Belsize Green Fair is a great success

When we lost control of a trolley loaded with turf at 8am on Haverstock Hill on Saturday morning, and it hit the side door of a taxi, the omens didn't look good! We'd bought public liability insurance the day before so it wasn't a huge problem, but it didn't feel like a great start. However I was wrong to worry because the Belsize Green Fair was a huge, huge success.

Hundreds and hundreds of people enjoyed the educational, informational, ecological and action- oriented stalls on offer. We had beekeeping, farmyard animals, foraging, story telling, face painting, composting, natural herbal remedies, climate change games, clothes making, a 5k Fun Run, a Give&Take, bike repairs, local food, a quirky vegetable competition, a pizza oven made out of mud and straw (cob - see photo above) and loads more besides.

At the last minute I decided to enter the Fun Run - which just goes to show how relaxing the day was for me. Sadly I didn't make it on to the podium - except in my capacity as the person handing out the prizes. But I did sort of win the quirky vegetable competition - in a very quirky way.

The winning entry was a Jerusalem artichoke that looked just like a mouse with a long tail. It was a grown by a friend of mine from a seedling I gave him which came from a seed artichoke given to me by my colleague Cllr Arthur Graves!

So all in all a great day. Add to that the 400 or so people who went to eco films during the week and I'm hugely happy. Now all we have to do is get on with it and make our homes energy efficient, collect all the rainwater we can and grow our own food!