Have you got any bulbs coming through yet? Are your snowdrops in bloom, or early daffodils proudly displaying their yellow trumpets? Or crocuses creeping out of the ground?
Send us a picture from your garden, balcony or windowsill and we will post the best online.
Send them to Stella Wiseman, news@badshotleaandhale.org
Picture above by Ales Krivec; top picture by Pascal Debrunner. Both from Unsplash.
Join the online public meeting on January 6 at 6.30pm to discuss the Farnham Infrastructure Programme which aims to improve traffic and transport across the town and make Farnham a better and safer place to live.
It is very important that north Farnham residents have their say so that all parts of the town are improved. For instance, if the centre of Farnham is pedestrianised, what impact would that have on north Farnham?
There are details of some of the issues in a leaflet here:
If you are on Facebook please join the North Farnham Voice group (click here) and please sign up for the Zoom meeting on Wednesday – click here to do so.
There will also be Zoom hubs available. Contact Hale Community Centre or St Mark’s Church/St George’s Church.
Anyone who doesn’t want to or cannot participate via Zoom can email Catherine Powell, founder of North Farnham Voice, with ideas and/or solutions or can contact their local councillor – details of councillors can be found here.
Please join us and have your voice heard.
Have you heard of the Farnham Infrastructure Programme? It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity to have an input into what is important to the people of Farnham and here in Badshot Lea and Hale to have our say on what we would like to see improved and how.
A local resident has set up a new Facebook page, https://www.facebook.com/groups/northfarnhamvoice
There is also a Powerpoint presentation of the ideas so far.
Please log on and have your say.
The group is also looking for volunteers to drop a leaflet into every household in North Farnham about the programme and other local initiatives. If you are happy to get involved please do get in touch via the North Farnham Voice page.
Picture © David Martin, Creative Commons.
The grass near St John’s Church and the layby where we park for church is going to be a joy to see next spring, thanks to the efforts of Farnham in Bloom.
John Ely and friends were out planting bulbs this morning, ready for spring blooms. Autumn may be here and a difficult winter is looming, but new life will be forming in the cold earth.
For more on Farnham in Bloom, click here.
The October issue of our parish magazine is now online with lots inside. Download it by clicking on the green button here:
Among this month’s contents are:
Do your bit for the environment
The Fridge and Cupboard – food for all
The Church and Covid
Generosity
The APCM
John and Sue Innes
Prayer
Behind the verses – the background to one of Paul’s letters
The Church Cat
Registers
And much more…
If you have an article or news item for the magazine, let us know. The next deadline is Sunday, October 4. Contact Stella Wiseman, the editor, on 07842761919 or editor@badshotleaandhale.org
Publishing online means we reach far more people than just in print. This means advertisers can reach more people too. If you would like to advertise, contact Stella on 07842761919 or editor@badshotleaandhale.org
If you would like a printed copy of the magazine, again, contact Stella using the details above.
Enjoy!
Politics and faith meet in the parish this month as we celebrate the Season of Creation, with contributions from local MP Jeremy Hunt; Cllr Penny Marriott, Mayor of Waverley; Rt Rev’d Andrew Watson, Bishop of Guildford; and, for Harvest Festival on October 4, the Mayor of Farnham, Cllr Pat Evans.
The Season of Creation is an international, ecumenical season which runs from September 1-October 4 each year. During this time people are encouraged to focus on prayer and action to protect the planet, and we are joining in with services in the churches and here online each Sunday. The online services will feature guest contributors including the Bishop of Guildford who will preach this Sunday, September 6, on what is known as Climate Sunday, when the focus will be on the challenge of climate change. He will be joined by Cllr Penny Marriott, who will give a Bible reading and Jeremy Hunt, MP, who will read a prayer known as the Collect.
Other guests over the next few weeks include Ruth Valerio, environmentalist, theologian, social activist and author, who launched the Eco Church scheme; Ben Niblett, campaigner on poverty, injustice, climate change and fair trade who works for the Christian charity Tearfund; and the Mayor of Farnham, Cllr Pat Evans, who is passionate about local community issues.
The Season of Creation will challenge everyone to do something to help tackle the environmental crisis that is threatening the Earth. Lesley Crawley comments: “The Season of Creation helps us focus on the world we live in and our duty to care for the environment. The way we are living is causing damage to the planet and all that lives on it – humans, other animals, plants, all living things – and we are calling on everyone to take action in whatever way we all can to stop the damage and begin restoration of our world. We would like everyone to make a pledge, however small, to do something positive, whether it is walking rather than driving where possible, cutting down on the amount of meat we are eating, looking at how our clothes are manufactured and how many we buy and then throw out.
“Please join us in person at our churches or online where we will be thinking about what we can do in the Season of Creation and long term. We are delighted that the Bishop of Guildford, the Mayor of Waverley Penny Marriott, Farnham’s mayor Pat Evans, and our local MP Jeremy Hunt are among those contributing to our online services and we continue to call for action from all areas of society.”
Everyone is welcome in the churches which have had Covid-19 precautions put in place.
What do you want for Farnham? Have your voice heard! Sign up for the launch of the Farnham Local Liaison Forum which will be held on Zoom next Wednesday evening (August 5) from 6-8pm to discuss plans for spending £250m on infrastructure in the town.
In the first hour of the forum you will hear from local MP Jeremy Hunt; Cllr Tim Oliver, Leader of Surrey County Council; and representatives from Waverley Borough Council (Cllr John Ward) and FarnhamTown Council (Cllr John Neale). They will lay out the objectives for the town. The second hour will be a chance to ask questions about plans for how the money will be spent.
There will be further consultations later this year, with members of the public taking part more directly in the discussions. There will also be opportunities for people who are not online to participate.
To find out more or book to take part, visit www.farnham.gov.uk/LLF
How can we reduce our impact on the environment? Are there are any steps we can take locally? Wendy Edwards has some suggestions:
The advice: “Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints. Kill nothing but time” is possibly from 1950s America. The members of the Baltimore Grotto Caving Club were concerned to avoid harming the underground caves which they explored so the quotation was a helpful reminder for them.
I am a not a great photographer, so I am more likely to take away memories from any experience rather than photos.
I was brought up never to drop litter and to take my rubbish home with me. It seems that many would do well to adopt this habit. I find it scandalous that motorway litter-picking workers place their lives at risk on motorway verges, collecting litter thrown from cars near motorway service stations. ‘Out of sight, out of mind’ seems to be the mentality of thoughtless car occupants when they lob their coffee cup or sandwich wrapper out of the car window.
I do my level best to recycle properly at home and at the dump and to be careful about what I put in my recycling bin and non-recycling (land waste) bin each week.
I am also a vegan. I have enjoyed a healthy, varied plant-strong diet for five years now. As a vegan who wishes to further reduce her impact on the environment, I was delighted to discover the tiny but perfectly formed vegan café called Okomoko at 18 Downing Street, Farnham.
It has a Facebook page which you can find here, and it is open some evenings for themed evenings.
Upstairs there is a zero waste zone, run by the very helpful Annabel and Sarah. Here, at Keep (as in Keep Old Containers) you can take your own containers in to collect some of your weekly shop. For example, you can fill an airtight jar or biscuit tin from home with some beetroot/ mixed vegetable or potato crisps. In the UK, we munch our way through six billion packets of crisps a year and throw the non-recyclable plastic packets into our non-recyclable bins, so they end up in landfill and can take more than 30 years to decompose, sometimes much longer.
Walkers, our biggest crisp manufacturer, has pledged to make crisp packaging 100 per cent recyclable by 2025, but if you want to do your bit now, then do consider buying your crisps at Keep. They also try to help animals and the environment and prevent excess packaging by having various products e.g. fabric conditioner, washing-up liquid, floor cleaner and multi-surface cleaners in huge pump-action containers so you can fill up and re-use your existing containers.
When my Ecover washing up liquid at home runs out, I will keep the container ( I usually throw it away in my recycling bin and buy a new one but re-using it is much more sensible) and I will refill it with their environmentally friendly, vegan, washing-up liquid which is certified as not tested on or harmful to animals.
Some popular brands are harmful to fish. For reasons unknown to me, young fish never seem to have the popular appeal of puppies, lambs, piglets or kittens, but neither they nor their parents or siblings deserve to die because we humans wish to wash our dishes in a liquid which is but poisonous to fish or because we do not bother to look at the back label on the bottle. There is a warning on the back of many bottles – “harmful to aquatic life with long lasting effects”.
The cost for the all-surface cleaner on sale in Keep, above Okomoko, is 30 pence per 100 ml (so just £1.50 for a 500 ml bottle I supply myself; not a bad price at all) and Annabel says that the Environment Agency was very impressed with the speed with which it killed bacteria as tested in the Okomoko café kitchen downstairs. The café has the maximum hygiene rating of 5. So, these products are effective at killing germs while saving the lives of the fish we may not give a second thought to as we plod on with our housework or washing up.
For Keep, visit the Facebook page here or follow the shop on Twitter (@keepzerowaste) and they do pop-up shops in various locations too, and are happy to give talks.
It may not cost you as much as you think to start buying environmentally friendly, animal friendly, effective cleaning products from a local supplier, while also reusing your old containers. Sounds like a win-win situation for humans, animals and our beautiful planet, and that gets my vote every time.
Pictured are Annabel (left) and Sarah in Keep.
St John’s Church has received a Bronze Eco Church award in recognition of both its commitment to reducing its carbon emissions and of its encouragement of local wildlife.
The church uses renewable gas and electricity and has installed swift boxes on the side of the church to encourage swifts to nest. Swifts have suffered a dramatic decline of 50 per cent in the last 20 years, in large part because of a lack of nesting places, and boxes such as those at St John’s and St George’s in Badshot Lea, are being used to encourage the birds to breed.
Lesley Crawley said: “We are delighted to have received this award for St John’s which means that all three churches in the parish now have the bronze award. The world is in environmental crisis as global temperatures and sea levels continue to rise and species numbers decline. Only this week the Met Office has warned that summers could be five degrees hotter in the UK by 2070, with summer rainfall decreasing and sea levels rising. It is up to all of us to do something if we are to save our planet.”
Eco Church is run by A Rocha UK (ecochurch.arocha.org.uk/), a Christian charity working for the protection and restoration of the natural world. The Eco Church award scheme encourages churches in England and Wales to look at how they express their care for the world in worship and teaching; in looking after buildings and land; in engaging in both the local community and global campaigns, and in the personal lifestyles of the congregation.
There are three levels of award – bronze, silver and gold – and all three churches in the parish are now working towards a silver one.
Everyone is invited to celebrate the fruits of the Hale community orchard on Apple Day, Sunday, October 7, at St Mark’s, at 10am.
The celebrations will be held in the orchard, which is next to the church, and inside the church hall, and everyone is encouraged to bring their apples and put them in the apple press for freshly pressed apple juice.There will be apple songs, apple pancakes and apples dipped in chocolate, all followed by a celebratory harvest festival service in the church. The Bishop of Dorking, the Right Rev’d Jo Wells, will join in the celebrations and harvest festival.
Rev’d Lesley Crawley explained how the day has come about: “In December 2014 we planted 11 fruit trees to create a community orchard at St Mark’s. Each tree was adopted by a different community group and all except one have thrived since they were planted.
“Our first Apple Day was in 2015 because we were so delighted that our trees were bearing fruit and so we decided to celebrate! Since then we have celebrated every year by having apple pancakes, apple-y music and apple pressing. It is a great atmosphere with children and adults pressing the apples, drinking the juice, eating pancakes, listening to the music and chatting. This year with have the Bishop of Dorking joining us for the celebrations at 10am and staying on for our harvest festival at 11am. Please come and join in the festivities.”
Anyone who wants their apples turned into juice is asked to bring apples that are in good condition, picked from the tree and washed, along with clean two-litre plastic milk cartons, including the lid, to put the juice in.
Come along and celebrate!
The Parish of Badshot Lea and Hale 