Game For A Laugh

Our "Edible Table" with a Comedy Festival tent

This weekend Machynlleth will be invaded by hundreds of (mostly) young and (on the whole) trendy people. They are coming from all over the UK to be entertained, but thankfully not by me. Whatever the collective noun is for stand-up comedians (a heckle?) is arriving to do the entertaining. Yes it's Machynlleth Comedy Festival once again and the town will be buzzing.

I will be there anyway, partly as a punter - I have a ticket for someone called Lolly Adefope - and partly as a promoter of local food in the form of our weekly veg bag scheme and Edible Mach. A few of us will have a stall somewhere central to ply people with smiles, flyers and possibly cakes. Obviously we'll have to sort the locals from the out-of-towners, the latter being less obviously our target market.

Chives

This week I led my first volunteer session for Edible Mach to smarten up the “Crop Circles” veg beds near the main focus of the Comedy Festival, the big tents put up by the Town Hall. It was a cool but sunny afternoon and about 6 or 7 of us spent a happy couple of hours weeding, removing old bolted plants and replacing them with blackcurrant bushes, strawberry runners and broad beans, all donated for free by local growers.

The "Crop Circles"

It used to be that leaders of these sessions were paid but unfortunately the funding for that ran out so now we're transitioning into getting people to do it for free, on a rota basis. I've put my name down for a couple of sessions as I want to see the Edible Mach veg beds continue looking great. Without these targeted gardening sessions they would quickly become a mass of weeds and thirsty or dead plants.

At least Edible Mach does have funding for running workshops, of which we have several coming up on all manner of things - fermentation, soil, bread making, sowing, building raised beds and compost to name a few. And they're all free to attend! If you're a local and you're reading this, do check them out as I'm sure there's something of interest for everyone.

Enough tapping on this keyboard now - I'm off out to my garden to plant loads of beetroot!

We sowed some wheat as well!