Incredible Edible

May 9, 2018 6:46 AM

The people of Todmorden in Yorkshire, UK came together to turn unused land into something useful, inspiring a movement which has gone global.
posted by Stark (23 comments total)

This is cool, but there was one bit in the article that rankled me slightly:

Growing food was their answer. Clear, now 63 and retired, who previously worked in child protection, lowered one of the walls in her front garden, removing rose bushes to make a bed with herbs and signs saying “help yourself”.

Granted, England is not exactly short on rose bushes, and rosehips require a non-zero amount of processing before they’re edible, but it seems a bit weird to remove a tall, hardy, foragable fruit bush for some low herb that will inevitably be covered in slugs and fox piss before anyone can make use of it.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:00 AM on May 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

Some recent genealogical research on my part uncovered that I have/had relatives in Todmorden, which made me incredibly proud... but still doesn't get me a visa ;)

Although, when I looked up an address I found in old documents -- and looked for it on Google Earth -- I found it was the one building in the row of houses to have been demolished.

FYI, this has been going on in Todmorden for some time now
posted by terrapin at 8:19 AM on May 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

I got my seed potatoes from the Incredible edible todmorden festival that occurs at the end of the winter each year. It was great because you could get them by the tuber instead of having to get a large bag. It meant that I could get 4 different varieties and still not have to plant out a quarter acre of potatoes and grow enough potatoes to feed a family of 10 for a year. Instead I could get 6 tubers of 4 different types (at the low cost of 17p a tuber) and get a good selection of earlies and maincrops and only grow 50 pounds of potatoes.
posted by koolkat at 8:24 AM on May 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

And if you want to move to Todmorden, a totally haunted church is up for auction today.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 8:42 AM on May 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

Heroes all of them.

Perhaps fitting that it's a story from England where one of the first recorded cases of guerrilla gardening was Gerrard Winstanley's True Levellers, or Diggers, in 1649. They got trounced for their movement to grow food for the hungry on unused lots, but their legacy lived on. It inspired some of the back-to-land hippies in the 1960s and yet more guerrilla gardeners everywhere to this day.

Proving that success isn't measured by the harvest alone and you never know what you might achieve if you just plant the seeds.
posted by ecourbanist at 8:49 AM on May 9, 2018 [6 favorites]

Wow, that's only a 19th century church? Looks so much older.
posted by jeff-o-matic at 9:03 AM on May 9, 2018

Todmorden sounds like the name of a death metal band.
posted by Kattullus at 9:06 AM on May 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

Thanks, robocop, now I want to move there AND to that haunted church! And you can visit for inspiration.
posted by terrapin at 9:08 AM on May 9, 2018

Kind of sounds like a community garden. Some friends of mine started one here in Washington DC that opened in 2004. Lots of used needles and the like in that lot before they cleared it.
posted by exogenous at 9:12 AM on May 9, 2018

The group then turned their minds to the grass verges which seemed to only attract dog poo, and turned them into herb gardens too
Appetising!
posted by KateViolet at 9:18 AM on May 9, 2018

The forner farms turned to exurbs turned to empty mcmasions could operate as working small farm greenbelts
posted by The Whelk at 9:43 AM on May 9, 2018

It isn't mentioned in the article, but before doing this sort of thing, it's always good to check and see if the soil in the area has unhealthy concentrations of heavy metals. Lead is the most common, thanks to lead based paint being in use for centuries in some places.

Many parts of New York City, for example, have such high lead concentrations in the soil that simply being around it can cause lead levels in people to rise, and no one should eat anything grown there. Some soil in NYC has lead levels similar to those found at superfund cleanup sites.

So yay urban gardening! But do your homework before you eat anything grown in urban soil, otherwise you might wind up getting heavy metal toxicity.
posted by sotonohito at 10:04 AM on May 9, 2018 [8 favorites]

The Todmorden church looks staggeringly beautiful, and unheatable, and the article helpfully points out that it's hard to get a conventional mortgage on a building that isn't watertight. A glorious rock on which fortunes founder. "The grave of the murdered vicar has historical interest and must stay." is nothing in comparison.
posted by clew at 10:34 AM on May 9, 2018

“Things have changed hugely in the past decade,” says Clear, her fingers still dirtied with soil. “But the real culture change is about kindness. There’s no need to be a victim in this trumped up shitty time. People doing stuff for each other, for their town, bringing a tiny bit of joy – that’s important. With each person contributing a tiny bit, you can do huge things.”

Boy howdy.
posted by Kafkaesque at 10:53 AM on May 9, 2018 [5 favorites]

The Todmorden church looks staggeringly beautiful, and unheatable, and the article helpfully points out that it's hard to get a conventional mortgage on a building that isn't watertight. A glorious rock on which fortunes founder. "The grave of the murdered vicar has historical interest and must stay." is nothing in comparison.

Unfortunately, I expect that my PowerBall win tonight will come too late to bid on the church. After pulling the plans for the reno a few months back, I found that the current owners are in way over their heads when it comes to the work. The proposed home layout is pretty bad, but it appears to have been simply what they could afford. Now me and my imagined lotto dollars? We'd do it up right.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:35 AM on May 9, 2018

Incredible Edible is driven by the attitude that it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission. Any IET signs nailed to walls around town were done without permission from the council, benches emblazoned with their logo were installed without asking. Even the beds outside the police station were put together and maintained without formal permission.

“You can do nothing and obey the rules, or you can say ‘I’m going to make a difference regardless’."

Is this... is this... disruption I can actually get behind?!
posted by clawsoon at 1:14 PM on May 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

Perhaps fitting that it's a story from England where one of the first recorded cases of guerrilla gardening was Gerrard Winstanley's True Levellers, or Diggers, in 1649.

Am I remembering correctly that the Diggers were trying to revive the traditions of the pre-enclosure commons, on which the English expected to be allowed to do... well... pretty much what these people are doing?
posted by clawsoon at 1:19 PM on May 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

If you'll forgive the derail, Todmorden is also home to another incredible plant-named collective who do amazing work. I know them because my organisation gave them an award a couple of years ago for their efforts.
posted by YoungStencil at 2:05 PM on May 9, 2018

Todmorden sounds like the name of a death metal band.

Every time I go to Todmorden with Mrs Binaryape I step off the train and say "One does not simply walk into Todmorden!" and she sighs.
posted by BinaryApe at 10:55 PM on May 9, 2018 [3 favorites]

That building might be several fortunes short of done, robocop is bleeding; if none of the intermediate ones do anything too dumb, you could yet win the tontine.

Then we'll call you "robocop is Blandings".
posted by clew at 11:13 PM on May 9, 2018 [1 favorite]

Todmorden sounds like the name of a death metal band.

I'm from Halifax, UK, and Todmorden was in the catchment area of the grammar school I went to. On our German exchange trip to Aachen, one of our students was telling one of the Aachen kids they were from Todmorden, and was greeted with a confused look, before they explained that in German it more or less translates as DeathMurder.

Tod had a pretty bad reputation in Halifax at the time (Halifax being where Happy Valley is set, and not entirely sketchy area free itself), so this seemed pretty appropriate, if spooky.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 11:48 PM on May 9, 2018 [2 favorites]

the traditions of the pre-enclosure commons, on which the English expected to be allowed to do... well... pretty much what these people are doing?

Not quite. On a traditional commons, the rights of the commoners are very restricted : typically they'd have the right to graze livestock (but not too many) in season, but not to plant crops - otherwise, it stops being a common and turns into someone's private farm.

PS the term "commoner" here isn't pejorative; it refers to only those people who had the right to make use of a common i.e. not everybody.
posted by vincebowdren at 1:13 AM on May 10, 2018 [4 favorites]

Turbary, estovers, pannage -- the rights were always limited and often enumerated. Perhaps farther from the current use of the word "commons" is that a common was held in common by a specific group of people, not everyone or even every citizen.
posted by clew at 1:45 PM on May 10, 2018 [3 favorites]