Sunday 1 December 2013

Minutes Posted

Do you want to see what we have been up to this year? Click on the Governance Page to find copies of our posted minutes.

Free Thermal Imaging Survey

Do you want to check that your house insulation is up to scratch?

Energy bills are increasing and costing more money every year. Costs can be reduced by making sure our houses are well insulated and not losing unnecessary heat to the outside. Taking a thermal image of a house can show where the heat is being lost and where homes can be better insulated and therefore need less energy to heat it.

Greening Chinnor with support from Haddenham in Transition will be carrying out a free thermal image survey for 30 Chinnor households towards the end of January 2014. This will involve taking a series of infrared thermal images of the outside of your house to see areas of heat loss. The survey needs to be taken in the evening when there is at least a 10% difference in the indoor/outdoor temperature. The survey does not take long and should be completed within a half hour.  Once all the images have been processed, a household report will be compiled. Greening Chinnor will organise a public meeting to enable you to see your data on a one to one basis. As part of this process Greening Chinnor will organise UK Government information to assist you in reducing unnecessary heat loss.

If you are interested please supply your contact information to Maureen Dyroff at mdyroff@tiscali.co.uk or telephone 01844  352816. There is a limit of 30 households and the list will close once this number has been reached. All successful households will be contacted once the list is completed.

Update on White's Field Hedging Project

We are pleased to report that the hedging planted last autumn is doing extremely well. Our input this year has only involved a bit of tidying. However we have planted some fennel and raspberries. We will add a few more herbs and food plants in the autumn and early 2014.

Don't forget the purpose is to create a wildlife and particularly bee friendly section of the village.

Another Successful Litter Pick


Greening Chinnor – Community Litter Pick

On Sunday 6th October a dedicated group of 17 Chinnor Community volunteers carried out the 4th litter clearance on some of our most popular village footpaths and byways. We were extremely fortunate with the weather as we were being shown the last glimmers of summer. We were joined by villagers from many sections of the community who split up into groups and gave up a couple of hours litter picking.
 
Our thanks to the Chinnor Parish Office for sorting out the litter picking equipment.

If you were able to join us on the 6th – our grateful thanks. Many of you were old friends but we were delighted to be joined by several new helpers. The good news is that the volume collected was considerably less than previous outings. This, hopefully, shows the message of not spoiling our lovely environment is getting across  Can we please appeal to dog walkers who have responsibly bagged up dog litter to complete the task and place it in the receptacles provided and not hang it from trees or leave on the path. There really is  no such thing as a dog poo equivalent of the tooth fairy.

Again our thanks. Watch this space for  details of the next event.

Tuesday 21 May 2013

Annual report 2012-3

If you want to know what we've been up to over the last year, and our plans for 2013-4 then click on the "Governance" link and follow the link to our Annual Report for all the details (pdf file size 310kb).

Wednesday 1 May 2013

AGM minutes now posted

Click on the Governance link to the right and the 2013 AGM minutes are now published there.  These include this link to the excellent Pam Warhurst talk on Incredible Edible Todmorden which we were unable to show at the AGM due to technical hiccups!

Todmorden is now internationally recognised for its innovative use of spare land to grow community food and provides a fantastic vision for what could be achieved in Chinnor with the same interest and drive.  In the video Pam Warhurst asks "Can you find a unifying language that cuts across age and income and culture to help people help themselves? Yes, and the language would appear to be food"  The Incredible Edible phenomenon was achieved without asking for permission, without raising funds and without a strategy document.  They just did it.  The scheme now includes a seed swap, a herb garden on scrap land, vegetable beds, and involves artistic people in the community to help form part of a vibrant local food jigsaw.  This links nicely with the recent publication of a the Oxford Foodprinting report which demonstrates just how little food which is bought in Oxford comes directly from the local community, and hence contributes to the local economy.

Also at our AGM there was an excellent talk on the decline of bees and what we can do to help protect the pollinator population. A copy of the short Powerpoint presentation is available here

Our 2013 annual report will be uploaded shortly