October 2023

monmouthtransition

Dear Transitioners

We hope you were all able to enjoy some of the many goings on at both the ACE Monmouth Festival and Greener Abergavenny Festival.  Both were crammed with stalls, activities, demonstrations, discussions, films and food, music and fun.  They were great awareness raising events.  We extend our heartiest thanks to the many organisers and volunteers who made them possible, and welcome our new members

After so much activity, October is a quieter month for us all with just two items for your diaries – firstly another Apple Pressing – this time at St James Community Hall, Wyesham – this Sunday, 8 October from 10.15 to 1pm.  Bring your apples or pears, clean bottles and, with a little help from the organisers, make yourselves some delicious fresh juice!

Our monthly meeting is on Tuesday, 10 October at 7.30 via Zoom.  The agenda and notes of our September meeting are below the signature line.  Please join us:-

Join Zoom Meeting

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87873094146?pwd=wCl2KVnyNuZVTpRp1unhGGv5yIwoWL.1

Meeting ID: 878 7309 4146

Passcode: TM

The balmy autumn weather is great for gardening, but please don’t tidy your gardens any more than is absolutely necessary.  The leaves and dead stems and branches are invaluable habitat and provide shelter for zillions of little, and not so little, creatures over the winter months.  I was delighted to spy a hedgehog sleeping in a pile of dead leaves and twigs in my garden this morning;  hopefully he has found a good place to build his nest for the winter.

Agenda:  Transition Monmouth Members’ Meeting via Zoom

Tuesday 10 October 2023 at 7.30

Introductions

Apologies for absence

Note taker

Notes of the last meeting – copied below and matters arising

Future Events: 

Apple Pressings

Coffee Morning:  Claudia and Kelly to arrange

Climate Change Workshop – at the Museum – 6.30 on Thursday 16 November

Financials

Friends of the Lower Wye – update on activities

Green Grow/Green Spaces – tree nursery, pollinator garden notice board, Kitchen Garden notice board, Tudor Road Playing Fields, Attik

Monmouth Community Fridge – and Wyesham Warren

Monnow Voice Article

Any other business Date of next meeting:  Tuesday 14 November

NOTES:  Transition Monmouth Members’ Meeting

12 September 2023 at 7.30 via Zoom

Present:  Bryan Miller, Vivien Mitchell, Charles Emes, Kelly Jackson-Graham, Claudia Blair, Geraldine Smith

Apologies:  Cheryl Cummings, Louise Martin, Mike Dunsbee, Nick Day, Waltraud Engelfield, Mary Boase, Emma Bryn

Note taker:  Vivien Mitchell

Notes of the last meeting:  Action:  Bryan will check that the notes of Mark Hand’s presentation have been posted on our website.

Future Events:-

Apple Pressings:  We will do an apple pressing or at least a couple of demonstrations at the ACE Climate Festival.  This will be followed by a pressing event in early October at St James’ Hall, Wyesham

ACE Climate Festival:  Saturday 23 September, 11am till 4pm at the Blestium Street Car Park:  We will have stalls for plants/seeds, nature/gardening books, our display board plus leaflets, Benthyg, the Community Fridge, apple pressing and Plastic Free Monmouth – so we need many volunteers throughout the day starting at 10am for set up.  Bryan has booked gazebos, tables and chairs from Benthyg together with the apple press and a children’s game.  Action:  Bryan to organise a rota of helpers, advertise for plants/seeds and books, and arrange for displays from Benthyg, and PFM.  Kelly/Claudia will arrange for a Fridge display.  Vivien has prepared the TM display board.  There will be teas, coffees and cake for volunteers

On Sunday 24 September Friends of the Lower Wye will have a display/information stall.

Coffee Morning:  Deferred to our next meeting

Green Library Week:  2 to 8 October:  ACE has been working with the library re books on climate change.  Action:  Vivien to find out if we can have a display

Financials:  Claudia reported that we have:-

  • General Sub-Account:  £909 – after a boost from sales of books/plants/seeds at Wye July and sale of raffle tickets.  This is sufficient to cover our insurance costs for the year
  • Food Sense:  £8735 – sufficient to cover costs for the coming year but we will have to do a significant fund raise thereafter.
  • Green Grow: £1127 – sufficient for quite a while
  • Plastic Free Monmouth:  £181 – sufficient pro tem.  A further £500 is available from Monmouth Town Council if needed
  • Claypatch:  £5397 – sufficient to complete works detailed in the 10-year management plan
  • Friends of the Lower Wye:  £2133.  Further fund raising will be required to cover costs for the year, let alone beyond.  FLW will exceed their budget for the year as more testing sites have been identified and more volunteer testers have been trained

Signatories:  Kate Rees has moved to Cardiff and Karin Chandler has stepped down from a Committee role.  Claudia proposed that these two signatories be replaced by Helena Ronicle and Emma Bryn who are readily available and very local.  The proposal was agreed by the meeting as being very sensible.

Funding:  A further source of funding now open is the Principality Building Society.  Charles will look further into this with a view to applying for ACE but he will report back to us on procedure/suitablitiy

Friends of the Lower Wye:  Mike Dunsbee and Nick Day were at a meeting to discuss chicken farms but sent in a written report:-

  • We have received £1,000 from Dave Richards for testing equipment, £40 from a stall holder and £500 from the Monmouth Charity
  • Raft Race – no real interest in participating
  • We met with John Reed, Director of Avara Foods, regarding removal of all manure from 83 Avara chicken farms starting in January 2023.  The other 25 farms will be monitored closely to ensure any manure spread onto the land is within the nitrate levels
  • We met with Patrick Lewis, MD of Gamber Logistics, to obtain clarification of the Avara contract – monitoring the amount collected and depositing the same amount out of the catchment
  • We have highlighted a major issue on the River Trothy.  Six testers checked the pollution levels and found near the source two dairy farms where the levels of phosphate and nitrate were 175% above the NRW target.  NRW have been notified to make a farm visit.  We await results
  • We are attending the SARA Wild Swim on Sunday 17 September
  • We have been asked to meet with Julie James, Climate Change Minister, to discuss solutions for the Wye
  • We are taking the Senedd’s Agriculture Liaison Manager to a farm visit in Herefordshire to present a biomass combustion solution to the excess chicken manure
  • We addressed the Labour Group – well attended and good feedback
  • We have been asked to consider a follow up event in November.  We are considering having presenters to talk about ‘solutions’ to the nitrates entering the river
  • We are looking forward to the ACE Climate Festival
  • We have identified more test sites and will engage more volunteers to share the workload on both new and existing sites
  • Nick Day was on BBC Breakfast TV for a ‘live’ test showing how polluted the river is

Green Grow/Green Spaces:  At the tree nursery it’s the year of the bindweed – we had none in previous years but are now having regular working parties to clear it.  We are waiting on the results of a funding application to Monmouth Rotary to purchase a new noticeboard for the Pollinator Garden;  Bryan has sourced one with an aluminium frame which we think would suit us well and withstand the weather.  The Orchard Notice Board needs a clean and a refurb;  Jacqui Hutley has agreed to help Vivien to do this.  It would be good to have a noticeboard at the Kitchen Garden;  this is still being cultivated No Dig but is being simplified to include just soft fruit, herbs and self seeded flowers – violas, calendulas, nasturtiums.  Verbena bonariensis has taken up residence and is very attractive to both humans and insects.

Monmouth Community Fridge:  Geraldine Smith from the Wyesham Warren operated by the Wyesham Christian Fellowship told us how this was operating successfully providing cheap food to 40 subscribers.  It was agreed that we donate our Community Fridge shed for their use so long as they are able to satisfy environmental health requirements. 

Transition Monmouth and in particular (we think the Community Fridge) has been shortlisted for the Community Awards and we have been invited to take four members to the awards ceremony.  Action:  Vivien to check details and inform Claudia and Kelly.

The Fridge has been offered the services of a social worker to provide support and guidance, especially on how to deal with difficult customers.

£1,500 of Circular Economy funding has been provided to the Fridge to replace racking, purchase a Henry vacuum cleaner, head torches and other supplies.  We are grateful to Ryan Coleman for arranging this.

Terry Ing is organising a social event – bowling at the Royal Oak – an opportunity for day and night volunteers to get to meet each other.

Benthyg:  Benthyg is very successful and busy.  Tom Clarke has joined the day team to provide additional cover, and Louise Martin has taken over marketing.  Welcome to both, and many thanks to Jem Jenkins-Jones for her marketing help to date.  We have been busy making space for future projects such as dressing up clothes, and training volunteers from the Abergavenny branch.  We expect to be busy during the ACE Climate Festival.

Any Other Business:-

Plastic Free Monmouth:  Beccy MacDonald-Lofts attended the Monmouth Town Council People and Places meeting on 11 September.  She reported:-

  • There appears to be little further scope in targeting individuals – if they are going to do it, they are doing it already
  • PFM has already successfully targeted businesses and many have been awarded PF status as defined by Surfers Against Sewage.  The system will be enhanced so that businesses are able to achieve bronze, silver or gold status
  • In 2022, MCC signed up to the Motion for the Ocean – https://oceanconservationtrust.org/motion-for-the-ocean-swims-upstream/ – whereby we look further than our immediate vicinity re plastic pollution and consider the sources and the detrimental effect it has not only on our immediate environment but further afield and, in particular downstream – ultimately to the oceans
  • There is much scope in working with schools with this concept and, on a trial basis, PFM has chosen Overmonnow Primary School.  The responses, ideas, solutions and commitments from the children is impressive

At the meeting, Cllr David Evans welcomed this wider approach and described how MTC had already funded testing of the Wye not just in Monmouth but upstream to Hereford and downstream to Chepstow.

There was a display board which we will try to borrow for the ACE Festival – Action:  Vivien

Public Transport:  Matt MacDonald-Wallace has told us about the sad state of the buses serving Hereford, and of the impossibility of undertaking a day’s work in London using public transport only.  Action:  Vivien undertook to raise this at the Climate Change Champions meeting the following day

The Story of Climate Change:  Monmouth Museum has invited us to a workshop on 16 November at 6.30 to discuss