Our Town | Our Future
Spare Produce Scheme

Spare Produce Scheme

Food / Waste

We all need to eat.  Some of us have gardens and can grow our own food, have access to an allotment, can afford to buy whatever food we need.  Some of our town’s residents are not so lucky and visit one or more of Wymondham’s food banks.

As a Town Councillor I knew that Wymondham leases out 130 allotments on Chapel Lane. In 2020, I spoke to Arnie McConnell, founder of the Wymondham Community Outreach Project. The Project runs a food bank so I said…

If I arrange for the allotment holders to donate their spare produce would you be interested in taking the donations for the Project’s visitors?

He was.  

With the help of my friend Janet, who has an allotment, we started the spare produce scheme in summer 2020.  I collected donated produce every Monday during the summer months and delivered it to the Project on Tuesday.  The overall aim was to minimise food waste and improve the service users’ access to nutritious fresh fruit and veg.  I didn’t keep records the first year but did later.

  • In 2021, over 20 weeks from May to September, the total collected was 37 stones (235kg).
  • In 2022, over the same time frame, the total was down by 13 stones (82kg) to just over 24 stones (152kg).  What was summer like that year?  Yep – boiling hot – which no doubt affected yields.  Hello climate change!  
  • In 2023, for various reasons, I was six weeks late starting the collections.  Over just 14 weeks and with much wetter, temperate weather, the allotment holders donated an astounding 38 stones (nearly 243kg) of spare produce.  The photo with me in it shows just one week’s bumper collection.  I even had to add an extra donation box to cope and was able to extend the scheme out to occasionally include a second food bank in the town.
Photo of a woman seating in front of a hedge with vegetables on her lap and to her left. There is a sign saying “WYMONDHAM ALLOTMENT ASSOCIATION, PLANT EXCHANGE AREA ONLY THIS IS NOT A GENERAL DUMPING AREA"
Cllr. James: “No. I was not generally dumped in the area 🤣”

NOTHING is wasted.  There was a huge glut of marrows and courgettes in 2023 (frankly, if I never see another courgette, it will be too soon) and the food banks could not take all of them.  I posted on the Hart’s Farm FB group and left the spares outside my house; free to whoever wanted them.  They all went.  Other town councillors took some to distribute locally in their areas.  Whatever it took, they were all used.  

This is just one example of a sustainable food scheme in the town.  In 2023 the Town Council’s planters, thanks to the Wymondham In Bloom volunteers and Town Council funding, contained tomatoes, herbs and strawberries as part of an ‘incredible edible’ help yourself initiative.  There is also a help yourself vegepod in the alleyway behind the White Hart.

How much spare produce will be donated this year?  What other schemes can we come up with to promote sustainable food in our town?  Perhaps a Lend and Tend scheme to connect those who want to share their garden with someone who does not have one?  

Watch this space!

Cllr. Annette James

Credit: photos courtesy of Annette James.

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