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Our Daily Bread
We departed Liverpool with fingers crossed that the weather would hold out for our trip to Church Farm, the bus proving a good place to begin conversations. Prompted by Jean's information about Liverpool's open spaces the discussions that went on moved in a range of directions.

What exactly is derelict land? One person said "spaces don't have to have buildings on them to be derelict" and offered us the example of new sheep rotation systems in Australia, a nation with increasing expanses of soil devastated by over-farming. Australians are taking action to renew their soil after years of failing to put back what they have taken out.

Where do we grow plants? Well, "you can grow anything anywhere", another person commented, this certainly seems to be true in the case of the people on our bus who do so everywhere from allotments, to gardens, to tyre flowers beds and shed wall trellises.

With all these issues still fresh in our minds we arrived at Church Farm and were introduced to owner Steve Ledsham. Steve was to guide us through his 68 acres of land, teaching us about the problems and benefits of being an organic farmer.

Of his 68 acres, a smallish sized farm, 25 are devoted exclusively to growing fruit and vegetables, the most immediately obvious thing being just how labour intensive organic farming is. As an organic farmer Steve won't use chemical weedkillers and for every corner he refuses to cut his team must devote days of hard toil, much of the time working on hands and knees. Yet Steve Ledsham is so obviously a man in his element and content with his chosen life that he is quite a compelling argument for organic farming.

For the rest of us though, we exist at a smaller scale. The purpose of the visit was very much to gain transferable knowledge, to find ways of looking at the commercial, wide scale use of land and to teach us something about the plot of land we live on.
It was this that seemed to resonate most with the group. We saw how organic food can be grown locally through giving our time and energy to our land, something that each of the participants seemed more than willing to do as we came away.

"I grow flowers and herbs in my garden, everywhere we go we end up coming back with a shrub but I might start to think about vegetables now"

"Local food needs to be talked about by the same people who talk all the time about organic food"

"It's made me realise that I need to have growing things around me, that it needs to be a priority for me in terms of my quality of life"

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