The Boys!

Day 7

10/11/12:  Volunteers - Austin, Rhys, Dwayne & Brett

Liz and I were away for the weekend and so the boys went down to do some proper 'man' digging!

The right hand plot was the last left to turn over and now the end of the preparation of the plot is in sight

 Rhys (above) & Brett (below) are a couple of new recruits!

The plot still needs a bit of work on the bottom right hand corner, but the winter weather is setting in and the volunteers spirits, like the weather, are getting a little chilly! 

More Digger Action

Day 6
28/10/12: Volunteers - Dwayne, Austin & Katie. Late Arrivals - Liz & Paul

When we arrived Tony was already there with his digger waiting to let us use it........
Amazing!

 The plan was to make as much use of the digger as possible - so we started turning the land over.......in huge digger claw sized chunks!

This then allowed whoever wasn't hogging the digger at that time to really easily pull the weed roots out....

What a difference a digger makes!

  

 Everything has really stepped up a notch now. Gone are the days of hand tools and sandwiches!

We now have heavy machinery and a full on kitchen with wind break and preparation area

The gas ran out on our camping stove half way through cooking the sausages! Nooooooooo.......

Not to worry, we dug up an old car wheel rim and a couple of huge stones the other day - lets convert them into a BBQ! 

Liz and Paul arrived just in time to help us finish off the BBQ food.............

                                                                                                                                                             

We were pretty satisfied with the progress though 

and then it started raining so we decided to call it a day!

Just this plot to turn over and de-root now........

This is Tony and his van! 

Digger Day!

Day 5
27/10/12: Volunteers - Dwayne, Austin & Katie

Day Five and we were back to three volunteers......

 and a little friend we made after he nearly met his match in the form of Austins spade! 

Fortunately I had packed my spade for vertically challenged volunteers, so our new little friend could help!     

             

 

We finished off tidying up the back of the middle two plots

......I made a compost bin out of some mysterious palates that appeared on our plot during the week.

Keith?!

Because everyone involved in the project so far also have 9-5 jobs we are like ships in the night. Each having keys for the allotment I am hoping each time I go down some magic fairies will have done something!

Unfortunately no magic fairies had done any digging................

We had however found out that ALL the four plots are indeed ours. Meaning that the half a days work I had done on the plot was ours after all......Phew! 

........and so we carried on digging the other plots, now knowing they all had to be dug!

A couple of hours in we had a visitor! 

Tony - aka God! 

Tony - as you might guess; is the amazing, kind & generous owner of this digger you see on the right!
We had a conversation with Tony about the project and he was impressed with what we had managed to achieve by hand, but suggested that perhaps his digger might make the work slightly easier.............

YES!!!! 

I explained to tony that we were a charity and therefore on a very tight budget. Tony really kindly let us have the use of his digger for free if we filled up the tank with diesel.

Wayne was driving the digger for us, his method was to use the claw as a scraper and pull all the foliage back into piles for us. Instantly saving us about three days work. Tony reckons a digger can work about 7 times faster than man power! I reckon its more like 20 times..............

After a while Wayne had to leave......and left us in charge of the digger. Wise?! 

OMG! Digging is so much fun! 

Where there was green twenty minutes before - now there was glorious mud!

I've never been so happy about seeing mud! Infact, I dont think I've ever been happy about seeing mud - until now!

Thank You Tony! 

We had come prepared - we've learnt that on an allotment you need supplies! 

Gas Stove burgers all round! 

 Mud, Glorious Mud! 

We were all so elated at the end of this day! 

more of the same..........

Day 4

21/10/12: Volunteers - Keith, Dwayne, Austin, Liz & Katie 

After yesterdays exertions some of us went out for a curry and a few drinks......

This meant day four got off to a much slower start (infact those involved didn't make it down there till one - oops!).

Keith however, had been down there since eleven and had continued the amazing work we had done the day before......

The aim was to get those two middle patches finished. 

Commence the digging..........

........and more digging! 

...............and more digging!!

End of day 4 - knackered again! But the two central plots were pretty much done! Yippee! 

Team Day 4

left to right: Dwayne, Liz, Keith, Katie & Austin

Gaining momentum..........

Day 3
20/10/12: Volunteers - Keith 1, Keith 2, Matthew, Dwayne, Austin, Liz & Katie

Yey - we got some more volunteers (aka man power) and tools!

Left to right: Katie, Keith, Dwayne, Keith, Matthew, Liz, Austin

Keith was also none the wiser on the plot situation, so we decided to work on the middle two plots again until we were clear on what was ours.

With the initial plan being: here's a spade - Go.......

A couple of hours in something resembling a logical formation of attack seemed to start naturally occurring!

To prepare the land we have to remove all the deep rooted weeds which have grown on the patch since it was last in use.....which has been a while. 

The two main culprits on our land are brambles and dock leaves.

If you just pull half a root up it will grow back, if you cut it into lots of pieces then all those pieces will grow a new friend!

Therefore:
a) We need to dig deep enough to remove the whole root
and
b) Weeds are not our friends!

As the day went on we were making great progress. Many hands were making 'slightly' lighter work! 

.....and our nifty natural line formation was becoming quite military

Keith was instantly popular having brought his rather lovely VW van, with excellent tea making facilities, along for the day! 

Time to breathe and take stock of the brilliant progress we had made!

By the end of day 3 things were looking more promising, with spirits high and having all concluded that it was probably the hardest days work any of us had ever done, we all took our muddy boots off and went home to enjoy our well deserved dinners/pints!