NEWS

Following the retirement of Food Manager Dr Liz Charles earlier this year, we've reviewed how we communicate with everyone interested in the food system across County Durham.  Liz used to send regular snippets to people on her mailing list and the Growing Durham team...

Carved your pumpkins for Halloween?  Make sure you don’t waste the cut out bits and even the pumpkin seeds: they are all good food! If you’re really savvy you could pick up some really cheap ones after the event and make the most of cheap food. As part of the...

What's scarier than witches, ghosts and ghouls at Halloween? How about the 18,000 tonnes of edible pumpkin that ends up in the bin each year. That's the same weight as 1,500 double decker buses!  That's food that farmers have grown, that has been watered and...

You may have spotted talk about shortages of fresh salad leaves this autumn and winter and if you want to to make sure you can continue to feed your salad habit now is the time to start sowing them.  Most of them with benefit from a bit of protection in a greenhouse...

As you may have spotted the VegPower campaign, which is drew to a close just before Easter 2019, had 10 vegetables of the week and families across the county have been eating them to defeat them for weeks.  Following a brilliant idea by Richard from the Leadgate...

About sixty people came to the Food Durham Annual Gathering at Collingwood College in Durham in mid March 2019 to hear about the progress of the County Durham Food Partnership over the past few years. Food Partnership Manager Dr Liz Charles described the journey of...

As part of the VegPowerUK campaign #EatThemToDefeatThem pupils at Our Lady and St Joseph's Brooms Catholic Primary School in Leadgate have been getting creative with the veg of the week as well as eating them. The children are really enjoying the campaign and  are...

Friday 25 January 2019 saw the launch of the National VegPower advertising campaign #EatThemToDefeatThem with adverts on during ITV's Coronation Street and a day later on The Voice.  The campaign is aimed at encouraging children to jpoin the fight to 'defeat the evil...

Durham County Council have excellent standards in their restaurants!  We're proud to have helped them to develop procurement policies so staff are encouraged to eat healthy, sustainable and ethical food.    

The Food Durham Team will be taking a break over the Christmas and New Year period.  The Durham Community Action offices in Low Willington will close on Friday 21 December 2018 and the team will be back on Tuesday 8 January 2019.  We wish you a merry Christmas and a...

A grant from Durham County Council could help you and your community group plant some fruit trees to celebrate National Tree Week in late November 2018. The Tree Council organised the first National Tree Week in 1975 and now up to a million trees are planted...

The Food Durham Annual report was published today. The report covers the period between September 2017 and August 2018 during which the partnership achieved its Sustainable Food Cities Bronze Award, ran the Sugar Smart campaign for the county and launched the Durham...

With the autumn now well underway it is time to start  collecting fallen leaves and making leaf compost. Every year the bins in County Durham are full of leaves which could be turned into beautiful leaf compost.  Composting leaves is super simple and the resulting...

This year appears to be a bumper one for apples in the county.  For once there was no frost at blossom time and the fruit has benefited from the copious amounts of sunshine we've had.  However, a bumper crop means having to deal with a glut of apples of all types. If...

There's still time to join in with SUGAR SMART September and try to reduce the amount of free sugar you eat this month. “Free” sugar is any sugar that is added to foods at home or by the producer, plus sugar naturally present in honey, syrups, and fruit juices. It...