Making (feathered) friends

Supermarket staff have made a poultry contribution to animal welfare, after showing their support for Sunnyside Rural Trust by adopting a chicken.
Waitrose staff meet their adopted chicken TikkaWaitrose staff meet their adopted chicken Tikka
Waitrose staff meet their adopted chicken Tikka

Partners at Berkhamsted’s Waitrose store have long been supporters of the charity, and have named their new feathered mascot ‘Tikka’.

The name was chosen by Kevin Freeman who works on the fish and meat counters and whose mother used to volunteer with the Trust when he was a youngsters.

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Earlier this year staff helped to create a floristry coppice at the Trust’s site in Northchurch, which saw them take off the turf, remove shrubs and dig the soil for future planting. The site will be sued to plant eucalyptus for floristry workshops.

Peter Finch, Sunnyside’s site coordinator, said: “This is such a busy time of year for us, managing the work on the rest of the site, that we wouldn’t have been able to start this project until later in the year, and then it would have taken us a considerable amount of time to do.

“As we support adults with learning disabilities jobs progress at their pace and can take some time to complete. But this means we can start planting this autumn and winter, which is great.”

Sunnyside Rural Trust supports over 115 people with learning disabilities through horticultural activities on three sites in Berkhamsted, Hemel Hempstead and Northchurch.

The produce grown is sold as part of their social enterprise on a weekly market and in their farm shops.