project report - keep scotland beautiful · 2016-11-24 · project report. april 2015- march 2016 ....

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

http://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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

project report - keep scotland beautiful · 2016-11-24 · project report. april 2015- march 2016 ....

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