The Sustainable Food group promotes local and seasonal food by working with our local food suppliers on a labelling scheme and other initiatives.
We’ve organised regular events with The Wildest Rumpus – The Wildest Food Day and Tollesbury’s Apple Day, which now looks set to be an annual event. In the longer term, we’re aiming to establish a community orchard and market garden.
We are working with the shops and food outlets within the village to showcase food that is produced locally through a labelling scheme. You can support sustainable food and local businesses by looking out for the TCP crab logo highlighting food that has been produced in the local area.
TCP members have established a number of small herb plots in front gardens that are available for residents to help themselves. We are looking to expand these, so whether it is a small corner of someone’s front garden, a roadside/footpath verge or an area on the edge of a business property, please let us know if you can help. We can offer support to help establish them. Herb gardens also provide fantastic habitat for pollinators, helping our wildlife too.
The first community apple day in October 2022 was such a great success we repeated it in 2023 and we’re making it an annual event! We had 200 visitors, filled more than 70 buckets with local apples weighing a whopping 283 kg and our visitors took away 80 bottles of delicious apple juice. As well as making their own fresh apple juice, everyone enjoyed our tasty apple-based treats, a scavenger hunt and making an apple feeder for birds.
Our volunteers have prepared and shared a host of seasonal food recipes for everyone to try. We’re planning to make these available at various points in the village and online. Our long term ambition is to publish a community recipe book, giving the local stories behind some local recipes.
We’ve been encouraging residents to sign up to the Olio App, aiming to reduce local food waste and raise awareness within our community.
Our long term plan is to secure a site within the parish to start a community market garden ,where residents can contribute to growing food for the village and learn more about sustainable farming practices. We hope eventually to be able to offer a scheme providing regular fruit and veg boxes to residents and other food outlets in Tollesbury.
The enthusiasm for our Apple Day has prompted us to look for an area to plant a community orchard. We hope to harness enough local support to manage a small plot growing fruit for the community and all of the benefits that brings.
If you’d like to help with any of these projects please get in touch.
