Come along on Wednesday 24th September for a talk on “Bees and Bee-keeping” by our own Leo Jordan. 7:30pm at the Church Hall.
Free, but a donation of a quid or two towards the hall hire would be appreciated!
Also coming up!
Saturday 4th October – community apple pressing day with Blue Barrel Cider. At the old stables on the High Street, afternoon. All welcome to this popular, family-friendly event – help wash and crush the apples, enjoy free refreshments, buy local cider.
Saturday 18th October – provisional – planting bulbs in verges around the village which have been selected for management to encourage pollinators. With the PSA. More details to follow.
Wednesday 22nd October – (note NOT last Wednesday in the month), 7pm (note earlier time!) at the Church Hall. Bring and Share Vegetarian Community Meal. We all enjoyed this very much last year!
Saturday 1st November – another community apple day, another chance to help make cider, and enjoy great company and refreshments!
Wednesday 26th November – wreath making workshop. 7:30pm at the Church Hall.
Tool Share Coordinator Needed
We have a community tool share kept behind Crossways House on the crossroads, but at the moment nobody can use it because there is no-one to act as a point of contact, arranging to unlock it when someone needs to borrow something. If you could help with this please contact SOW. It’s not a very time-consuming role, and would particularly suit someone who enjoys DIY or who knows their way around tools!
On 30th July 2025 we welcomed Judith Large who volunteers at Shepreth Hedgehog Hospital. 25 people came! Thank you for your generous donations, totalling £120 – enough to pay for three hedgehogs to have ringworm treatment.
Shepreth Hedgehog Hospital was started in 2012, and is run by the Shepreth Wildlife Conservation Society at a cost of £65,000 pa. Hedgehogs need specialist treatment. Successful release is very good at around 60% (compared to the usual ~30% of most rescues!). Rising costs mean there are fewer rescue centres and hedgehogs are brought into Shepreth from Bury St Edmunds to Milton Keynes.
Hedgehogs are classified as “Near Threatened” – numbers have fallen off a cliff in the last 60 years because of habitat destruction and climate change. Drought means they cannot dig out earthworms, their main food source, and have to resort to their least favourite food, slugs and snails. These carry lungworm which can kill hedgehogs. High temperatures also disrupt hibernation (should be Nov-Feb.) Climate change also means mothers leave their young too early.
“Out in the day is not OK”
Hedgehogs are nocturnal and a hedgehog out in the day is always in trouble. The only exception is if you see an adult purposefully foraging through the undergrowth in the breeding season (spring to late autumn) – this will be a lactating female. Otherwise, take the hedgehog to a hedgehog hospital. (Pick up with gloves or a cloth and put in a cardboard box with water, some cat food, and a hot water bottle wrapped in a towel (so long as there’s space for the hedgehog to move away from the heat).)
60% of hedgehogs brought into Shepreth are ones found out in the day. (Another 18% are orphans.)
Reasons a hedgehog might be in trouble include parasites such as ringworm, lungworm, mites, ticks and fleas. Never remove a tick from a hedgehog yourself, or use cat/dog flea treatment – these are toxic to hedgehogs. Hedgehogs also become entangled in mesh or netting, or suffer terrible injuries from strimmers. Other injuries are caused when hedgehogs are burned by chemicals such as bleach, weedkiller, patio cleaner and diesel.
Don’t disturb hedgehog nests
Making nests is an important part of hedgehogs’ activity, and there are three types: daytime (to sleep in), breeding, and hibernation. It’s not too serious if you disturb a hibernating hedgehog if you put it all back straight away and leave it – hedgehogs take 3-4 days to come out of hibernation. But disturbing a breeding nest is more critical – the mother may run off or even destroy the babies.
Daytime nests are flimsy, often in grass, and very vulnerable to strimmers. Before strimming, make yourself really obvious – noisy, “John Cleese silly walks” so wildlife will get away before strimming.
Dogs sometimes dig out hedgehog nests.
Hedgehog poo
If you don’t see a hedgehog at night you might spot hedgehog droppings – long, black and shiny with a tapered end, the length of a little finger.
At the Hospital
Caring for babies
Hedgehogs frequently give birth in the hospital. Volunteers foster the young families in rabbit hutches. But many babies are brought in as orphans; they need almost 24-hour care and are very tricky to rear.
Food
Hedgehogs at the hospital are fed jelly-based cat or dog’s food, and kitten biscuits to keep teeth healthy. They don’t buy specialist hedgehog food. Mealworms are not recommended as they can lead to bone softening.
Release back into the wild
A good release environment is one which already has a good hedgehog population, linked gardens, water, shelter and food. Adults are released in the same area they were found if possible. The aim is to conserve local populations, not to reintroduce hedgehogs where there are none, but young hedgehogs are released where they can support “island” populations by increasing genetic diversity. Oakington is one such “island” and there is a release site in Saxon Close.
Hedgehogs in our villages
Hedgehogs are now rare and declining in open countryside, where there is less cover, fields are vaster, and there are badger territories. (However badgers are not responsible for many hedgehog deaths – 1.5% compared to 10% on roads – except in times of food scarcity.) So they become islanded in more built-up areas, such as villages/gardens, where their population has stabilised and may be recovering.
The best places for hedgehogs are where the community works together . It would be great if we could make Oakington & Westwick a safe haven each night for hedgehogs.
Easy ways to help hedgehogs in your garden
Top task: Put out water. A steep-sided pie dish is ideal. Use tap water, and clean and refresh daily.
Create a wild, undisturbed corner, all the better if there are wild flowers too.
Make your pond safe. Either build a beach into the water, or put a plank ramp in parallel to and against the side (not into the middle because hedgehogs swim round the sides and won’t find it).
Link your garden to others with a porous boundary (hedgehog highways). Hedgehogs need about 15 gardens to roam through.
Deal with netting and litter. In allotments pin netting down really tightly. Put football or tennis nets up at night.
Build a hedgehog house – better than a bought one. You can make one with 20 bricks and a slab, or if more room, from pallets and logs. Put in a quiet sheltered spot, filled with hay (better than straw.)
Make a cat- (and corvid-) proof feeding station in a similar way from slabs and bricks, with a hole the size of a CD case. Include a baffle, and feed kitten biscuits not wet food.
Miria explained that learning about foraging had been a lockdown project, something to do with her son out of doors. An extension of her interest in gardening, gardens and being a qualified aromatherapist. Various useful books came her way; she particularly recommends The Forager’s Calendar by John Wright.
Principles
Foraging can be seen as part of a wider approach to life. It’s about connecting to the land (and we’re all custodians of the land), to nature and to the old ways. It’s a truly seasonal activity, and one that is as old as time. Wild food is “more than organic.”
It’s practical and easy – you don’t have to go out into the wilderness, start in your own garden. And it’s natural and normal – not a new fad or something exotic.
Foraging includes fruit, flowers, foliage and fungi. Once everything we needed to live came from nature, including cleaning, fuels, decoration, medicines and more. The talk focused on food and drink, but foraging can also be for tonics, for example.
Tips
You have to decide: What do you like, what do you need, what do you have time for and what can you cope with? For example, Miria currently draws the line at roadkill, mushrooms, ants and snails. (Paul said he’d once eaten citrus ants, in South America!) She also avoids anything like celery or parsley, because of the danger of confusion with hemlock, which is very poisonous.
You have to actually use what you pick! And you might only end up with a small amount you can actually eat of some things.
Have a wishlist – both things that are easy to find/identify and longer term desires. Learn in advance what things you seek look like, so that you recognise them at the “moment of abundance.”
Avoid the “dog pee zone” (eg pineappleweed is delicious but often in this zone)
Use a good (OS?) map, stick to paths, avoid cliff edges!
If on the side of a road – consider how busy the road is, how low down
Kit: long trousers, maybe wellies; scissors, secateurs, Swiss Army knife; plastic bags and boxes. Remember though that often you make your most significant finds when you aren’t expecting them and don’t have these with you!
Laws & codes
The countryside code says leave only footprints, take only litter. So this is modified by the foragers’ code and which includes some of the following.
Take only what you need for your own personal use. (Foragers often won’t tell others where they found things.)
Only pick something you’re 100% sure you’ve identified correctly
Harvest only in abundant areas (which does depend on the season and weather)
Don’t trample on other plants to get to the one you want
Must have permission from landowner when relevant
You may only take wild food; scrumping apples from a farm doesn’t count as foraging!
Never carry a lockable blade or fixed knife – a small Swiss army knife is legal as it is under 3 inches and does not lock.
It’s not food for free – there is no such thing. We need to give gratitude by treading lightly on the earth; eg composting, donating to nature charities
Murphy’s Law – if you go looking for something you probably won’t find it!
Examples
Some of the foraged foods mentioned were:
Jelly ear and scarlet elf cap – distinctive, identifiable edible fungi
Dewberry – like a grey-blue blackberry, taste OK, but hard to pick enough
Seaweed – but there are complexities
Nettles – Miria hasn’t tried, but nettle soup is popular
Wild garlic – one of the most rewarding and popular but (so far!) hard to find in quantity in Cambridgeshire
Fat hen and marjoram are often found in the garden.
Miria’s top targets for foraging are: garlic mustard, ground ivy, three-cornered leek, wild garlic, and chickweed.
Tasting!
Miria had brought many examples, all but one from around the village and two-thirds from her own garden; including garlic mustard (aka Jack-in-the-hedge), dandelion, lilac flowers, mallow, feverfew, hawthorn (leaves and flowers), magnolia petals, chickweed, sweet woodruff, fennel, lemon balm, elder, dog rose, water mint and lavender. We sampled a lot of thes
We tried spring water with goosegrass (cleavers) steeped in it, and hawthorn flower tea.
She had made a salad which included some of these ingredients – salads are one of her favourite ways to use foraged food. Tear the leaves for a salad rather than using metal implements.
If you would like to borrow the SOW sharpening equipment, please email SOW (sustainableow@gmail.com) or put a message on the WhatsApp group.
Nikki who sharpens at Repair Cafes, including ours, led a workshop on 25 June. The focus was on sharpening unserrated blades.
SOW has used some of the surplus from the Repair Cafe to buy the tools asterisked below to share around the group (better for the environment and everyone’s wallets!)
How to tell if a blade is sharp
It’ll have no dinks and divots, and be very thin. It will catch at your fingernail stroked across the blade. Note that secateurs usually have a blade only on one side.
Kitchen knives and scissors
Foil – cutting through aluminium foil with scissors will sharpen them a bit – this trick works with pinking shears (serrated scissors) too.
Anysharp – there are lots of kitchen knife sharpeners but this is the only brand/type Nikki has found that works. (Available from Lakeland.) You just pull the knife through. It will maintain an already mostly sharp knife but won’t rescue a blunt one.
For the rest of the sharpening tools you need to get the angle right: always sharpen at an angle of 22.5 degrees (half and half again a right angle). HOWEVER: consistency is more important than accuracy. Keep the angle the same. Pull/push the knife away from you, for safety. (Note: You will find sharper and blunter portions along a blade.)
If you want sharpening tools to last, use them wet.
Swiss sharpener* – will work better on slightly blunter knives and on scissors, to knock off burrs.
Kitchen steel – works well if you can get the angle right.
Sharpening stone (whetstone)* – Must soak in water first – won’t work if not wet. The numbers refer to the grit (like sandpaper) – the higher the number the finer the grit. Start with the coarser side. (Use the rubber foot to hold it to the table, and an old tea-towel to mop up splashes!) Push the knife along the stone – doesn’t need to be fast, but apply gentle pressure.
Care of knives
Kitchen knives – use a wooden or plastic chopping board (not glass, not a plate) and use the back of the knife to scrape pieces off the board.
Sheath knife – oil it before putting it away (wipe with a little sunflower or rapeseed oil on a kitchen towel.) Then it should stay sharp while stored.
Garden tools and draw knives
Diamond sharpeners* – Nikki’s mainstay at Repair Cafes. Wet first (they will work dry but won’t last as long.) They have grit numbers on the back, 150, 300, 400 – start with lowest and work up – when you see a silver edge on your blade you can go up from the lowest.
You can take secateurs apart to sharpen them (carefully keeping track of screws!). One or both sides of the cutting edge may be bevelled. Sharpen the bevelled edge first, then draw the tool flat across the flat edge to remove burrs.
Boatstone – curved, very coarse stone, better for curved blades like lawnmower blades.
Care of gardening tools
Wipe off any plant material, dirt or moisture with a clean dry rag before storing in a dry place.
SOW will be there in the afternoon at Oakington & Westwick Village Day, at the Rec on Saturday 28th June, from 12:30. Come along and say hello, take the recycling sorting challenge and find out more about helping pollinators through the APollOW project.
Lots of events coming up, put the dates in your diary and hopefully see you there! Everyone welcome.
Wednesday 21 May: Foraging etc
SOW meeting (note NOT the last Wednesday in the month), 7:30pm at the church hall
In search of wild food and other useful stuff. Come and find out another side to the “weeds” and wild plants around us.
Wednesday 25th June: Tool and knife sharpening workshop
7:30pm at Oakington church hall
Learn how to sharpen knives and garden tools from Nikki, our expert from the Repair Cafe! Extend the life and effectiveness of your tools. SOW will be buying some sharpening tools for community use going forward.
Wednesday 30th July: Hedgehogs!
7:30pm at Oakington church hall
We have a speaker from Shepreth Hedgehog Hospital coming to tell us about their work and all about these engaging animals which seem to be making a comeback in Oakington & Westwick.
If you’ve been lucky enough to see a hedgehog please log it on the Big Hedgehog Map!
There will be a few small items of merchandise connected to the hedgehog hospital available to buy to support the hospital, such as keyrings and notebooks, so please bring a little cash.
SOW/EAG will have a stall – come and find out more about the APollOW project and how help pollinators by doing a pollinator count.
Saturday 28th June: Village Day
12:30pm onwards, Recreation Ground, Oakington
If you missed the stall at the Pollination Festival, a second chance here – plus how to recycle everything!
Sustainable Rampton Open Gardens & Wild flower event
Sunday 18th May, 2pm, Rampton Village Hall. Another chance to find out how to help pollinators. Be inspired by wildlife-friendly gardens. More details here.
Grey Box Recycling
Following the talk at SOW earlier this year, we have set up as a trial scheme a grey recycling box in the village shop. At the moment we are just collecting marigold rubber gloves but hope to extend the range of hard-to-recycle items we could collect in the village. If you use marigold gloves, please take them (clean) to the box when they get holey! More details here.
Tool Share – volunteers needed
Oakington & Westwick have a tool share, kept at Crossways on the crossroads. It’s a really environmentally friendly idea, saving resources (and money) – but it needs a little TLC to help it realise its potential. If we could get it a bit better organised it would be better used, and if it was better used we might be able to get some funding. It would be fantastic if someone – or a couple of someones – would be willing to volunteer as tool share champions, spending a little time (perhaps even one-off) starting this virtuous circle! Please get in touch if you might be interested to know more.
Everyone – whether or not you usually come to SOW meetings – is very welcome to this special session focussing on pollinators and including “training” on how to take part in the APollOW scheme – a pollinator survey of Oakington & Westwick. Whether you could spare 15 minutes once a week or just occasionally, you can help – come and find out how.
Recycling: the list of where to recycle various things is in the April/May O&W Journal. We are still trying to find a location for boxes to collect certain items which can’t be recycled in the blue bin, as described at the January meeting. Several useful Terracycle schemes have just ended so at the moment the thought is to trial Marigold gloves and beauty product packaging.
Tool Share: this could be a great village resource-saving scheme but needs a bit of TLC. Looking for SOW volunteers to help Jess at Crossways who administers it.
Several of us had counted plastic packaging this week, and had brought it to the meeting. The vast majority of the packaging was from food, especially snacks and bread.
We weren’t very clear on exactly what the blue bin takes – everyone had a different idea! (See this webpage– in fact the blue bins take all soft (including scrunchable, crinkly) plastic bags/film/wrappers except:
plastic/foil pouches or wrappers (eg pet food pouches or baby food pouches and tea bag or chocolate wrappers
and crisp packets (with metallic inside)
Why isn’t plastic packaging OK even when you can recycle it? Recycling is an energy intensive process. It’s sometimes incinerated instead. Soon our recycling will be transported to Northern Ireland instead of Waterbeach for processing (adding to transport emissions) (although a UK facility is promised soon.) And making packaging uses energy, even for eg. cardboard packaging.
Often the most over-packaged food is also the most ultra-processed, so less good for us anyway.
How to avoid packaging? Dry cat food instead of pet food pouches. Shampoo etc refills at the Lush shop or with Green Blue You, or soap bars. Buy less stuff (eat less food!?)/re-use. Being selective about what you buy – but it’s difficult when you’re busy and short of time!
We talked about biodegradable plastic – you can’t put it in the green bin (takes too long to break down for the fast composting process used for our green bins) and it contaminates the recyclable plastic if put in the blue bin. Takes ages to home-compost (but cutting it up helps.)
Leo explained his dilemma in packaging their cider: glass is actually worse than plastic in terms of overall energy used. Metal cans would be best of all but the equipment for canning is not accessible for a small cidery.
Vicky explained how recent legislation for simplifying recycling requires her small business to dispose (recycle) food waste separately – it means they all have to take their apple cores and tea-bags home because it’s too expensive to have commercial green bin recycling.
We heard about a recent investigation tracking supermarket soft plastic waste. Some went to Poland where it was turned into black bin bags. But some went to Turkey, notorious for dumping rather than recycling foreign waste.
Eco-Club presentation: Our Future!
Five members of the kids’ Eco Club gave everyone a presentation – see below – which they had prepared about the environmental issues they are really concerned about. It was really good and a lot of work had gone into it, and it very much brought home how much the environmental crisis impacts young people now as well as in the future.
Ideas for action which came out of the discussion included an Oakington event to celebrate our planet – perhaps fundraising for spring bulbs to help pollinators – and writing to our MP.
Thank you very much to the Eco Club for leading this part of the meeting!
Our Future!
80% of animals live in forests but every year 1000s of square kilometers of forests get cut down every year wich is making animals lose their home also every time someone cuts down a tree you should plant a new one or two well most people plant the type of tree that is good for paper and wood but bad for animal homes.
Lots of people would squash insects if they see one, now thats like a giant just swatting you just because your tiny and different. I think many people forget that they are living animals, I also think we forget how important bugs are. They are at the bottom of the food change we would die. The total mass of insects is falling by a precipitous 2.5% a year, according to the best data available, suggesting they could vanish within a century.
Oil is so harmful as we know to all of our planet it poisons rivers and hurts kills marine life as lizzie will explain.last year there was a massive oil spill in ireland this happened on the 22nd of january 2024 at 19:25. Oil is bad in many ways and not onley is it bad for the planet but it is also bad for our health.
93% of children breathe in toxic air every day. What is really sad and worrying about air pollution is that 600,000 children under 15 die respiratory infection because of air pollution.we as a village obviously can’t stop climate change but in long term I think this is one of our biggest problems as well as sound pollution and light pollution the worst thing about toxic air is that innocent people animals with weak lungs are dying because weak lungs
Sustainable Oakington and Westwick 