Mary Clear on Todmorden’s Incredible Edible
Gloriously plain-speaking grandmother of ten, Mary Clear of Todmorden’s Incredible Edible was the second to speak at the All Party Parliamentary Group on Agroecology yesterday (6th Dec). Here’s a summary of what she said:
Three and a half years ago, a few Todmorden people were discussing concerns about it all — climate change, people in some developing countries going hungry, everything . . . and how everyone blamed everyone else for what was going on. Let’s see, they decided, if we could do something for Todmorden that’d make a difference.
Todmorden is in a deep valley, equidistant-ish from Burnley, Rochdale and Halifax, towns themselves that aren’t doing too well. It’s socially mixed, with high unemployment in the town, mostly back-to-backs. There are a few rich people, and they live up the sides of the valley. Industry, formerly cotton, has gone. There are five supermarkets in and around the town.
They hit on food as an agent for change. “If you eat, you’re in.”
Everyone has a lot to offer, including the jobless youngster. She presented a simple diagram, three circles for learning – cradle to cradle, business, including farmers, and community – everyone.
Propaganda gardening. (A better term than guerilla gardening, she said, which smacked of machismo illegality). Making it beautiful. Help yourself, we want to help you.
They started with the main road, so everyone could see it.
Then they moved on to the estates with their difficult soil. (This is a Pennine town, remember, so think wind and rain as well as bright clear days.)
Then they heard the local PCT with its new building had £20K for landscaping . . . So they asked a local doctor if they could plant trees, apple, pear and plum on the site, plus an apothecary garden at the back.
They have pick-your-own herbs on the station. The police station then did some planting, and not to be outdone, the firemen also had to join in, didn’t they.
There was a Bengali bean-growing championship on raised beds on what was previously tennis courts.
They created a growing space even at the side of the local church graveyard.
There are six primary school and one secondary school in town; they joined in. There’s a need for “incredible parents” if schools join in, as during the holidays, they’re the ones that carry it.
Links with farmers were set up. A pop-up kitchen for cookery lessons in the streets. Bee keeping took off. In the three years, over a thousand fruit trees have been planted and anyone can help themselves to the produce. Trees are expensive to buy, so some of them have learned the art of grafting. Indeed, there are many lost arts which will die when the old generation pop their clogs, so they’ve set up a rolling programme of learning.
They needed a business. Eggs. They decided to increase the number of laying hens in the town. They then created a demand for locally produced eggs. There’s an egg map of the town.
One guy gave up his day job and became a cheese maker. There are also rare breed pigs in the town. And the local Bear Cafe Bar, committed to local produce, has bought itself a polytunnel.
A landowner gave them some land to use in Walsden (see right, and which required expensive fencing ‘cos, unknown to everyone, the place was a meeting ground for every rabbit and deer in northern England).
The next project is a training centre. Oh and another, an aquaponics investment to grow fish.
No doubt, if Mary is anyone to go by as a Todmorden person, there’ll be plenty more projects and activities that can’t be imagined yet. And will happen.
And, much to Mary’s surprise, particularly in a raw Pennine January, there are ‘vegetable tourists’, people coming from across the world to see what a townspeople can do. There’s even been a visit from a planner from earthquake-torn Christchurch in New Zealand. It’s a no brainer, he said, for the new town there to have food growing at its core.
Grinning ear to ear!! Wanting to take this beautiful idea and run with it in Southern California…it isn’t the quaint little English town, but we eat too..and have plenty of land. I wonder….
Go for it! And let us know how Incredible Edible works in California . . .
Fantastic visionary pathway for others to follow! Listen out for Incredible Edible Somerset in 2012…
I’ve already got a meeting set up with RCT Homes in South Wales to look into the possibilities of starting an Incredible Edible project in this part of the world.
Now here’s an initiative that will take off the more people know about it – Just in time to bring some smiles amongst the doom & gloom of the “global recession?”
Keep this info alive and moving – Well done!
Excellent! Keep us posted . . . Todmorden has the advantage of being a small (15K people) community in a deep Pennine valley. Bigger towns and cities have qualitatively different issues. Like, for example, a lack of social cohesion for the whole place, a single identity. Larger communities and cities have significant advantages too. Like, for example, organsations such as RCT Homes, other social landlords, hospitals, police and firestations, lots of schools, health centres and parks many of whom have budgets for landscaping, a small (or smallish) snuck of which can be used for community veg growing . . . Additionally, many people identify with the specific area of the city they live in, so local or hyperlocal initiatives can work, at least for a time.
[...] Now isn’t that great? Not just for Liskeard, either. It tells us something about the state of play in decision-makers’s minds regarding all things horticultural in urban areas . . . though what we’ll call officially sanctioned guerrilla-anything is now up for grabs. Freedom gardening anyone? Propaganda gardening (the term used by Todmorden’s Mary Clear)? [...]