Monday 25 January 2010

Site now open to tenants!

The snow has melted, most of the site preparation work has been done and the plots are now ready for individual occupation. The ground is draining surprisingly quickly and is already becoming quite workable, so it won't be long before we can get stuck in with a fork!




Sunday 17 January 2010

New plot signs

Big thanks to Janey Bennett for doing such a good job on these plot signs, they will be hammered into place this afternoon. The snow has now melted so everything is steaming ahead - all is still on course for the site to be fully open following the meeting next Sunday 24th January (11.30am in the village hall).

Friday 15 January 2010

Big Lottery Fund award

We are now able to officially announce that we have been awarded a grant by the Big Lottery Fund. The grant is for £5785 and is to cover all of the main costs in getting the site properly established.


A huge thank you to everyone who buys lottery tickets and also to the Big Lottery Fund themselves for recognizing the value of the project - both to the community and the environment.

Saturday 9 January 2010

Meeting postponed again

Apologies for the late notice but, for fairly obvious reasons, I am postponing tomorrow's site meeting again. The whole field is still buried in snow and as such all the work has been set back another week.

More snow and cold temperatures are forecast so to be sure I am rescheduling the meeting for 2 weeks time. So the final confirmed date for the meeting is:

11.30am on Sunday 24th January up at the allotment site.

This meeting will go ahead no matter what the weather - if it's very cold or raining most of the meeting will transfer to the village hall. I do hope you can make it as this will definitely be the official site launch, however should you be unable to attend I will send out a full update by email on the same day.

Enjoy the snow!

Thursday 7 January 2010

Fence posts are in

Just managed to get the fence posts in before the whole site was buried under a foot of snow!







Friday 1 January 2010

More photos & Update

Here are some new photos taken over Christmas. The gate and parking area are now in place, the lane has been scraped and the site has been roughly cultivated. The storage container has also been delivered. The ground seems to veer between frozen solid or totally drenched depending on the weather (this is England after all!), but this gives us a chance to crack on with the rest of the site preparation work while we are unable to get on with planting.

The individual plots will be marked out this weekend so we will all be able to see exactly where we are. Then next week the perimeter fencing will go in, the storage container will be totally refurbished (with steel plates bolted across the openings); we'll also be laying a central path with wood chippings and doing some more work on improving the lane. The next steps will be to look at improving drainage and start digging the trench for the water supply.

We will be having a meeting on the site at 11.30am on Sunday 10th January - all are welcome. Hopefully, weather permitting, the bulk of the work will be done by then, so this can be considered to be the official opening of the site to individual tenants.