LAST week I and my fellow Cultivate manager attended a Growing Collaboration meeting for members of Oxfordshire's Community Action Group network who are involved with local food and agriculture projects. The CAG network consists of more than 60 groups across the county who organise events and projects to take action on issues including waste, transport, food, energy, biodiversity and social justice. There are groups all across the county including Abingdon Carbon Cutters, Incredible Edible Didcot, Oxgrow, Sustainable Blewbury and of course Cultivate.

Being a member of a cooperative social enterprise, I was vaguely aware of this network of groups and their activities but it was great to come together and really understand what everyone is working on. In fact I was incredibly impressed at the number of groups large, small, established and fledgling groups that are working hard to make a better food and growing system for the local area.

It was particularly great to hear from Christine who is part of the Charlbury Green hub and who organises the Big Apple Takeaway twice a month in Charlbury from September to November. It's part of a Sharecroppers scheme where they pick and re-distribute fruit in their local area. Perhaps I underestimated the parish of Charlbury but I was impressed to learn that they re-distribute more than three tonnes of apples to hundreds of people who then go on to use them for eating, cooking, storing, freezing cooked or making cider. As I have a lot of apples going spare on trees where I live this definitely inspired me to make more of my local crop.

I think it's this inspiration and motivation that will stay with me. Knowing we are all working away towards similar goals and hopefully can do this in a more joined up way moving forwards is fantastic. What's even better is that there are loads of ways for communities to get involved especially now during harvest season. Our events calendar is absolutely bursting with local food fairs, restaurant nights, apple festivals and community garden events. Oxford really is bursting with the spirit of harvest and I would urge everyone to get involved.