Tuesday, 27 April 2010

Logos at dawn

One land girl is designing the logo to promote the allotment. It will be used on letterheads, perhaps t-shirts and placed on items at the first fete in June. Several logo ideas were presented to the committee in early April and several of the members wanted to fuse two ideas together, which is always a designers nightmare. Watered down visual elements. Today a revised logo has been developed incorporating two elements together. Does it work? Not really but designing to a committee results in being designed by a committee. It will be presented on 28.4.10.

Sunday, 18 April 2010

meanwhile on the windowsills...

The extraordinary process of growing from seed - an unexpected pleasure of allotmenting. Courgette and sweetcorn seedlings shooting from the soil and celery - just can't believe that these delicate seedlings could possibly grow into heads of celery!

Saturday, 17 April 2010

Sunny days

What allotment holder wasn't out on their plot at some point this weekend, enjoying the sunshine and thinking that this kind of weekend weather perfects the allotment experience....?! The influx of new plot holders on our site has resulted in a show of industriousness at the top end which could put the old hands to shame. The removal of the blackberry bushes which previously shielded the rest of the site from the lane has also removed some of the character of the site, but the new faces, conversation and obvious enjoyment being had has to be compensation. And as well as the seeds, seedlings and seed potatoes, the landgirlz are enjoying the vigorous growth of the free produce on our site - rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb (gooseberries come later). We didn't force it properly but it's growing all the same. And in the cold frame, the lettuce and rocket are powering along, promising to beat the threatened ash-related shortage of salads in the supermarkets...

Friday, 9 April 2010

joining the two halves

Sterling work this week from the working parties (and action man J in particular - give that man some beer!), clearing the collected rubbish at the top of the allotment site, digging out long-unused plots and laying hardcore at the allotment entrance to prevent the gateway becoming a mudslide in rainy weather. These are the kinds of people on whom the infrastructure of allotments (and any community activity) depends.

It will be interesting to watch the way in which the site develops over the next six months - I suspect it's been a while since there has been so much change on the site, resulting in an influx of new plot holders. I wonder if this will resolve - or intensify - the tacit divide between the lower and upper plots on the site...?

One of the landgirlz met with another allotment holder - I'll call him Basil - tonight to discuss a new writing project. We plan to create a sociological map of the allotments and to flesh it out with a series of profiles, journals, visual images and creative pieces.

Wednesday, 7 April 2010

Tuesday, 6 April 2010

The Blues


Enough already...the shed is becoming a star in its own right! A coat of 'midnight blue' turned many heads today on the allotment. A working party of six men, building a new section of fencing (to keep the deer out) used my painting as a distraction and gossiping topic. "Blue for a shed, it should have been Barbie Pink, they are four girls". After the first few strokes the midnight colour was even more startling and I though we might be thrown off the site for breaking some parish law or allotment ettiquette! I made a dash for it after one coat. Let's see how many raised eyebrows and committee minutes the Blue Shed attracts....!!

Planting Chocolate Eggs

Easter Sunday saw us down on the plot, where small children hunted for chocolate eggs (which we did not see). First job of the holy day was to fathom out why our unique water collection system was not working and why two weeks of rain had resulted in a mere puddle in the oil drum. To cut a long and boring story short our water was going up hill! To resolve this gravitational issue one landgirl reversed the pipe work to point down hill.
Planting & Digging
Carrots, parsnips and beetroot were all sown (fingers crossed, as not had much joy in previous years with carrots). Creating a border for wildflowers turned into more of a landscaping exercise with the discovery of a huge bit of carpet underneath the earth!























Friday, 2 April 2010

how many women does it take to put up a shed?


Last Saturday four women struggled with one electric screwdriver, one hammer and a set of crap instructions to assemble a cheap three by four foot shed. An early estimate for the time it would take to complete (one and a half hours) was out by two (hours!). That was after the man on the neighbouring allotment took pity on us and finished the job in about 20 minutes with some well aimed hammer blows! Men do have their uses! Comments about the shed from fellow allotmenters have compared it to a public toilet and a sentry box. We don't care, it will keep the tools dry and we hope to set up a small bar inside in the summer! Then they'll be impressed! Of course the main purpose for the shed was to collect water (there is none on the site). However an inspection today after a week of rain showed poor results from our makeshift pipe system....??!

back pages

To recap on the month of March after our travels from New Zealand.
England had the 'worst' winter for some 35 years so returning to the allotment after two months away we came back to a frozen then a sodden plot. The upshot of this was that there was little weed growth and the 'professionals' who surround us had made little head way. We spent a few weeks preparing the beds and clearing the site for spring planting.
Our allotment association is in the midst of a viagra-like reinvigoration and has all kinds of new plans to increase the number of plots and plot holders, keep out the deer and create a communal area. As a result of this the workable area of our own plot, previously half covered with brambles, has now been cleared so we have bribed two other landgirlz (on secondment from the southern hemisphere) to do their worst with the new half.
As April approaches we have onions and garlic on the way (from a December sowing), newly planted potatoes, broad beans and peas. We are waiting for Spring to spring!

rainy good Friday

This is our first entry from the land girls blog. This is our third year of running a plot in Stroud, rural Gloucestershire. However this is our first session as allotment bloggers. We want to share our highs and lows of growing our own and the experiences of being part of an allotment community. Don't read this blog for expert tips on growing your cabbages, more for stories about the 'woolly jumpered' experts and characters with whom we spend our spare time.