tools that volunteers did not have time to fully refurbish and
paint/ sharpen, but had been safety checked and declared to be perfectly useable. This was
widely advertised through social media and resulted in over 230 people coming along and
taking 420 tools away with them.
Working with local schools was another highlight. At
Burntisland PS, the school community had raised
funds to develop a garden in memory of a previous
Headteacher. With the support of the Easy Peas-y
team they decided to make growing food a real focus
and adopted a ‘Living, learning, growing’ theme for the
new garden. Our team worked every fortnight with the
school to help start the growing season and offered
practical help moving tonnes of topsoil into new raised
beds. The transformation was a very rewarding
process for our trainees and to be involved in.
Figure 11: Tools ready for the end of project Big Tool Giveaway
Figure 12: social media helped to spread the word- this photo was taken half an hour BEFORE opening
Figure 13: Bedrock were just one of the community groups to be given free tools
Figure 14: School garden in April 2015
Figure 15: Growing food is now an integral part of the school's outdoor learning
Figure 16: We were able to give advice on habitat improvement and biodiversity as well as growing food
Figure 17: School garden in October 2016
6. The Ecology Centre: Easy Peas-y end of project report (April 2016)
Of course, Easy Peas-y was only a small part in the overall efforts across Scotland to reduce
carbon emissions through the Climate Challenge Fund. The activities we undertook to
contribute towards government goals included:
CCF Activities Grid
How many advice/information centres – regular drop-in centre, advice surgery
etc. - is your project running?
6
How many training sessions where skills and/or information were passed on
– e.g. composting training, cooking workshops, etc. – has your project has held.
42
How many events did your project hold, e.g. information fairs, open days, etc.? Do
not include events held by other organisations which you have attended.
8
How many staff, volunteers or community members have achieved qualifications
through the project – e.g. City & Guilds Energy Awareness, Trail Cycle Leader, etc.
4
How many people were directly employed by your project. Tell us the full-time
equivalent (FTE) number of employees (e.g. 3 days per week = 0.6 FTE).
1.5
Is the project supporting the development of any long-term jobs which are not
dependent of CCF Funding? How many?
3
How many people are actively involved in your project – attending groups &
workshops, using the project facilities etc.?
260
How many people volunteer their time and energy to keeping the project going –
don’t forget the members of your management committee or board.
52
How many schools are involved in your project? 6
How many square metres (m2) of community growing space (allotments, poly-
tunnels, raised beds, community gardens) has your project brought into use?
270
How many tonnes of waste have been diverted from landfill because of the
activities of your project?
1.7
7. The Ecology Centre: Easy Peas-y end of project report (April 2016)
What difference did Easy Peas-y make?
CO2 outcomes
We set out to reduce our community’s
carbon emissions by 11.6 tonnes by growing
food organically and locally. We have
calculated that we will have saved 11.2
tonnes over the lifetime of the new growing
plots. We planned to do this by creating 250
square metres of growing space. We
exceeded this by creating 270 square
metres. We know this information is
accurate as we measured and recorded the
sizes of the raised beds installed and garden
areas cleared.
We collected (sometimes from accurate
notes, sometimes from estimates) feedback
about how much produce had been grown
by individuals and groups over the project
year. The information we gathered indicated that 720 kg of produce was grown, slightly less
than using Zero Waste Scotland’s accepted production ratios would have suggested, but given
that some plots were late in being established and most people were growing for the first time,
we are not too concerned about this slight under production. This is also a conservative
measure as in some cases as some produce e.g. from fruit trees and shrubs, will not be
measurable until the plants have become established enough to produce fruit.
Produce grown in Easy Peas-y gardens includes: salad
leaves, rocket, spinach, tomatoes, butternut squash,
potatoes, turnip, broccoli, cauliflower, radishes, apples,
plums, pears, strawberries, peas, runner beans,
mangetout, pumpkin, onions, shallots, spring onions,
herbs, garlic, carrots, raspberries and cucamelon.
In total 720 kg of food was produced resulting in an
estimated carbon dioxide saving over the lifetime of
the growing plots of 11.2 tonnes.
(Outcome met)
We also intended to reduce carbon emissions by 15.3 tonnes by recycling and refurbishing
one ton of unwanted gardening tools.
A total of 144 refurbishing sessions were held involving 31 volunteer which clocked up an
impressive 4,114 volunteer hours sifting through donations, refurbishing and safety checking
tools.
In total 657 gardening tools were refurbished and 1,832 kg were refurbished for other
purposes or recycled responsibly resulting in a carbon dioxide saving of 6,582kg
Total Carbon Dioxide savings= 17,782 kg
(outcome exceeded)
Figure 18: A front garden mini allotment created in Kinghorn from a disused lawn has inspired other people in the neighbourhood
Figure 19: An impressive variety of fruit and vegetables have been grown
8. The Ecology Centre: Easy Peas-y end of project report (April 2016)
Community outcomes
Through our activities, we wanted to improve the physical health and wellbeing of participants
and reduce social isolation within our community.
A total of 43 volunteers were involved in activities growing food on site or refurbishing tools.
This is in addition to 120 people involved in Easy Peas-y households and community groups.
100% of volunteers who participated in our evaluation reported an improvement in their
physical health and wellbeing and 94 % reported an increase in how socially connected they
felt as a result of being involved in activities. This information was mostly gathered through
facilitated discussions over various tea break times.
Our team of kitchen volunteers started making
community lunches once a week, using fresh produce
grown on site where possible. These started later than
planned due to the delays to moving into our new
building which was delayed from June to the end of
October. Due to the late occupation of the new kitchen
it was not possible to involve volunteers with limited
cooking skills in the kitchen to learn from experienced
volunteers or to produce recipe cards, but this is
something that we are still keen to do next year. Despite
the late start, kitchen records report that 466 lunches
were prepared and served between October and the
end of March, and a further 23 lunches were delivered
to a volunteer unable to attend due to undertaking a
course of chemotherapy.
Two members of staff and two volunteers undertook
Level 2 Award in Food Safety for Catering training as
part of the skills development for the kitchen team.
New policies on food hygiene have been written and
implemented and The Ecology Centre is now
registered as a food business with Fife Council.
This will further help with
the sustainability of our
organisation as we are
now looking to build on
this training and
experience and are
currently looking at the
feasibility of organising a
pop up café once a month
to generate unrestricted
income. We have also
discovered that some of our regular volunteers with protected
characteristics particularly enjoy the routine of chopping vegetables
and we will build this into future developments.
(outcome partially met)
Figure 21: Using produce grown on site whenever possible
Figure 22: Homemade soup- always a winner
Figure 20: Kitchen team volunteers ready to serve
Figure 23: Kitchen diary providing useful monitoring & evidence
9. The Ecology Centre: Easy Peas-y end of project report (April 2016)
We worked closely with Burntisland and Auchtertool primary schools and both schools now
have well established growing areas in their school grounds. Between the two schools we
worked with a total of 64 pupils and 6 teachers. Feedback from staff and pupils indicated a
significant increase in awareness of food miles and composting in particular. One teacher
commented “Never in a million years would we have been able to do this (grow food)
without your help”.
As word of our project spread, we also gave advice
and provided tools to several other schools and built
compost bins for Aberdour primary school and four
large raised beds for the Dept. of Additional Support
in Balwearie High School.
(outcome met)
Reflection and Learning
Overall the staff, volunteers and management committee are very pleased with the
achievements of Easy Peas-y project. Not only did the project contribute significantly to
reducing carbon emissions, it also resulted in several other benefits. Our local community was
strengthened through an increased awareness of food production and recycling and improved
health and wellbeing amongst participants. It was also very beneficial to our organisation as
we were able to continue our work with the community and with groups working off site while
our new site and building was under construction.
We became aware how important practical support is in changing people’s behaviour. Many
people reported to us that they had intended to grow food but often simple barriers like not
having a car to take garden clearings to the recycling centre or not physically being able to
move heavy things into place were stopping them. Having someone else interested in their
efforts also meant that they were more likely to see their plans through. As an organisation we
will take this on board and appreciate more that giving relevant information, advice and raising
awareness is not always enough to change behaviour.
We gathered information in several different ways including formal exit interviews with
volunteers and trainees, group discussions, recording casual comments and by making phone
calls to complement the hard evidence recorded through our volunteer sign in sheets, kitchen
team diary, visit notes/ action plans for recruited growers and workshop tool logs.
Figure 26: Auchtertool PS's revamped bottle greenhouse
Figure 24: Raised beds made and installed in Balwearie High School
Figure 25: Busy little hands as pupils learned how to care for their tools
10. The Ecology Centre: Easy Peas-y end of project report (April 2016)
We introduced new data collecting methods like
weighing scrap metal before taking it to the recycling
centre and measuring the sizes of raised beds to
calculate growing space. We also had more
informal but facilitated discussions over cups of tea
which volunteers were more comfortable with rather
than more formal methods of gathering feedback.
We found that no single method could give us all the
information we needed but by bringing together
different techniques we could build up a robust
picture of the difference Easy Peas-y was making.
We have also learned not to underestimate the time
that this all takes.
Our funding
Our grant totalled £46,136 and we were able to put the whole of this sum to good use in
delivering the project outcomes. A small underspend in volunteer/ travel expenses arose due
to us doing more work in the community and less work on site due to the delay in being able
to move into our new premises. This was diverted to cover the cost of training for the Project
Manager to build up our project management skills and capacity within our organisation.
In addition to covering the cost of two staff members whose roles were changed by the
management committee to reflect the needs of the project, one new Education member of
staff was recruited. This new member of staff has now been taken on by The Ecology Centre
and co-ordinates our pool of sessional educators. Once we appreciated the detail required for
making a claim, we found the process to be straightforward and the CCF staff to be very helpful
and efficient.
This report was compiled by Jo Hobbett (Project Manager) with the invaluable input of Karen
Wakefield (Finance Officer), Mark Douglas (Workshop Supervisor), Claire Reid (Education
Officer) and Robert Paterson (Operations Co-ordinator), The Ecology Centre’s volunteer
Management Committee, the team of volunteers in the Kitchen Team, the Tools Shed
volunteers, gardening volunteers, site trainees and staff at Burntisland and Auchtertool
primary schools.
Figure 28: BOSS club delivering their verdict on growing food
Figure 27: Workshop log book
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