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Unused open space and fruit tree map
May 25th, 2009 in Food by Peter Bull
We’ve been talking about mapping these things for a while now and I thought we should get this organised so that we have a record of what could potentially be used for community use together with locations of trees identifying unwanted fruit.
Stephen from Abundance Sheffield www.growsheffield.com who recently visited us on our food day said that they started with about 20 trees in the first year…not so many I thought! Lots of fruit off them though. There are lots of trees in Goldington/Putnoe as well as the Saints/Kimbolton Road and Poets/off Shakespeare Road. I think with a bit of planning 20 aiming for access to 20 trees is definately feasible and likely. Oakley Environmental Group were looking at acquiring a fruit press with some other communities.
I am happy to help with mapping and knocking on doors. We need a plan/strategy and someone to lead this. Any takers? Also, is there anyone that has the IT skills to help organise an online map where we could map specific locations (private and public) where (1) there are fruit trees and open spaces (2) the owner of the land is willing to let us harvest the fruit or use the land.
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ddell said:
I don’t have time or skills to lead this, but want to help too. How about starting with listing the Devon Park orchard? There is an East of England orchards group at Apple Day at Bromham Mill every year, perhaps they could help?
Also, we are the proud owners of a Newton’s Wonder tree. Would anyone have the skills to take grafts from it to propagate it, as it is especially suited to the local climate?
May 29th, 2009 at 11:29 pm
Michael Harper said:
I am happy to lead this project.
I have been looking into using google earth as the mapping tool for the site. It is free and well supported. You can easily embed information using the mark-up language kml. In addition you can insert 3D models using the tool ‘google sketch-up’ or by searching the extensive online library of free models.
Shane has provided me some details on the website, some contacts who can help and greater access so hopefully in the not to distant future I should be able to set-up a test page and get feed back on its function.
In the meantime it would be good to start forming a database of information to be inserted into the mapping tool. Once some pieces of information come in, we can define our data model (i.e. standardise the data we wish to receive; e.g. for a single fruit tree this could be: type (apple), location (lat, long), harvesting period, whether permission to harvest has been gained etc…)
In addtion we can look to categorised the information and set-up the map to enable filtering. Categories can be: current plots of land, single trees, sites of potential, fruit types or what ever we agree on.
If anyone has any information about fruit tree locations or plots of land which we can use then please let me know and I shall start to collect the information.
I shall be posting a set of user requirements which should hopefully give everyone an idea of how the tool will be used, comments on these will be paramount to ensure we get the right feel and functionality in the tool.
Cheers
Michael
June 2nd, 2009 at 7:48 pm
shane said:
Hi Michael, I had a good chat with Ant from Bigbarn yesterday and we’re both keen to find away of working together to develop a template map that can be rolled out across other transitions. Does this fit with you? Maybe he can supply code for you to work from. I’m pretty sure he mentioned it being ope source.
We need to chat about the scope. i.e. will it be just food based or will their be renewable energy sites, recycling points etc. There’s also a sticking point with ant. He runs a commercial operation and some local suppliers pay to have a superior listing. How we deal with this needs to be discussed on day 1. I think it can be worked out but not sure how and wouldn’t want to waste time and then find out there’s no fit.
Shane
June 23rd, 2009 at 9:21 am