Transition Town Dorchester celebrated the return of a lost member of our community last week.

Early one morning we received a call from a bakery in town saying they had found a large goose wandering around outside their shop, could it be ours? We raced down to check, and sure enough, it was our scariest alpha male goose, the one who goes the extra mile to defend his women folk from all potential adversity.

He was bundled into the car, for once meek and subdued, and taken back to the orchard. We can only imagine what had happened – someone thought that stealing a goose might be a good idea (the lock on the shed was broken), but the reality was far more frightening than anticipated, so he was abandoned.

Our bees have been making prodigious amounts of honey, and we have now got five honey boxes (supers) piled on the top of one of the hives. We have seen pictures of towering hives like this, but never thought our bees would produce so much. We will take some of the honey off soon, because it is likely to be rapeseed honey, which sets rock hard and then can be unusable even for the bees.

We have found a contractor to level the area where our polytunnel will be built, so we have been busy clearing the vegetation away and moving some stacks of wood. We have been chosen by Poundbury Waitrose to be part of their green token scheme for August to help with the funding of the work, so do remember us when you are shopping there!

If you would like to join us for our weekend workdays at our community spaces, email info@transitiontowndorchester.org