A day down on the farm, with the bees and the trees on the Urban Farm and its volunteers in Wolverton

A day at the Urb Farm off Windsor Street in Wolverton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Patrick Comerford

I spent time earlier this week with clerical colleagues from the Milton Keynes area at the Urb Farm, a three-acre market garden in Wolverton that produces and sells its own seasonal vegetables, fruit and honey.

The Urb Farm can be found between 196-198 Windsor Street in Wolverton. This is a horticultural social enterprise that nurtures the soil and grows organic produce for the local community all year round. With its trainees and volunteers, the farm maintains 25 large growing beds, five polytunnels, greenhouses, beehives and an orchard throughout the year. They grow a wide range of vegetables and fruit using environmentally sensitive techniques, working with the seasons and local climate.

The farm works with young people not in education, employment or training, and offers work experience while developing work skills within a framework that understands their individual needs.

The farm welcomes volunteers as part of the Urb Farm team, to enjoy the site and use their gifts, time and enthusiasm to learn more about growing vegetables and fruit and helping the Urb Farm to flourish and grow. Seasonal produce is grown at the Urb Farm market garden in the heart of Wolverton.

Milton Keynes Christian Foundation is an innovative local charity growing people and community through social enterprise. Our eight exciting enterprises work to ‘co-produce’ solutions to locally identified issues that have a global importance.

The enterprises are staffed by teams of young people who have struggled with mainstream education. Their enterprise work experience is supported by accredited training enabling trainees to build confidence and make good choices for the next steps in life.

The Urb Farm in Wolverton is part of the Milton Keynes Christian Foundation (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

The Urb Farm has its roots in the Christian community, but we were told how it works with people of all faiths and none, celebrating diversity and welcoming people from all parts of the community. Milton Keynes Christian Foundation runs a number of social enterprises and services from and Foundation House. As well as the urban farm in Wolverton, these include: the Learning Foundation, offering an alternative to school or college; Childcare Pathways, a nursery social enterprise in the heart of Wolverton; Think Food, a small café with a big vision; Cycle Saviours, saving, refurbishing, repairing, servicing and selling bikes and making cycling accessible to all; Urban Bee-lievers’, making Milton Keynes a bee-friendly city.

I was interested in particular in Urban Beelievers, an exciting social enterprise that finds ways to encourage, educate and inspire people to make Milton Keynes a bee-friendly city. The farm looks after thousands of honey bees across the city in company gardens, roof tops and school grounds as well as at the Urban Farm.

The farm helps create homes for bumble bees and solitary bees as well as plants, flowers and trees that provide food for bees, it runs workshops on all things honey and bee related and produces useful and beautiful products using wax and honey.

The UK has already lost 11 species of bee with 35 species of the 250 left being under threat. Bees pollinate 75% of our food crops like apples and tomatoes, and the farm invited people to help them to look after bees and to stop their decline.

The farm invites people to learn more about bees, helping to create a city full of bee food flowers and places for them to live and thrive. People are welcome to join an Urban Bee-lievers beekeeper experience and to learn about becoming beekeepers. During the three-hour Beekeeping Experience course, which costs £60, participants learn about the honeybee colony, how to care for the bees, get hands-on experience and taste the honey.

The Urb Farm helps create homes for bumble bees and solitary bees as well as plants, flowers and trees that provide food for bees (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

We heard how Milton Keynes Christian Foundation and Sector Ministry was established by the local Christian community and continues to be part of. It emerged from the Church’s ecumenical adventures in the growing new town of Milton Keynes. As churches found new ways to work with each other, they also sought to develop innovative patterns of working with the emerging communities, exploring new meanings of ‘being church’ and new patterns of ministry.

From humble beginnings in a Methodist church hall in Wolverton, the Christian Foundation was born, inspired by the values of the Christian faith. The foundation is committed to learning from communities and with others about how to challenge disadvantage, exclusion, injustice and the abuse of the environment. With its faith perspective, it sees these activities as signs of God’s activity in the community.

One strand of these explorations was developed by a team of ‘Sector Ministers’ who came together in the early 1980s, and the Christian Foundation was one of these ventures. The focus has been on the everyday sectors of life, such as work, education, business, health, family, community and environment.

The Urb Farm runs workshops on all things honey and bee related and produces products using wax and honey (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Over the years, the foundation has engaged with many local issues, including waste and recycling; unemployment and training; teenage pregnancy and period poverty; childcare and play; education and school exclusion; food security and healthy eating; affordable housing and homelessness; regeneration and community cohesion; transport and cycling; renewable energy and climate change.

It continues to be involved with many of these issues, but more recently it has found social enterprise offers a new and creative way to work with them. The enterprises offer opportunities for working on demanding common tasks, enabling young people and others to co-create their futures, ‘learning, changing and growing’.

The Urb Farm also works in partnership with companies across Milton Keynes and welcomes teams to enjoy the farm site for team-building experiences or to make the most of their volunteer days. Others sponsor or host a beehive, enjoy pop-up shops for staff events and office-based Christmas fairs and workshops in growing veg or honey tasting.

As Milton Keynes Christian Foundation marks its 40th year, it is celebrating all it has been achieved and is looking ahead with hope. It sees this milestone as an opportunity to renew bonds with the local churches. A thanksgiving celebration takes place at the Urb Farm at 4 pm next Friday (17 July 2026). It is planned as a joyful occasion to meet young people, staff, and volunteers, to celebrate together, and to explore how this shared mission can continue in the years ahead.

• All produce at Urb Farm is cultivated on site with zero food miles from field to market. Veg Bags can be bought on the shop section on the website, and collected from the farm. The weekly market is open every Tuesday from 10 am to 4 pm and the second and fourth Saturdays of the month from 10 am to 1 pm.

The weekly market is open every Tuesday from 10 am to 4 pm and the second and fourth Saturdays of the month from 10 am to 1 pm (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2026)

Praying with the Psalms in Easter: 20 May 2022 (Psalm 86)

‘Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy’ (Psalm 86: 1) … street art seen near Harcourt Street, Dublin (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Patrick Comerford

Before this day begins, I am taking some time this morning to continue my reflections in this season of Easter, including my morning reflections drawing on the Psalms.

In my blog, I am reflecting each morning in this Prayer Diary in these ways:

1, Short reflections on a psalm or psalms;

2, reading the psalm or psalms;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

Psalm 86:

Psalm 86 is found in Book 3 in the Book of Psalms, which includes Psalms 73 to 89. In the slightly different numbering scheme in the Greek Septuagint and the Latin Vulgate, this is psalm is numbered as Psalm 85. In Latin, it is known as Inclina Domine.

Psalm 86 is one in a group of psalms at the end of Book III within the 150 psalms, from Psalm 84 to Psalm 89. These psalms attempt to provide hope to the exilic Israelite community. But, despite their celebration of the historic traditions of the Jewish people, they remind the reader that these elements no longer provide the hope they once did.

Four psalms of this group – Psalms 84, 85, 87 and 88 – are attributed to the Korahites, who are described as the doorkeepers of the tabernacle in the Book of Chronicles. However, Psalm 86 is the only psalm in Book III of the psalms that is ascribed to David as ‘A Prayer of David.’

Psalm 86 is one of five psalms labelled as a ‘prayer’ (tephillah), and bears a resemblance to Psalm 17, which also has this title. (Psalm 90 is known as the ‘prayer of Moses.’)

This psalm includes frequent parallels and repetitions, such as an eightfold ‘for’ (verses 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 10, 13), the repeated ‘Lord’ eleven times (verses 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 15, 17, with seven of them being Adonai (verses 3, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12, 15), and the four others as YHWH. The psalmist is named the ‘servant’ of YHWH (abdeka, ‘your servant’) in verses 2, 4, 16, which may indicate literary patterns. A chiastic structure identifies verse 11 as the centre of the psalm.

In this prayer, David gives glory to God (verse 8-10, 12, 13), seeks grace and favour from God, that God would hear his prayers (verses 1, 6, 7), preserve and save him, and be merciful to him (verses 2, 3, 16), and that he would give him joy, grace, strength and honour (verses 4, 11, 17). He pleads for God’s goodness (verse 5, 15) and speaks of the malice of his enemies (verse 14).

This psalm may be divided into three parts:

1, verses 1-7: this is a plea for help that talks about the psalmist’s piety (verses 1-4) and ‘the character of God’ (verses 5-7).

2, verses 8-13: these verses form a hymn, interrupted by a call on God to teach the psalmist (verse 11), and conclude with thankful confidence for answered prayer, and a vow to offer praise or to sacrifice a thank-offering (verses 12-13).

3, verses 14-17: are renewed prayer, ending with a request for a sign of God’s favour. Verse 16 is a paraphrase of the middle part in the Priestly Blessing (Numbers 6: 25).

‘Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul’ (Psalm 86: 4) … street art in Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2022)

Psalm 86 (NRSVA):

A Prayer of David.

1 Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me,
for I am poor and needy.
2 Preserve my life, for I am devoted to you;
save your servant who trusts in you.
You are my God; 3 be gracious to me, O Lord,
for to you do I cry all day long.
4 Gladden the soul of your servant,
for to you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
5 For you, O Lord, are good and forgiving,
abounding in steadfast love to all who call on you.
6 Give ear, O Lord, to my prayer;
listen to my cry of supplication.
7 In the day of my trouble I call on you,
for you will answer me.

8 There is none like you among the gods, O Lord,
nor are there any works like yours.
9 All the nations you have made shall come
and bow down before you, O Lord,
and shall glorify your name.
10 For you are great and do wondrous things;
you alone are God.
11 Teach me your way, O Lord,
that I may walk in your truth;
give me an undivided heart to revere your name.
12 I give thanks to you, O Lord my God, with my whole heart,
and I will glorify your name for ever.
13 For great is your steadfast love towards me;
you have delivered my soul from the depths of Sheol.

14 O God, the insolent rise up against me;
a band of ruffians seeks my life,
and they do not set you before them.
15 But you, O Lord, are a God merciful and gracious,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
16 Turn to me and be gracious to me;
give your strength to your servant;
save the child of your serving-maid.
17 Show me a sign of your favour,
so that those who hate me may see it and be put to shame,
because you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.

Today’s Prayer:

The theme in this week’s prayer diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel) is ‘Advocacy in Brazil.’

The USPG Prayer Diary this morning (20 May 2022, World Bee Day) invites us to pray:

Today we celebrate bees, which play a vital role in our ecosystem. May we work to safeguard nature and put the wellbeing of the earth at the centre of our politics.

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

‘Don’t mow, let it grow’ for the bees and the butterflies

A bee-friendly corner near West Square in Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Patrick Comerford

While I was visiting the Hunt Museum last week and the exhibition of paintings by Jack B Yeats and Paul Henry, I noticed a small grassy area that is set aside and known as ‘The Bee Loud Glade.’

This is a wild garden and the name and sign are the inspiration of Sarah Hughes and the junior infants class at Our Lady Queen of Peace National School in Limerick.

Nearby, in a shaded corner on one of the wings of the museum, is a sign that declares: ‘Warning. Live Honey Bees.’ Behind a screen is an apiary that is part of the Limerick Urban Beekeeping Society project. Visitors are warned of the possibility of being stung and the sign advising people who know they have allergic reactions to bee stings not to enter the area.

For a time, I stood in awe as I watched the bees busy at work behind the screen.

‘The Bee Loud Glade’ at the Hunt Museum in Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Back in Askeaton, since the weekend, I have noticed how there are many areas of open grass that are not mowed or that allowed to grow for weeks on end as part of a scheme to manage them for wildlife.

Some of the signs declare: ‘Don’t mow, let it grow.’ They say: ‘This area of grass will be cut on a 6-weekly rotation to allow clover, bird’s-foot-trefoil and other low-growing plans to blossom. This will provide food for bees and butterflies where closely mown grass does not.’

There are signs on the east end of Church Street, east of the Rectory, near the West Square, and by the swimming pool, close to the banks of the River Deel.

‘Don’t mow, let it grow’ … a patch for the bees and the butterflies near the Rectory in Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

Near the corner of the road to Nantenan and Rathkeale, a sign says: ‘bee friendly, annual plants for pollen & nectar.’ A similar sign nearby says: ‘bee friendly, perennial plants for pollen & nectar.’

Some of the signs are sponsored by local businesses, others have been designed by schoolchildren and in schools.

During a late evening walk in Askeaton yesterday, I wondered whether I am living in the most bee-friendly town and county in Ireland.

‘Managed for Wildlife’ … close to the River Deel in Askeaton (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2017)

From lunch on Ormond Quay to the Duke of Ormond’s deer park

Flowers in the Kitchen Garden in Ashtown Castle this afternoon (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

Patrick Comerford

The rain came down in torrents at lunchtime today [28 July 2013] as two of us strolled from Christchurch Cathedral to the Italian Quarter for lunch in Wallace’s Taverna.

For the first time in many months we sat indoors there as people huddled outside under the awnings and the rain showed no signs of abating.

This traditional Italian restaurant and pizzeria opened in 2005 as La Taverna di Bacco, the flagship restaurant of the Italian Quarter on the corner of Ormond Quay.

Rain hits the paving stones in the Italian Quarter at lunchtime (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

As the rain continued in patchy showers, we realised this was not an afternoon for a walk on a beach. Instead, we drove out to the Phoenix Park, intending to visit Farmleigh House.

Despite the rain, cricket was being played at the Civil Service Cricket Club, and the grass was being prepared at the Phoenix Cricket Club, which was formed in 1830, making it the oldest cricket club in Ireland one of the oldest in the world.

When we got to the Phoenix Monument, Chesterfield Avenue was closed off, and we ended up visiting the Visitor Centre and Ashtown Castle instead.

A busy bee at work in the walled kitchen garden at Ashtown Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013

We first strolled around the 2½-acre Victorian kitchen walled garden, with its array of flowers, fruit, vegetables and small trees. We are all concerned about the future of bees, and one of the delights of the walled garden was seeing the number of bees hovering around the flowers and plants.

Ashtown Castle ... neglected by successive Papal Nuncios, but now restored for the people of Ireland (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

We then stopped to look at Ashtown Castle, which had been hidden for centuries within the walls of a much larger and more recent building that was used as the official residence of the Papal Nuncio until 1978.

When the Papal Nuncios abandoned the house, it was full of dry rot and in such a state of neglect and disrepair that it was deemed to be structurally irreparable. But as the house was being demolished, Ashtown Castle was uncovered.

The castle may date back to the 1430s, when it was built as a tower house. The dimensions conform to a government policy of the time that offered £10 to those who built a castle of this style for their own safety. Ashtown Castle was later incorporated into Ashtown Lodge, when it was rebuilt as the official residence of the Under Secretary of Ireland from 1782.

From Ashtown Castle, we walked across to the courtyard that houses the Phoenix Park Visitor Centre, which provides an historical interpretation of the Phoenix Park from the year 3500 BC to the present day.

The Phoenix Park extends to 707 hectares (1,752 acres) and is one of the largest enclosed recreational spaces within any European capital city. It is larger than all the city parks in London put together and twice the size of Central Park in New York.

The Phoenix Park was established just over 350 years ago in 1662 on behalf of King Charles II by the Viceroy of Ireland, James Butler, Duke of Ormond, who also gave his name to Ormond Quay, where we had lunch a few hours earlier. Ormond originally planned the Phoenix Park as a Royal Deer Park, using the former demesne of Kilmainham Priory, which stretched across both sides of the River Liffey.

In the 1660s, the Duke of Ormond introduced a herd of Fallow Deer that has lived in the park ever since. In 1668, Marcus Trevor, Viscount Dungannon, was appointed Park Ranger, and with two other keepers, he was responsible for the deer, managing the park’s enclosures and the new plantations.

Ormond also founded the Royal Hospital in Kilmainham in 1680. The foundation of the Royal Hospital reduced the Phoenix Park to its present size and location on the north side of the river. The park was then enclosed within a stone wall, which adjusted and delineated the size and the boundaries of the park.

The traditional maze at Ashtown Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2013)

The other attractions beside Ashtown Castle and Visitor Centre include a café, a traditional maze, woodland walks, a picnic area and a children’s playground.

Almost one-third of the Phoenix Park is covered with trees, and the park is a sanctuary for many mammals and birds, with a wide range of wildlife habitats.

Nearby is the official residence of the President, Áras an Uachtaráin, which dates from 1750, and is the former Vice-Regal Lodge. Ratra House was the retirement home of Ireland’s first President, Dr Douglas Hyde. It was built in 1876, and Winston Churchill, lived there from the ages of two to six when it was known as the Little Lodge. In his autobiography, My Early Life: 1874-1904, Churchill said his “first coherent memory” was formed in the Phoenix Park when his father was Secretary to the Lord Lieutenant, Churchill’s grandfather, the Duke of Marlborough.

When we left the Visitor Centre it was still raining, and we never got to visit Farmleigh House. Instead we drove on Castleknock, where I wanted to photograph the parish church to illustrate a paper I am writing on Josiah Hort, an 18th century bishop.

By the time I got home, it was time for a change of clothes.