Freestylers know that being happy is the key to being successful, and for one group of green-fingered troops this means creating some dedicated time away from the screen. Or to put it another way – we’re growing fruit and veg in our own new allotment.
Beginning in May 2010, the ‘Freestyle Farm’ has already a fine-looking crop of proto-sweetcorn, beans, courgettes, onions, tomatoes and strawberries...in addition to a growing photo library and a sense of pride at how far it’s come already.
The first step was to clear a plot from the wasteland belonging to Freestyle. We know we could have done it with a rotivator, but we opted for muscle and will power instead. We wanted to do something ourselves, for ourselves, and getting help like that just seemed a bit too much like cheating. The reward was worth it, even if we seemed crazy at the time!
Since then we’ve made the following progress:
1. Planting the veg we were very kindly donated by Freestyle friends and family.
2. Running out to the allotment every lunchtime to see if anything was happening.
3. Shiny-eyed excitement as the first shoots appear, and debating whether that little shoot is a carrot or just some stray grass (turns out it was grass).
4. Realising that something’s eating the Farm, and debating the best way to go about stopping this from happening.
5. Weeding and watching the plants grow. We have massive sweetcorn.
In the autumn we hope to be able to celebrate our first harvest with a Freestyle barbeque, share our crops with local harvest festivals and donate leftover veg to homeless projects in the community.
Watch this space for more information about the Freestyle Farm!