Our Shed, In The Middle Of Our Street

Borage flower

Edible Mach. Or in Welsh, Mach Maethlon. A familiar project perhaps, at least to those of you with enough idle time to glance through my blogposts once in a while, or indeed to those who actually live in Machynlleth and witness first-hand the edible plants that proudly grow in handsome wooden planters dotted all over the town. It's possible that a few of you have not only witnessed but actually partaken of the veg, picking off a few leaves of kale here, a sweetcorn cob there, or maybe some mint from outside the library to make a nice bedtime cup of herbal tea.

Ripening autumn raspberry

It is a fine project and its aims are laudable. It seeks to reconnect people with how food is grown, right slap in front of their faces as they shop on the high street. It shows how growing vegetables can be both useful and beautiful. It encourages community building as groups of volunteers create and maintain the various sites. It offers free veg to anyone bold enough to pick it.

But there's one thing it lacks, and that is a decent shed. The garden tools have to be stored somewhere and people need somewhere to potter aimlessly for hours. Funds however were absent to purchase such a thing, so the power-that-be decided to hold a fund-raising dinner. Last Saturday, it happened.

A male pheasant greedily eyes my vegetables from outside the netting

What a fantastic evening! The room was packed with sixty or seventy guests seated around eight dinner tables, a hubbub of conversation over the background music. I was helping as a volunteer whereas Anna had a ticket but she also got stuck in with the set up and food prep. “Getting the best of both worlds” was how she put it.

The sourdough loaves and rye bread for the starter were baked by Sam, an Edible Mach leader, and the relishes were homemade. The butternut squash in the risotto was locally grown, the risotto itself made by local chefs of the Green Goat Cafe. And all the many delicious dessert options were all lovingly made and donated by people involved in Edible Mach.

Salads and kale still going strong

The most stressful job I had was to place the risotto on everyone's plates in the kitchen, spooning it into a large cookie-cutter and patting it down before removing the cutter, with the chef hovering next to me adding on bits of roasted pumpkin. It was easy for splodges of risotto to end up all over the place, which I had to tidy as I went. Clearly I was the slow link in the chain. One rather unevenly-patted risotto earned the chef's comment “not good enough. The next one must be better.” That told me.

After the meal there was music by local group The Bung Bung Belles and a raffle with prizes donated by local shops and people. So many people had given their time, their skills and their money to make the night work well, it was a privilege to be part of it. Count me in for the Shed Building Crew next year!

STOP PRESS: Just found out that the evening raised £750!

8.6kg of my butternut squash harvested this morning (26th Oct)

and chopped into 16 portions for the Green Isle Growers veg bag scheme