During August and September, BEST members will once again be running Crop Swap Stalls, where you can swap your surplus home produce for something else, or if you haven’t anything to swap and simply want to take home some really fresh Bentham local food, you can make a donation to the Practical Action charity, to support a project using solar power to pump water in arid areas of East Africa. Click here for info about the project.

What might be on the Crop Swap Stalls?

Fruit
Vegetables
Herbs
Flowers
Preserves
Honey
Free-range eggs
Home baking

The stall will be on the Main Street near the Post Office, from 9.30 till 11.30 on the following Saturday mornings: 9th and 23rd August, and 6th and 20th September.

October 25, 2013 by Collette Knowles

Sustainable Staveley

Here’s another site you might be interested in:

http://www.sustainablestaveley.org.uk/staveley-big-onion/

Don’t forget to look at our meetings & events page for details of our next Green Cafe. This will be about a local currency “The Realm Exchange”

If you have a local business we are particularly keen to welcome you so you can find out what it’s all about. Plus there is CAKE!!!

October 1, 2013 by Collette Knowles

Local Shopping

This is a comment from Peter Lennard - Don't be shy - 
please leave your comments/answers at the bottom of 
the post.

I live only part time in Low Bentham but was very 
pleased to see the arrival/expansion/conversion of
 the shop called Antiques into &tiques, selling food.
 On checking it out I found that they are selling 
organic fruit and veg at very competitive prices 
compared to supermarkets, will take orders for 
newspapers and also sell nice bread. I compared the 
price of their smoked salmon with Sainsbury in 
Lancaster. &ntiques price of £2.95 for a pack of 
Atlantic Smoked Salmon compared with (best price) 
2 for £8 at Sainsbury for factory farmed smoked salmon
 (similar weight per pack I think). Of course they 
don't do the range that any supermarket can do, but I
 look in at the shop first even if I am intending to 
go into Lancaster, for instance, and note what I can buy
 here on my return. But are people using this shop? Not 
many, it seems. Isn't it more environmentally 
sustainable to buy locally where possible and only go to
 a distant supermarket for things not available locally 
for a reasonable price? Is there any way that we can 
persuade local people to give it a try?