Looking forward to doing the market this weekend (Sat 10th) - autumn is always such a great time for produce and if it could just, (please) stay sunny and not rain, particularly not rain, on Saturday when the market is on, that would be great. Chris and Iain from Stocks Farm are meant to have their new apple juice there this Saturday- the apple harvesting is really taking off now - so it should be a mixture of Discovery and Worcester. Might be nice to organise some tastings.. We will have a lot more apple stuff on Apple Day at the market which this year will be on Saturday 15th October - think I might go for a Bee theme this year..A to Bee - mmm - need to work on that a bit.  That's Chris in the picture looking at his apples in a gloating sort of way...

We're just sorting out some leafleting to let people in Dalston and London Fields know about our new community pick-ups for the box scheme which are starting up at Passing Clouds in Dalston and the Happy Kitchen in London Fields this month. The Happy Kitchen have previously bought Growing Communities' salad so it's really nice that we're going to have even more of a link soon.

Also on the things-to-do list is getting everything set up for the Growing Communities Open Day on Sunday 18th September - when all the main sites will be open for visitors from 10 in the morning till 5pm. The Allens Garden site's Eco-building is also open as part of the Open House weekend and Sara, Pip and the apprentices will be on hand to answer questions about organic growing and the rest of our work. The growers and volunteers have been working away to make the new beds at the front of the Clissold site look good and fortunately there are still lots of salad leaves in the main beds. I need to work out a way of getting Maisie the milk-float to Clissold on the day and really need to repair her eyelashes - one of them has dropped off - giving her an even more louche appearance than usual...  Last year we had a lot of people visiting the sites - some of whom were box scheme members and lots of people who come to the farmers' market but had never seen our growing sites before. Have just found out that Hackney Council are re-organising the Carnival procession that got cancelled in the wake of the riots, for that Sunday  - sadly the procession won't make it as far as Clissold Park as they are ending on Stoke Newington Church Street but hope some of the revellers will drop by afterwards to have a look at our salad leaves growing...