Hello Natural Communities!
Well, it’s taken me a little while to get myself into the loop, but hopefully I’ll be a regular communicator from now on.
I joined the Natural Communities gang back in February, which means I’ve been here in Portglenone, County Antrim for over a month now.
For a little town, it’s quite imposing…. dark stone churches, tall forest, big river…. and a huge colony of rooks that darken the skies every evening on their way home to roost.
The setting may be slightly spooky, but the people are as friendly as they come… and all of them determined to feed me up on soda bread!
I’m working with a very small community group who run the Portglenone Green Gym, so my experiences will be very much about local, small-scale community engagement. In this spirit I have been thrown into some interesting fundraising experiences…. packing shoppers’ bags at B&M Bargains in Ballymena took me right back to my first job aged 16!
The Green Gym in Portglenone provides badly-needed opportunities for local people with learning difficulties to get out and get active. Which they do with gusto!
I’ve already been hugely busy in this post, which partly explains why I have neglected to tell you about it so far…
The Green Gym currently works at 3 sites, all of which are being used to grow food in varying amounts…. so planning what to grow, putting in the seed orders, and getting sites prepared has been quite a challenge…. oh, and on top of that, planning enough tasks to keep all our hardworking Green Gym volunteers going on a Monday and Tuesday (Guys, can you work a bit slower please!!!).
We’ve a big fundraising event coming up on March 31st… a springtime walk, with storytelling, in Portglenone Forest… althought the bluebells may steal the show if they get their act together and flower!
We will also have a stall, and sell a lot of the plants we’ve been raising in our polytunnel (located within the grounds of a monastery… well, the surroundings are calm even if the group leader is not!). Hopefully there’ll be peas, chives, lettuce, herbs, and some flowers. I’m hoping it will be a good chance to raise awareness as well as funds.
Hope to meet up with other members of the NC gang soon!