If the weather cooperates we hope to hold our first Community Sunday in a while this week – the last two have been rained off. With IYN and Green Flag assessments upcoming, it would be great to have plotters, volunteers and friends along to help with essential site maintenance tasks and some special new projects.
This week saw the last of our Kaimhill Primary Five visits for the Summer Term. Having the kids with us again has been a real tonic after too long a gap caused by the Lockdown years.
Thanks go to Mr Skinley and his team for agreeing to bring the P5 class every week over the Summer Term. Thanks too to the committee members, plotters and volunteers who helped host the six groups each week. The visits are an important part of our Fresh Food for Frugal Families project and it was wonderful to get the project off to such a great start with the kids.
The kids themselves are a credit to Mr Skinley and to the school. They were both a force of nature and for nature with their limitless enthusiasm for the outdoors. They were a proper tonic and we oldies all need our regular positivity vaccination shots and updates to fend off the grumpy doldrums.
The school breaks up this week, but we will be back in touch with the kids in the Autumn term to harvest and deliver their produce for them to take home and cook with.
Regular users will have noticed that the wee compostable toilet at the top of the site is currently locked and no longer able to accept deposits.
We are very grateful to Stewart Gilchrist who has continued to maintain the toilets, despite no longer being a member of the Committee. Unfortunately, Stewart had reported several incidents of late when the small toilet has been used inappropriately and solids have been dropped into the liquids bowl and then sawdust added, so causing a complete blockage of the loo. Needless to say putting this right is a far from a pleasant business – and it is very time consuming.
We are not quite sure why this is happening so frequently now after many years of successful operation. However, it is clearly not fair on Stewart that he has to put up with the extra cleaning up on a regular basis.
While we investigate solutions to this problem, the small toilet will be kept locked. The larger loo by the Community Garden is of course still available.
Suggestions as to how to go forward with the smaller loo will be welcomed.
Our Community Sundays are a great way to meet your fellow plotters and our volunteers and enjoy a good blether while we get some site-wide tasks done.
This Sunday we hope to:
We hope you will be able to come along and lend a helping hand.
After the long Covid break, it was great to have the wonderful Kaimhill kids back visit with us along with Captain Grow, aka Peter (Plot 29).
Thanks go to Hazel, Anne, Steve, Raymond, Ron and Norman for hosting groups on their plots and to Mr Skinley and his colleagues for taking the kids along to us.
The kids return on Tuesday 9 May and then for the next six weeks or so at the same times. If you can spare an hour or so between 13.00 and 14.20 and would be willing to have the kids visit on your plot we would love to hear from you.
We were all disappointed to find that our local supply of cow dung had dried up – so to speak! We are investigating alternatives which can be delivered in bigger tonnages – of domestic green waste compost and/or manure.
The scrapping of the containers from site produced a one-off windfall for GFAA funds and we hope to make around four barrowloads of dung and/or domestic green waste compost available free of charge to GFAA members.
We fear demand my outpace supply, so requests will be fulfilled on a first come, first served basis while supplies last.
If you are interested, please leave a comment below this post with your name and plot number. The compost/dung will be delivered to your plot once it is available. This may take a few weeks to organise. Bear with us.
If things work out and there is enough interest we may try to repeat this exercise.
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