Big Eat at St Peter's community centre

Then there was the Big Eat - a celebration at St Peter's Community Centre when the fruits of all that labour were to be enjoyed by young and old, a new and modern take on the traditional harvest supper.

Tables laden with home-grown goodies, including roast marrow, spinach quiche and blackcurrant crumble, were evidence that the Big Idea devised by St Peter's church group The Hill had really worked - and organiser Jason Newton was thrilled with its success.

Jason said: "I can only compare it to the garden where we were digging. I am not really a gardener so I got a bit disheartened...we planted potatoes and the shoots came up and then it all seemed to die away before we got to the harvest. Then I got the fork in there and all these potatoes suddenly came up - and it was like that today, because you do all the work and give seeds to people then you don't hear much back, and then it is great to have so many people here today, with lots of new faces and lots of children from the schools we did assemblies in.

"Certainly this is something now - similar events to this are going on all around the country, and I think this is going to give us momentum to carry on...I hope we can take it on and make this part of Bexhill's future.

"It is all about planting seeds in the community - on lots of different levels I think that is what we managed to do.

"This is about taking harvest festival back to its roots."