We are thrilled that the community school gardens are continuing to flourish. The gardens help provide a haven for wildlife and have become an integral part of school life. Sowing, growing and maintaining crops has been going on throughout the year both in our beds as well as in our polytunnel. In the depths of Winter, we eagerly watched onions and garlic grow with students learning that these clever little plants will find a way to grow, even if planted upside down. Students loved watching the tractor in action and enjoyed learning about larger scale farming.

The swede was harvested in autumn and in early spring we made our delicious cawl together. We prepped the veg, talked about texture and flavour, but the best part was the eating, where students got to reap the rewards of their hard work. We’ve also found time to forage, with students learning about the bounties of the natural world around them. It’s a joy to find a hazelnut flower together or flick a catkin and watch the pollen float away. It’s been wonderful to see how students’ confidence has grown and to see the joy they have in working towards a shared goal. They have become bold and excited when talking about food and prepping for the CAWL project.

This project has not only taught them about growing and harvesting food but it has also introduced them to social enterprise, giving students an understanding of the importance of a circular economy. You will be delighted to know that we have some of these delicious Cawl available at the shop on a Wednesday so please come and say hello and have a taste for yourself.

Alongside our work with schools, we have also been visiting residents at Cartref Dyfi. Sowing seeds with our resident gardener Ken from the care home has been great fun and has proved to be a therapeutic outlet. Ken also tried his hand at making apple juice which was thoroughly enjoyable. Next we will be sowing pumpkins seeds with residents. The sown seeds will be taken to the school polytunnel to grow on for a field scale crop. If you would like to leave a small donation for either our CAWL or Cartref Dyfi projects, we now have an option for donations to be made on our website:

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Friends of Tymhorau

Supporters Membership

Introducing “Friends of Tymhorau”:
Exploring land-based practices, supporting sustainability,
and contributing to the local economy and ecology.

Tymhorau Dyfi is looking for supporter members, and we wonder if that could be you? Would you like to join Friends of Tymhorau?

Imagine inspiring evenings in our Machynlleth shop listening to interesting talks with warming drinks and traditional music. And imagine a creative skill-share in a local woodland with a fire, local food, and enriching talks and demonstrations. What a great chance to gather and learn about land-based skills!

Supporter members, or Friends, pay a subscription of £5 a month – or more if you can. It is easy to sign up on the website and you can cancel at any time.

If you join before Christmas, a free, locally foraged wreath will come with every subscription.

Interested? Please read on to find out more about our social enterprise. Your contribution will support us in our aims and objectives: to run enriching courses, allow wildlife to thrive in the countryside around us, and continue to support our community.

Tymhorau Dyfi is a social enterprise based in its shop on Machynlleth high-street, attracting 40 members from the Dyfi Valley and further afield around Cymru. These trading members are small independent businesses of growers, makers and artists celebrating the nature and land of Cymru through their carefully crafted products and land use practices. Tymhorau Dyfi acts as a route to market for our members, and as a support network for sharing ideas and resources. Our aims and objectives are to explore the traditional land practices of Cymru, and the potential for new markets for land-based goods that support wildlife and community.

Currently, we are developing a new option for our supporters and customers to become more involved in Tymhorau and help us in our aims and objectives. Friends of Tymhorau will be a membership that brings our supporters together for talks and gatherings, and provides a little financial support to the social enterprise.

We run on mainly volunteer hours in the shop but we have a few simple roles that are paid, and we have rent and overheads. Our membership scheme will help provide financial security into the future and allow us to increase our reach. A monthly contribution from a Friends of Tymhorau membership will help us to continue to support our trading members, but will also contribute to our annual community land project. Last year, with the help of local farmers, school children, and the residents at a local care home for the elderly, we grew and cooked the ingredients for cawl, in order to make tasty healthy food that we distributed on Machynlleth high-street. For our project this year coming, we hope to run a local cut flower and flax crop experiment with a local farm, recruiting women volunteers who are facing challenges in their lives and need positive experiences. We will also be working with local schools to monitor the biodiversity increases during the project, and will offer two summer placements for secondary school leavers looking to be inspired by the growing of flax and flowers.

New to Tymhorau this year will be regular evening knowledge-share talks in the shop on land-based topics run by our membership. For example, Callum will talk about perennials for wildlife, Grace will talk on ecology, our meat producers on some of the challenges they face, and our wood workers on how they harvest and work with timber. We will also host musical evenings inspired by the land and the history of land use in the Dyfi Valley and further around Cymru. We will cover some of the farming pressures of today, and how the future can be more sustainable in the face of climate change.

For supporter and trading members, we aim to hold seasonal gatherings around a fire, with a skill-share where interested parties can gather, learn and exchange knowledge. There will be food, drinks and music at these events, all available at special discounts along with early bird places exclusively for the Friends of Tymhorau membership.

Friends of Tymhorau will receive email updates on our work and progress in the community and regarding our trading members, as well as news on updates to the shop. (… For example we are hoping to expand our food section this year.)

If you like the sound of this and would like to join Friends of Tymhorau, please contact: outreach@tymhorau.cymru or sign up here.* Your support would be extremely helpful for our future as a social enterprise for sustainable land use and community in Cymru.

The Tymhorau Team

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Friends of Tymhorau

Sowing Seeds in the Community

Friends of Tymhorau