 My name's Janet and I'm a member of Fincher, which is a community-based garden, three gardens in fact in north Wales. There's one in Hardin, one in Northwick, which is where we are now, and one in Kilkin. They're all very different and basically we grow veg together as a community and on a Friday generally we pick veg from each of the sites and then take it to our hub, which at the moment, because of Covid, we're holding in Northwick, and basically we have a huge selection particularly at this time of year where we have lots of veg from three different sites. I've been a member for about five or six years and Fincher was established about ten years ago. In fact, yes, this is our tenth year that we've been working together. The aim of Fincher is to grow to organic standards and produce food which members can access locally. So it's very local. Most people live within five miles, I would say, of any of the sites and we can produce veg even through lockdown. We've been able to produce veg for our members. But because of the Covid outbreak, we've had to change the way we worked. We were quite worried at the beginning that we wouldn't be able to produce the veg because of the lockdown itself. But in fact, we felt we were producing food and it was a form of work and we knew that we could work safely. So we worked two government guidelines and instead of working on a Tuesday, we worked throughout the week and somebody did a rotor so that there were only two people on the site at any one time. It's three acres so we were able to work well away from one another. I think it probably worked more effectively than it might otherwise have done because there were people who were normally at work who couldn't come on a Tuesday but throughout the lockdown we had huge interest in Fincher, people wanting to join and the work was spread out and at the very beginning of the lockdown we actually had some very, very hot weather and normally watering is quite a problem but because we were dividing our work throughout the week we had people to walk to the crop so actually it worked quite well. During the food scarcity we were still to a point able to access our veg locally in the same way as we always have been able to and one of the additional benefits during lockdown has been that people have been able to get out into the fresh air to work and talk at a distance so I think in terms of mental and physical wellbeing it's a really good thing. It is just for members but we did have a surge in people showing interest in wishing to join Flintshire at the time and we've probably run along with a membership somewhere between 65 and 75-ish for a long time and we're currently close to 100, in fact we've capped it at 100 because we've only got the same amount of land and we would find it difficult to produce for more than the membership to be truthful. I think we were perhaps a little ahead of our time. There is a lot of concern about global warming, transporting beans for example from Kenya or asparagus from Peru. We tend to eat seasonally and the veg that we have as I say most members live within about five miles of any of the sites and so I think the mileage in terms of fuel and CO2 emissions is reduced. So at the moment it's just perfect really. Well the hub as we call it is something that we hold on a Saturday. Traditionally we would rotate between the three sites, prop the veg on a Friday and take the veg to whichever site was holding the hub. Through lockdown we've had to change this so now we're at the north of site which is very spacious, there's plenty of parking and for the foreseeable future this is where we'll hold our hubs. So we're still operating in a similar way in that we crop the vegetables fruit and veg on a Friday and then bring them to the hub on the Saturday morning so later on this morning we'll have an array of marrows, courgettes, tomatoes, aubergines, lots of lovely veg. I don't know if anybody else does it, I think we've just kind of evolved this way. I don't really know, I mean with allotments I guess people swap some of these grown beans and some of these grown tomatoes, you might swap your veg but this is done in an intentional way. We don't use very much money at all. It is a cashless model essentially where members work in exchange for veg and they have a veg account which they submit at the end of each month. If they're in credit then they don't pay for veg. If they're in debit they can work a few more hours or they can top up the cash later on. The positives from having an association with Horticultural Wales has been that we've been able to link up with other similar groups doing different things, maybe not gardening but composting, growing fruit and we've been able to meet one another and share ideas. So yeah lots of good things come out of having an association with Horticultural Wales. I think it's fantastic. If you think of the model of allotments people have their own sites and you'll find that everybody is growing similar things at the same time of year. So come you know, August, July, August time everybody but everybody's got run of beans and there are only so many run of beans you can eat and give to friends and put in the freezer. Also if you go on holiday if you have an allotment you might be worrying about getting things watered. The beauty of Flintshire is that you can come and work as much or as little as you like. There are some people who work only two or four hours a week, there are people who work eight hours a week or more and the beauty of it is that you can go on holiday and know that somebody else is taking care of the crops.