Chichester

Organic
Gardening
Society
Newsletter 49
January 2009
NOTES FROM THE COMMITTEE
January 2009
So here we are at the end of another gardening year. We’ve all done our
share of moaning about this year’s depressing summer, but when you look
back on it, this is probably the closest we’ve come to 12 months of
traditional British weather for a long time. – a cool damp summer
interspersed with short bursts of hot and sunny weather and now, at last,
some proper frosty winter weather that should lay low some of the pests and
lay the foundations for a good fruit crop next year.
There is no doubt that global warming is happening but it also seems that its
short-term effects will be much more unpredictable than forecast. The advice
to invest in drought-resistant plants and replace our runner beans with
Mediterranean vegetables now seems a bit simplistic. Did anyone try
growing aubergines even under glass this year?
As worrying as climate change, but receiving far less publicity, is the rapid
decline in the insect population, particularly honey bees. It has been obvious
over the past decade that when you leave windows open on a warm summers
evening (not a frequent event this year), the number of insects attracted to
the lights indoors is far less than it used to be. This decline is now official,
and the future of the honey bee is particularly precarious. Worryingly,
government organisations like DEFRA that should be taking this seriously
seem fairly indifferent, and funds for research into the reasons for the decline
and how to halt it are stingy. Don’t they realise how much of horticulture,
the environment and our food supplies depend on bees! Silly question really!
Most ministers and senior civil servants probably believe that food grows
wrapped in plastic ready for the Occado van!
As organic gardeners we are doing our bit to keep the bio- diversity of the
environment intact. But for things to really turn around, we need far more
people to understand how important it is look after our plot of land, large or
small, in harmony with nature and how our lifestyle choices impact on the
environment worldwide. The Transition Towns initiative is based on the
belief that a more sustainable society can only be built from the bottom up,
by the actions and lifestyles of millions of people. Organic gardening fits
ideally into this outlook and this is why it is important that we work with
Transition Towns – not to do any different from what we do already but to
work on how we can encourage and help more people to join us. With the
recession and the scare about food security, as evidenced by the demand for
allotments, there has never been a better time.

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February’s meeting will be a discussion on practical ways that Cogs can help
to encourage growing in general and organic growing in particular. Among
the suggestions we already have are the setting up of neighbour mentoring
teams to help people who want to get growing but don’t know how; and
developing a Cogs demonstration plot. We are sure there are lots more.
Please join us if you can and share your ideas.
A happy Christmas and New Year to you all. And good growing in 2009.
The Committee
COGS NOTICES
Speakers and Meetings
We are always looking for suggestions for speakers. If you have any
idea for speakers or visits, please let Vi Cowan, our Speakers’
Secretary, know.
We also need volunteers to help at meetings. Please contact Liz
Campling if you can help.
MONTH Set up Hall Run the Meeting
January 2009 Pat Alderton
February
March
New Membership Secretary
We have a new membership secretary, Nina Guilfoyle. Everything to
do with membership should be sent to her from now onwards. Her
contact details are on the back of this newsletter and will appear on all
new membership renewal forms.
New Committee members
We welcome two new members on to the committee – Nina Guilfoyle,
the new membership secretary, and Sally Petch.
RHS Concession Cards
We now have 3 RHS concession cards, each of which gives the holder
and a guest one third off the price of entry to the RHS Gardens at
Wisley (except Sundays), Rosemoor in Devon, Harlow Carr in
Yorkshire, Hyde Hall in Essex and Trebah in Cornwall. And also
entitles us to one free group visit of up to 55 people per year to an
RHS Garden. Liz Campling currently holds 2 of these cards and the
other is with Nina Guilfoyle, so if you would like to borrow one,
please contact them.
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We have to pay a small fee for these cards and they are only valid for
a year, so if there is little interest from members, we will not renew
next year.
Membership Subs and Entry Fees
At the request of a member, the subject of the £1 entrance fee to
meetings was raised at the AGM. After lively discussion, the proposal
was put to the floor that the £1 entrance fee for members be dropped
(although retained for visitors) and the annual household subscription
be raised to £5 from 1st October 2009. The vote went overwhelmingly
in favour of this. Therefore:
• The £1 entrance fee is dropped with immediate effect
• The household membership subscription will be £5 from 1st
October 2009 (stays at £4 until then, so only pay £4 if you
are renewing for this year.)
• Visitors pay £2 for entry to meetings.

Charitable Donations
When Liz, the Treasurer, was tidying up the old finance records, she
discovered that in years gone past, COGS sometimes gave a small
donation to a charity with organic connections. Past beneficiaries
included Organics for Africa and Urban Organics, which introduces
young people in deprived urban areas to the benefits of organic food.
The Committee thought it might be a good idea to think about doing
this again – say £30-£50 a year. The idea will be put to the vote at the
2009 AGM. In the meantime, if any members have a suggestion for a
suitable charity, perhaps they could let a Committee member know. If
the vote goes in favour of a donation and we have more than one
suggestion, we can put that to the vote as well.
Seed Swop
Following the suggestion of a member,
Derek Henderson, we are thinking of using
the newsletter as a clearing house for seed
swops. Members who have spare seeds or
who are looking for seeds can send the
details and their phone number for publication in the newsletter. It will
then be up to interested members to arrange the actual swopping
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among themselves. Within the month before publication, please let
Penelope know your name and phone number and the seeds you
have spare or want.
(Garden Organic’s Heritage Seed Library has a similar scheme).
Note You are welcome to bring plants to meetings – but they go
home with you if no-one else wants them.
***
STANSTED SHOW - Friday 5- Sunday 7 June 2009
After several years of successful plant sales at Stansted
I hope 2009 will be a triumph too. Can you grow some
plants for us to sell?. We need tomatoes, lettuce,
pepper, aubergine, cucumbers, courgettes or any other
vegetable plants. Last year we had many requests for
veg (many stands were selling tomatoes and we had
several plants left over) so its veg! veg! glorious veg this
year. However, we do need some unusual tomatoes to sell as well. Herbs
are also very popular and flowers with their coloured petals sell too. Please
let me know what you could go grow for the COGS stand.
Also if you are available to help on the stand please let me have your name
and what time you are available. Many thanks
Vee Tel 01243 780518 or email [email protected]

New for Meetings

We would like to begin having a small ‘panel’ available at the end of
COGS meetings, so that anyone with queries can get help and advice.
Pat Adams has very generously agreed to lead this anyway for a start,
but would like more people on the panel. Would anyone like to
volunteer please? For one meeting or more. You do not need to know
about everything but to have plenty of gardening experience. We can
see how this develops, as it could be very useful – so please think if
you would be able to contribute in this way!
If so, please contact Pat: 01243 602713 or
[email protected]
PESTICIDES IN COURT
In late November 2008 a local resident, Georgina Downs, was in the
headlines, and even interviewed on the World Service, for her long and
finally successful battle to have the government forced to consider its
support of pesticides and indiscriminate spraying. The judge granted her
application for a judicial review of the policy of Defra, and ruled that the
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government is ‘failing in its responsibility to protect people from harmful
exposure to toxic chemicals’.
He concluded that Miss Downs has moreover ‘produced solid evidence that
residents have suffered harm to their health’. There are ‘defects’ in Defra’s
approach to pesticide safety, and they ‘contravene the requirements’ of a
1991 EU directive. The secretary of Defra must therefore rethink the way
spraying is controlled, and the risks to human health must be assessed.
Georgina Downs made the front page of both our local papers. She spoke of
unregulated pesticide use as ‘one of the biggest public health scandals of our
time’, and called on Gordon Brown to block any government appeal and ‘get
on with protecting the health of citizens of this country’.
Will this cause a real change? Anyone who lives near fields which are
regularly sprayed would consider these compounds are not benign (they are,
after all, designed to be lethal to certain forms of life). To test one chemical
and declare it ‘safe’ does not allow for the cumulative effects of repeated
sprays with a mixture of chemicals. These methods only began with the
second world war; before that, traditional farming was along organic lines.
Dangers to wildlife
Not only humans, but wildlife of many kinds suffer from
pesticides. In its Winter 2008 issue of Living Earth, the Soil
Association tells us that bees are endangered by the use of
pesticides, and this is officially recognised: a point made in the Downs
judgement was that under the 1986 Control of Pesticides Regulations,
beekeepers must be given 48 hours notice of any spraying with chemicals
likely to harm bees. The Soil Association has asked the Secretary of State for
an immediate ban on neonicotinoides, already banned in four EU countries.
A hundred different crops and plants are pollinated by bees, so their decline
would pose a real danger to crops and to our food supply.
Have you found The Organic Kitchen?
We were surprised that this little café has been in Chichester for over 18
months and we had not discovered it. Walk down South Street from the
Cross, take the first left, Cooper Street, and The Organic Kitchen is just on
the left. Pop in downstairs for a quick Fairtrade coffee, tea or chocolate, or a
refreshing organic fruit juice or water. If you want something more
substantial, go up to the light and airy dining room – perhaps full English
breakfast (meaty or vegetarian £7.95), seasonal soup £4.50, warm organic
salad (£6.45 or burgher (ultimate veggie or Goodwood beef £7.95).
Hardworking proprietor, Christian Barrington doesn’t come from a catering
background but has always been interested in food and cooking. All main
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ingredients are locally sourced except for chicken as the right supplier hasn’t
yet been found locally. Other meat comes from Goodwood and vegetables
from Wayside Organics and Tuppenny Barn. All the bread is made on the
premises and everything is “cooked from scratch”. Very good it is too. The
café is a friendly place and you can browse the cookery book shelf while you
are waiting for your order to be cooked! CT

FOOD AND FARMING AWARDS

"As far as I'm concerned these are the Oscars of the food
world and it doesn' t get much better than this." Jamie
Oliver
Towards the end of what Sheila Dillon, presenter of the
Radio 4 Food and Farming Awards, described as an
‘extraordinary year’, she introduced the winners for 2008,
chosen from people and organisations nominated by
listeners.
So to cheer ourselves up, for those of you who missed the
programme, here are some of those winners.
Farmer of the year is Mary Mead, of Yeo Valley, who took on the running
of the company after her husband’s death, and has brought excellent organic
dairy produce to supermarkets around the country. Producers of the year:
Calon Wen, a Welsh co-operative who felt strongly that their milk should be
processed locally. They pioneered in this country the use of plastic ‘bag’
litres of milk, which fit nicely into their plastic jugs. (Available at Waitrose;
Sainsburys have since copied them; the method was being used in Israel
some 30 years ago).
Best market: Bury, Lancs, a very ancient traditional market of some 300
traders.
Local food retailer award went jointly to Unicorn Grocery Manchester, an
independent outlet, and Conrad Davies Spar shop, North Wales, with local
produce in season.
Takeaway: Adam’s Fish and Chips, in the Scilly Isles: potatoes and fish
both sourced within sight of his shop.
The Derek Cooper Award, named after the original presenter of the
programme, went to Geoff Tansy, author of The Local Control of Food.
Food Personality: Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, named in particular for his
Chicken Out! campaign.
Some of these are familiar to us, from their work or their produce, and they
can all give us optimism as we start the new growing year.

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FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Transition Chichester feasts on local produce
On October 28 2008 one hundred people tucked
into a three-course banquet at the Vicar’s Hall,
South Street, organised by Transition Chichester.
What was special about this dining experience
was that the ingredients for all three courses were
sourced wholly from local producers.
“A sumptuous meal – and really fresh!” remarked Peter Albon.
“It felt really great to be eating the food that we are meant to
be eating – I had the beef, which came from cattle that graze
on Pagham saltmarshes. It was delicious!” Lily Susser (10)
reported that the ice cream (from Sidlesham) was scrumptious.
The venue was perfect: the Vicar’s Hall is an astonishingly
beautiful upstairs room in a fifteenth century building belonging
to Chichester Cathedral.
The guests were informed and inspired by a fascinating talk on
food issues delivered by Clare Devereux of ‘Food Matters.’
Clare talked about the dependence of our current food system
on oil for fertiliser production, transportation and packaging. It
has been calculated that 18% of UK CO2 emissions are
attributable to the food chain – a figure that would be greatly
reduced if more of us bought local organic produce.
“One thing we could all aim to do right now is to try and eat at
least one meal a week knowing where all the ingredients came
from,” Clare suggested.
Clare also looked at the dilemmas that so often face the
conscientious shopper: do we buy the organic pear from the US
or the non-organic one from the UK? Do we choose the
organic baked beans at 60p a can when the non-organic ones
are just 17p?
“I don’t have the answers to these questions,” Clare admitted.
“Our confusion over such choices shows that there is a real
need for more facts and figures.” She mentioned carbon
pricing applied to food among possible future solutions.
There is some good news to shout about regarding food: the
rise of farmers’ markets throughout the UK (there are now 650)
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means the public can access local produce much more easily.
The demand for local fruit and vegetable delivery schemes is
growing too. And community and grassroots grow-your-own
projects are springing up in many towns and cities, where skills
in growing food can be shared and community spirit is nurtured
along the way
It is clear that in future a lot more of us will have to be involved
in food production as peak oil does away with our reliance on
large-scale conventional agriculture. Learning how to grow
food could become a significant part of our children’s
education. One of the dining tables was peopled by primary
school teachers and social workers. They spoke out during the
question and answer session that followed the meal. “Get
kitchens back into primary schools!” was the cry. Everyone
agreed that real food and proper food preparation isn’t being
adequately prioritised at the moment.
Rosemary Moon, who planned the meal, told the guests about
a little book called ‘The Sussex Food Finder.’ This is a guide to
the farms and food businesses in Sussex.
Howard Smith, a local organic farmer said, “It’s beholden on
people to make contact with those who actually produce
food… They should search out those who are passionate about
what they produce.” Kate Sabin

Back to our roots

Sustainable food and medicine from mother Earth!
Presentation by Steve Taylor at the COGS January meeting.
Steve Taylor is a practicing Herbalist who has a passion for our local native
flora. He is attempting to reinvigorate the traditions of our ancestors by once
again celebrating and using the healing potential of the foods and herbs that
share our environment and gardens. This is a way of life familiar to our
grand-parents but generally lost to us. The sustainable vision of the future
must include making use of all that nature freely provides. If we can learn
how to benefit from the harvest that comes from our own environment, we
can relinquish our over dependence on unsustainable systems of nutrition
and medicine that have grown up out of a need for profit rather than a desire
for harmony with our fellow creatures and plants. Join him in exploring this
vision of healing for the 21st Century.
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The Incompleat Organic Gardener (apologies to Isaac Walton!)
This short piece is designed for those who are new to organic gardening, and
are planning on growing a few vegetables in the coming year. It’s based on
my own experiences of running an organic allotment for several years, and
my working plans for it over the next few months. I shan’t talk about fruit,
rhubarb and so on, but concentrate of planting the first crop of vegetables.
For background I should say that my allotment is run on a “deep bed”
system (each bed about 4ft wide and 20ft long) with grass walkways. The
beds are never walked on, so there is no compacting of the soil (that’s
probably why my brussels are usually a disaster!). It isn’t a “no-dig” system,
but in practice I rarely use a spade except for edging. I practice crop rotation
(which is never as neat and tidy to organise as the books so often imply!) and
avoid all pesticides (sometimes through gritted teeth)’
By the time you read this we will be well into January – which at the
moment is pretty cold, and should be giving pests a hard time – the best
organic control! If we are on top of our soil preparation, January is the time
to browse the seed catalogues. The one for COGS readers is probably the
Organic Gardening Catalogue ((www.organicCatalogue.com) followed by
WigglyWigglers (www. wiggleywigglers.co.uk). However, if you need to
prepare the soil, January and much of February will give you opportunities
to do this, as well as allowing a general tidying up of garden debris. Look for
the clusters of pearly white slugs’ eggs and destroy them. No room for
sentiment here! Less aggressively, in my spare bedroom, I’ll start the
chitting process for my potatoes.
By mid February the packets of seeds will have arrived and some planting
can start. The broad bean is the classics at this time (I know you can plant in
November, but last year most of my beans were eaten (from two sowings!)
by December – I suspect birds since the only disturbance was a hole drilled
straight down (no spoil of earth). I’ll also try some parsnips, though I’ve
never had much success with early sowings
March is the time for frantic activity. I’ll probably start sowing peas in early
March. Summer cabbage also will go in, along with brussels sprouts
(surely this year the sprouts will be bigger than 5p pieces!). Spinach will go
in as well (with maybe a second sowing in August/September). A first
sowing of carrots can be made (and in my case, a second and third before
some actually germinate!). For the first time I am going to try some pak
choi, which apparently will provide succession crops if I repeat sow every 3
weeks through until July. Some chives will be sown, attractive as well as
edible, and a good companion plant. By now I will probably be putting in

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some more land cress, starting the radishes and (another experiment)
borlotto and spagna beans (though under glass rather than direct sowing).
The big activity will be the potato planting (about six weeks after the
chitting started in late January/early February but not before the last frost!).
By mid-March to early April it will be time for celery, basil (probably in the
greenhouse). Onion, cauliflower (under glass) and some mint (in a very
enclosed area). March is also the time to start off, under some protection and
heat, tomato and cucumber plants (outdoor varieties if you don’t have a
green house).
By April it should be an absolute pleasure to be outdoors (ever the optimist)
which is just as well because now the really heavy sowing work begins.
Beetroot, more peas, squash, rocket, savoy cabbage, parsnip (the ones
that will germinate!), parsley, sweet corn, swede, courgette, pumpkin and
runner beans (the latter three all under glass) can all go in.
In addition I will also start off selections of insect attracting flowers (for the
pollinators) and insect repelling flowers(for the carrot and onion flies) – and
because wild flowers look lovely. Good luck, and write in and let us know
what happened. Rob Campling
The luscious logic of local
Local food makes sense to me - delicious, varied and seasonal
sense. Whether living in the City or surrounding villages we are never
far from some beautiful and productive countryside in the Chichester
district. Not that all the countryside boasts particularly good soil -
much of it is only grade 3 out of 5 - and growing conditions are very
different north and south of the Downs.
Eating with the seasons gives a chance to enjoy a wide variety of
foods and, whilst we might all be bored to tears with swedes and
cabbages by the end of March, we will welcome them again in the
autumn. I am happy to eat apples only when the local fruits are
available and to gorge on rhubarb and berries for the rest of the year.
Eating local keeps our money in the local economy too - we tend to
buy from local shops or directly from producers, and it stops the
homogenisation of the High Street. As we face a time of reduced
finances it is up to us all to decide how we spend what money we
have and I, for one, would like to plough my pennies into Local. Of
course we must trade and have always done so, but when we want to
buy bananas, citrus, spices, tea, coffee and cocoa and sugar, we
should strive to buy fairly traded produce - Chichester is, after all, a
Fairtrade City.
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I now have to make a major confession. Until I became involved in
Transition Chichester I was utterly On The Fence about organics.
Having consulted to Waitrose for 11 years I am a great fan of LEAF, a
scheme they champion. It is a marque promoting integrated farm
management with minimum interventions into crops, i.e. restricted
use of inputs, fertilisers and pesticides. It is the best way of producing
fruits and vegetables for the mass market - i.e. the supermarkets.
Producing for the mass market inevitably leads to waste, as does the
perceived need to offer imported exotics. Until people stop buying out
of season fare we will continue to be offered it by multiple retailers,
keen to improve their results year on year. Food waste and the
environmental costs of bringing produce to Chichester from depots up
and down the country, let alone from half way around the world, will
continue to mount.
In terms of spreading the Organic Word, many
shoppers are put off by the premium that organic
food commands because of lower yields and higher
labour costs owing to hand weeding, etc. We will
fail to see the real value of local, organic food until
the true cost of the indiscriminate use of oil-derived
interventions for mass production is appreciated.
I have become convinced that the ultimate goal of a responsible food
society is to produce local food by organic methods. I think it would
also be possible for communities to succeed in producing a fair
proportion of the food that they need in this way. It will require a huge
change of culinary expectation but local, seasonal food is far from
boring and offers an ever-changing menu (except when those swedes
and cabbages seem to endlessly be the only veg available!).
It will take many years for us to reach such a goal and the biggest
challenge will be to start to change the mindset of those who regularly
jump into their cars to shop at a one-stop supermarket. Until the
majority start to think about buying local - and the costs of not doing
so - we will make little significant change. Local will be the first step
for most, and organic local food may be many years hence for the
majority of consumers. COGS, as organic gardeners, have the upper
hand here and are at the cutting edge of this ‘Back to the Future’ way
of life. But incremental changes will start to mount up and, who
knows, perhaps the speed of change will amaze us all?
Rosemary Moon

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COGS DIARY DATES
Monday 26 January Back to our roots
Sustainable food and medicine from mother Earth! Steve Taylor
(See article on page 9)
Monday 23 February Discussion Evening – Transition towns
Discussion Groups on Transition Towns - Following on from Tom
Broughton’s talk in September, we decided at the AGM to discuss ways we
can bring about better community living. COGS can play a role in helping
people discover about organic gardening and new members will have an
opportunity to express their needs as well as other people pooling ideas they
have come up with.
Monday 30 March Ganesh – Organic Gardening
Ganesh runs willow making workshops for adults and children and he is
involved with ecological and environmental projects both in schools and the
private sector. He runs a wide range of activities including teaching Organic
Veggie Growing in Schools and will talk tonight on organic gardening.
Monday 27 April Nick Robinson - Diversity in the
Organic Garden
Nick Robinson worked at Yalding Gardens in Kent for 10 years, starting as a
student and ending up as head gardener. He now works in conservation in
the High Weald.
Nick will talk about natural pest and disease control, propagation and seed
saving plus pass on some valuable tips.
Monday May 18 Spring Fling
Including a quiz and plant swapping.
INFINITY FOODS
Next orders to Pat by Wednesday 25 February please.
(Collect 3 March)
[email protected] or 01243 602713
Other Events of note
READY FOR ANYTHING: Resilience and the art of coping with surprise.
Lecture Dr David Fleming, Vicars’ Hall, Friday January 23, 7:30pm
Dr David Fleming, one of the thinkers who have contributed to the Transition
Towns movement, will discuss the principles of surviving the unexpected and
what that means in practice for us now and in the future.
http://www.theleaneconomyconnection.net/

Unless otherwise stated, Monday meetings take place at

Bassil Shippam Centre, Tozer Way, St Pancras, Chichester PO19 4LG
Meetings start at 7.30pm, doors open at 7.15pm
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Chichester Organic Gardening Society was formed in 1992 as a local group of
both the Henry Doubleday Research Association and the Soil Association.

Aims of the Society

To encourage the growing of healthy produce and beautiful gardens by sustainable
and environmentally kind gardening methods.
To provide a focus for local gardeners and growers to meet those sharing their
interest in gardening with nature, both for social activities and to discuss gardening
and related issues.

COGS activities in support of our Aims

• A programme of regular meetings (indoors September to April, outdoors
May to August) with speakers on gardening and related topics.
• Occasional visits to places of gardening interest.
• Promotion of organic methods at COGS special events and appropriate
local shows such as those at West Dean (Totally Tomato Show) and
Stansted Show.
• Shared purchase and bulk purchase scheme for whole food cooking
supplies to obtain discounts.
• Books available for purchase or on loan from our small library.
Membership costs £5.00 per household. The membership year runs from October to
September. To join contact Nina Guilfoyle on 01243 776063.
Your COGS organisers are:
Officers:
Secretary – Penelope Johnstone (01243 771881)
Treasurer –Liz Campling (01243 532910) [email protected]
Membership Secretary - Nina Guilfoyle (01243 776063) [email protected]
Organisers:
Publicity - Gina Carrington (01243 641390) [email protected]
Speaker Secretary – Vi Cowan (01243 780518) [email protected]
Bookshop/Librarian - Barbara MacGregor (01243 781849)
Infinity Orders – Pat (01243 602713) [email protected]
Stansted Show Co-ordinator - Vi Cowan (01243 780518) [email protected]
Newsletter Editor – Tom Broughton (01243 530019) [email protected]

Committee Members:
Pat Alderton (01243 822615) Liz Campling
Gina Carrington Vi Cowan
Penelope Johnstone
Sally Petch (01243 814598) [email protected]

This newsletter is printed on paper from managed forests

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