Yearly Archives: 2010

The first ever Portobello Organic Market!

basket of veg by Rosemary RatcliffWe now have a site, times and prices set for the mar­ket! The first one is on Saturday 4th September 10am to 2pm in Brighton Park, Brighton Place.  It is also Organic Fortnight and Scottish Food & Drink Fortnight, so more good reas­ons to come along and buy loads of lovely Scottish Organic pro­duce.  Have a look at the updated webpage for more info.  Details of stall hold­ers and enter­tain­ments will be pos­ted as they are confirmed.

Portobello Organic Market September 2010

September 4th 2010, Brighton Park, 10am — 2pm

This is the FIRST EVER Portobello Organic Market!

There will be busk­ers and a face paint­er along with the stalls

In no par­tic­u­lar order here are the stalls so far.…

Hello Petal — Hand tied bou­quets, corsages, arrange­ments and flower themed accessor­ies (homegrown where possible)

Frugal Cool - Locally made sus­tain­able design and craft

Sweet Temptations — loc­ally made medi­ter­ranean cakes

ART by Ian Higgenbotham — paint­ings, dec­or­at­ive sea­side stone and shells

Plants with Purpose — use­ful, edible or wildlife/native plants fruit trees and bushes

Blackmount Foods — meat, beef, lamb, mut­ton, pork, chick­en & pies

Oxenfoord Organics — fruit, veget­ables and flowers.  jams chut­neys and honey

Bloom by Joanna Kent — hand-knit­ted accessor­ies, corsages and jewelery

Phantassie Food — fruit, veg, pre­serves etc

Jo Jo’s Danish Bakery — tra­di­tion­al dan­ish pastries (she’s on facebook!)

Windshiel Organic Farm — lamb, beef, pork & ham eggs

Gourmet Treats — raised game pies and chutneys

Hugh Grierson Organic Farm — freer­ange organ­ic chick­en & eggs

Libby Torrie — sil­ver & beaded jewellery

Herbidacious — homemade face creams & crafts

Bouvrage — berry drinks made from scot­tish rasp­ber­ries and wild finnish blaeberries

Highland Fling & Midget Jems — homemade jam, cakes, bis­cuits & crafts

Next Food Group Meeting

The Next Meeting of the Food Group will be at 7pm in the Espy on the 30th August 2010.  Everyone Welcome!

This is an off­shoot of the old PEDAL food group which has now become the ‘orch­ard’ group.

The Food Group is some­where to share ideas about any­thing to do with grow­ing and eat­ing more loc­ally pro­duced organ­ic pro­duce in Portobello.  The Group also sup­port the PEDAL Food Workers with some of the CCF fun­ded food pro­jects: Portobello Organic Market, Fruitful Porty, The Edinburgh Garden Share Scheme, map­ping loc­al land that may be used for food grow­ing, and a feas­ib­il­ity study into some sort of com­munity sup­por­ted agri­cul­ture pro­ject (Portobello Community Farm).

Vacancy for Project Administrator at PEDAL

A vacancy has now opened at PEDAL for a Project Administrator. This post is fun­ded through the Future Jobs Fund.

Vacancy

Project Administrator

Eligibility

Candidates must be aged 18 – 24 and claim­ing Job Seekers Allowance

Closing Date

16th August 2010

Conditions

The post is for 25 hours a week, is paid at National Minimum Wage and will last for 6 months.

Additional Support

The suc­cess­ful applic­ant will be giv­en addi­tion­al train­ing rel­ev­ant to the post and in-work sup­port from ded­ic­ated Access to Work Coordinators

Please con­tact your Job Centre Plus Advisor to dis­cuss wheth­er you are eli­gible for this vacancy

Please down­load the job description:

Project Administrator Job Description

The Future Jobs Fund pro­gramme is run by The City of Edinburgh Council and Partners

Summer Pruning course

Many folk would like to gain con­fid­ence in prun­ing fruit trees and fruit bushes. The Summer Pruning course to be run at the Community Orchard off Brunstane Road South on the even­ing (6.30pm‑8.30pm) of Thursday 19th of August is for those who want to learn how to get the most from their fruit trees etc by judi­cious prun­ing. Contact Peter Upton or Polly Cooke if you’d like to register for this one-off even­ing course. There’ll be a book­ing fee of £10 to reserve your place, though there’ll be no fur­ther cost.

Bread Making course

If you are inter­ested in learn­ing how to bake your own bread, please con­tact Polly Cooke or Peter Upton at PEDAL. There will be a small charge for the course to cov­er mater­i­als and hire of premises, but we aim to keep this to a minimum.

Water Saving event 28th July

7 – 8pm in Portobello Town Hall

FREE water sav­ing tools to use in your own home

FREE impar­tial advice on sav­ing energy water and money through water efficiency

The oppor­tun­ity to WIN a water effi­ciency makeover for your house

The aver­age house­hold spends around 30% of their gas bill on heat­ing water, which could be as much as £200 a year.

To find out how you could save money and reduce your car­bon foot­print please join us for some refresh­ments at Portobello Town hall  on 28th July 7 – 8pm.

If you can­’t make it along you can still find out about sav­ing water and money here.

Water Saving event 28th July

7 – 8pm in Portobello Town Hall

FREE water sav­ing tools to use in your own home

FREE impar­tial advice on sav­ing energy water and money through water efficiency

The oppor­tun­ity to WIN a water effi­ciency makeover for your house

The aver­age house­hold spends around 30% of their gas bill on heat­ing water, which could be as much as £200 a year.

To find out how you could save money and reduce your car­bon foot­print please join us for some refresh­ments at Portobello Town hall  on 28th July 7 – 8pm.

If you can­’t make it along you can still find out about sav­ing water and money here.

£72,000 Wind Turbine grant funding announced!

Portobello’s plans to pro­duce and sell its own green elec­tri­city have taken a step for­ward with the announce­ment of a £72,000 fund­ing award for PEDAL.

The grant award from the Scottish Government’s Communities and Renewable Energy Scotland scheme is to pay for leg­al and plan­ning costs in estab­lish­ing a com­munity owned wind tur­bine on Portobello’s fam­ous Promenade.

The seafront power plan would see the cre­ation of the first com­mer­cial-scale com­munity power pro­ject in any Scottish city. When oper­a­tion­al, the Seafield tur­bine will gen­er­ate elec­tri­city for homes and busi­nesses in the east of Edinburgh.

Jane Lewis, Chair of PEDAL, said:

“We are thrilled that the cru­cial next stage in this excit­ing pro­ject has received fund­ing. Our ini­tial invest­ig­a­tions sug­gest that a wind tur­bine here could gen­er­ate plenty of clean energy. However, there’s still a long way to go before the tur­bine goes up, and we will be con­sult­ing widely with the loc­al com­munity later in the year.”

Tom Black, Project Manager with PEDAL, said:

“If it does go ahead, it could bring real bene­fits by redu­cing car­bon emis­sions, bring­ing in money that would be made avail­able for loc­al pro­jects, and rais­ing aware­ness of the renew­able energy resources that Edinburgh has on it’s doorstep.”

Today’s award will enable PEDAL to carry out a range of tech­nic­al stud­ies and seek plan­ning per­mis­sion, plus leg­al agree­ments with landown­ers. The tur­bine being con­sidered would be 47.5 metres from the base to the tip of the blade. If plan­ning per­mis­sion is gran­ted, PEDAL would be look­ing for a bank loan to meet the £470,000 costs involved in buy­ing and con­struct­ing the turbine.

The grant comes from the Communities and Renewable Energy Scotland (CARES) scheme, which is admin­istered by nation­al char­ity Community Energy Scotland on behalf of the Scottish Government. The CARES scheme offers grants and tech­nic­al advice to com­munity organ­isa­tions to help with the install­a­tion of a vari­ety of renew­able energy technologies.

Portobello Community Farm  —  Invitation to tender

We have just sent out our invit­a­tion to tender for the com­munity farm feas­ib­il­ity study!

To find out more go to the Invitation to Tender page.