Clearing out the old Hut
Our Trading Hut renovation project is moving on. Our plan is to trade from the Barn over autumn and winter while we demolish the old Trading Hut and then build and commission our new one. Today we started preparing……
10 o’clock on Sunday morning, 26th July 2015 was a historic time for our allotment society. This was when a hardy group of volunteers turned up to move all the bags of compost, fertilisers, nutrients etc from the Trading Hut and the Barn into the storage containers. We didn’t realise how hardy we would have to be, as about 9.30 this morning, torrential rain also turned up, to keep us cool while we moved around 5 tonnes of bags.
The day started by working out what should go where – although the containers look huge, we have an awful lot of stuff which needs to go in, and we need to be able access it all as we will continue to trade while the Hut is rebuilt. Careful planning had been done by Felicity Ford and Mandy Merryweather, and now the onsite staff used precision measurement to place ach type of goods in their right place – Brenda demonstrated how she never needs to use a ruler, while Felix showed of his new improvised rain hat which made sure the rest of his body got soaked by the deluge.
Meanwhile, the Barn team started work – Martin Hesse and Adele Walsh began the major job of getting tonnes of bags into the wheelbarrows.
Adele shows off her wheelbarrowing skills…….
Julian shows us how it should be done……
…..and Felix continued to keep his hair dry.
The end result? A rather full container……
…..and a rather emptier Trading Hut.
Finally, Belinda Constable gets the Barn ready for its new role.
Many thanks to the team that volunteered today – Brenda Carter, Adele Walsh, Belinda Constable, Mandy Merryweather, Martin Hesse, Julian Child, Felix Maguire, Steve Sydee and especially Tedros who turned up at the shop to buy a few things, and ended up doing two hours hard labour!
Great job by all – we really appreciate it.
Despite grey skies and a distinct nip in the air several volunteers turned up on Thursday to help finish clearing the old Hut. All the fiddly bits had been left to last but our trusty team used ingenuity and tenacity to move all the last items to the containers.
New plotholders David and Debbie didn’t know what they’d signed up for when they found themselves moving all the plastic and fleece and dismantling the elegant structure they’d been perching on for so long. They also hadn’t realised that gardening involved a large filing cabinet, which they kindly moved as well.
Then we were joined by Scilla, Julian and Sally who helped tidy up the strimmers and boxes. Julian also mended the old box we keep the loo rolls in.
And just when they thought it was all done Felicity mentioned that we needed to move the mower box. It’s a lovely box, well made, robust – and very heavy. We pushed and pulled and scratched our heads. Debbie went off to round up other people and Julian had a think. He then came up with a brainwave – he suggested putting two old bits of drainpipe underneath the box and rolling it, a la Stonehenge, along to its new home. Scilla managed the rollers while the rest of us tipped and rolled and in no time at all the immovable object had rolled across rough terrain, up a hill and come to rest in the right place. A real triumph of brains over brawn.
