IT'S the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness so how's the harvest going in Sheffield?
"We're just starting. The wet weather has slowed us down," says Urban Harvester Stephen Watts, organiser of the city's Abundance Project.
As you read this teams of hunter-gatherers are spreading out across the city, combing waste land, woods, gardens, street corners and hedgerows in search of bounty.
Imagine 80 mini-Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstalls and you've got the picture, although they may go easy on the roadkill.
Last year they found 30 varieties of apples, 10 of pears, greengages, plums, damsons, quinces, medlars, hazelnuts, walnuts, apricots, figs and peaches within the city boundary.
"It got to the point where there was too much to deal with as just one team so this year we've got three," says Stephen.
As last year, the fruit will be farmed out to organisations like Surestart and community cafes or turned into jams, chutneys and pickles.
They also handed out fruit and juice to shoppers in the city centre and Meadowhall.
And they also made some awful cider!
The climax will be a kind of harvest festival called Allotment Soup at Meersbrook allotments on Sunday, September 21, when gardeners loan their plots to artists and everyone enjoys "an intestinal installation of different juices from the Abundance project."
You can guess what that is.
It's all about making the most of what Nature provides, says Stephen, aged 24, who with a clutch of allotments and a keen eye for wild food, reckons he is 50 per cent self sufficient most of the time, rising to 90 per cent in the autumn.
He's 95 per cent vegetarian but since he believes you should "eat what the universe offers you," scoffing those meat sandwiches left by visitors to one of his allotments the other day didn't cause him any angst.
"They would only have gone to waste," he says.
Stephen, aged 24, from Sharrow, treads lightly on the planet.
"I've not bought any fruit or vegetables since June last year. I do a lot of composting and I often find perfectly good food to eat such as bananas which greengrocers have thrown out."
"Last year I found a peach tree and some apricot trees and collected seven peaches and a bowlful of apricots. That shows the potential if more are planted," he says.
Abundance is the ultimate in eco-living. They've worked out that the longest journey between tree and mouth was five miles!
- To get involved visit www.growsheffield.com
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