Category Archives: Uncategorized

Portobello Apple is a loc­al ini­ti­at­ive under the umbrella of Portobello Transition Town which is part of a nation­al net­work seek­ing to pro­mote low energy, more sus­tain­able liv­ing. At Portobello Apple we have had three suc­cess­ful years of col­lect­ing unwanted apples and pears from loc­al gar­dens, loc­al parks and our own Portobello Orchard, then juicing, pas­teur­ising and bot­tling them. The bottles are sold at Portobello Market and our own Apple day and the pro­ceeds so far have gone towards the upkeep of Portobello (Donkeyfield) Orchard. 140 bottles were sold last year, as well as a vari­ety of jams, pre­serves and ketch­ups from the fruit. The ini­ti­at­ive has only been pos­sible with loc­al sup­port from artists design­ing the labels; print­ers print­ing the labels at cost-price; people donat­ing space in their gar­dens for the juicing equip­ment and free time to the pick­ing; and com­mer­cial nurs­er­ies pre­pared to donate unwanted apples and pears. A great com­bined effort. As we look ahead to 2016 we see great poten­tial. Only 10% of all the apples grow­ing in loc­al gar­dens have found their way into our bottles. As we sell more we can start con­trib­ut­ing to oth­er char­it­ies. We have a second apple press for hire. Though fairly fully planted,the orch­ard itself lends itself to more grow­ing activ­it­ies and social activ­it­ies. So as we think and plan ahead we would be inter­ested in your responses to the following:

1. We plan to seek out the remain­ing 90% of apples with more pub­li­city. Do you have any unwanted apples or know of any­one who does?

2. We have the equip­ment to pro­duce lots more juice but not the man­power or woman­power. We need more help in the pick­ing and trans­port­ing of the fruit. Can you help?

3. We have the poten­tial to con­trib­ute to oth­er char­it­ies in some ways. Do you know of any?

4. Many people rel­ish mak­ing their own juice and our second mobile press for hire is an under­used resource.

5. Similarly our main stat­ic equip­ment can be made more avail­able to the pub­lic, per­haps for a dona­tion of apples which we can then sell.

6. In the Orchard itself we have a year’s list of pro­jects, includ­ing a children’s wood­land play area, on our monthly work-days. Can you help?

7. We run a series of prun­ing and graft­ing work­shops and an annu­al Wassailing Day already; but the the space is there for any num­ber of oth­er out­door activ­it­ies includ­ing children’s play, bird-watch­ing, theatre and oth­ers. We know of a couple who wanted to get mar­ried in the Orchard! Could you use it?

8. We gen­er­ated enough cre­at­ive recipes to start a Portie Apple Preserve Handbook. Can you contribute?

9. We make cider too but not for sale! We sus­pect there are many oth­ers around mak­ing cider to share tips with. A Portobello Cider Group?

If you are inter­ested or can help please con­tact us at: orchard@pedal-porty.org.uk

Tom, Carolyn and Vijay at the wind tur­bine site.

A wind mon­it­or­ing mast has been installed at the site of the pro­posed PEDAL and Greener Leith wind tur­bines. The equip­ment will mon­it­or both wind speed and wind dir­ec­tion at 50 metres and 60 metres over 12 months to help us get a bet­ter idea of the wind resource, energy yield and likely income from the tur­bines. Information is sent by email from the mast daily to the con­tract­or, Kona, who will the provide monthly reports. This inform­a­tion will assist with applic­a­tions for finance.

We’ve begun meet­ing with loc­al groups to dis­cuss the pro­ject and have more meet­ings planned in the near future.Volunteers from PEDAL and Greener Leith and staff from Scene Consulting (pic­tured) vis­ited the site on 3^rd of June to meet with the Community Council there and to see the install­a­tion being com­pleted. The area had already largely been felled of com­mer­cial tim­ber by the landown­er­’s forestry con­tract­ors. Additional trees felled for the install­a­tion will be replaced by new tree plant­ing at anoth­er loc­al site. 

Thanks to all of you who wrote in and respon­ded to the Ask Porty con­sulta­tion  that asked which registered Local Interest Groups should be rep­res­en­ted on Portobello Community Council. 

The Community Council had to choose 7 from 8 registered Groups.  A sum­mary of the responses they received is online here:- http://www.askporty.co.uk/pccgroups/responses.html

A great Sunday after­noon (3^rd November) clear­ing the site to pre­pare for the raised bed grow­ing spaces … frogs found so we’ll need a raised pond too!

Rumour has it this was not only the site of the old sofa fact­ory, but before that of the Electric under­ground Cinema … now there’s food for thought!

We’re plan­ning on a day of burn­ing and hope­fully chip­ping — hope you can join us!

This link takes you to the extraordin­ary Community Charter Falkirk has drawn up in the attempt to pro­tect its cul­tur­al and eco­lo­gic­al her­it­age against any devel­op­ments which the com­munity as a whole decide pose a threat to it.

It is in response to pro­posed meth­ane extrac­tion, but should Portobello do the same? If we did, it would be key that such decisions were taken by the com­munity as a whole, and arrived at through pro­cesses that secure consensus.

… and here is a lovely link to a brief video of kids at The Big Dig in Falkirk

(nb: this is a post by Justin, no one else is respons­ible for it!)