New Year, New Hut

Work has been continuing on our new Hut over recent weeks but bad weather and holidays have slowed progress down a bit. However, now the beautiful cladding is complete and Charlie and the gang have added attractive bespoke shutters to keep the Hut safe.

The walls inside have been varnished and the lower part of the outside painted. This week work is going on with landscaping because we can’t open with uneven ground as it wouldn’t be safe.

We’ve had some donations of furniture and paint from Fred Mayer, for which much thanks, and thanks also to Andrew Charalambous and George Lymboura for trekking down to Holloway to pick up some surplus chairs in the rain.

Work should speed up again next week and we hope to get back in to the new Hut by the end of February. In the meantime, seeds and potatoes will be on sale in the Barn as usual so do come in and stock up.

A reminder too that the AGM is on 7th February at 11am at St John’s School. See you there.

I should have looked at the weather forecast, I admit, before I asked for volunteers to help clear the rubbish on the Trading Hut site this morning. But undeterred by the appalling weather a great team of allotmenteers turned up at 10 and worked really hard in the mud and rain to make a great difference to the space.

Our heartfelt thanks to Margaret Bedford, Peter Chang, Felicity Ford, Paul Gouldstone, Fiona Quinton, Angel Matica, Richard Perry and Paul Wymer. I hope you dry out soon! And thanks to Amanda Whitehead for some of the photos.

Meanwhile Brenda was busy getting this year’s seeds ready in the dry.

And finally there was a nice cup of coffee for all the volunteers made by Belinda in our new kitchen.

The end result is much better than before.

Work has been going on over the last few weeks on the new Hut but it’s less spectacular than before. We’re hoping to move into the new Hut in March and we’re very nearly there.

Joe has been working hard on the landscaping – we’ve ended up with a lot of soil in the wrong place and he has moved every barrow-load of it around. We’re beginning to see how the outside will look and what space there is.

The paths will be levelled and paved in the next couple of weeks which should give us safe level access to all areas.

And to help us get ready for trading from the nice clean Hut, Julian Child took the old weighing machine apart and cleaned it all up in his workshop and now we have the most magnificent set of heritage scales ready to weigh potatoes in the new Hut. Many thanks to him for all the hours he has put in on this project and for the fantastic result.

The earth moved for me

At last, a nice day to do all the hard work! With the sun beating down our small, by now extremely fit, band of volunteers met together again to move the massive mounds of earth resulting from putting in the septic tanks.

Many thanks to Kon Ng who lasted the whole two hours, Margaret Bedford (who has come every week), Peter Chan, Paul Martin, Len Summerfield, and Joyce Butcher and Julian Child who sifted, sorted and spread all the earth to form a raised pathway up to the side gate. It was back-breaking work and when we started the piles of subsoil seemed quite insurmountable. But with reinforcements, and Len’s magic spade, it all suddenly seemed to flatten out. Thanks to Sally and Margaret for keeping the troops in tea, coffee and biscuits.

A huge thanks also to George Klanga who tirelessly rotavated the front of the hut, turning the potting clay into a surface that might one day return to grass. It was a long, hot job, but he did it on his own, so many many thanks.

Thanks also to Richard Perry for several tedious trips to the local dump.