Hello it’s Barney again and time for my second installment, where I’m going to tell you about my busy day last Tuesday. It was a day of varied activities (and weather!).
I joined Dorothy in the morning at Home Farm, Pitgaveney just outside Elgin. We were doing the preparation for the big Fun Day they have this coming Sunday 24th May. Get down if you can – there’s going to be a lot going on. As part of it we’re going to demonstrate raised bed construction and seed sowing for windowsill propagation and help the wee ones to make paper pots, sow bean seeds and make bug homes. We’ll be promoting this project too.
We had a most pleasant morning, firstly building a herb spiral from unused bricks which we then planted up with a wide range of culinary herbs. We celebrated its completion with a lovely cup of lemon balm and grapefruit mint tea, freshly harvested and bursting with freshness. We moved on to building one of our legendary metre squared raised beds. We filled this with lovely peat-free compost and then a smorgasboard of veg seedlings and young plants – including kale, carrots, leeks, salad onions, lettuce, mixed leaves, radishes, garlic – to show how easy it is for people to starting grow their own veg. We had some help from Jim Grant the friendly marquee man who gave us a shiny new drill bit. What a man!
And then it was on to the final destination, Action4Children on King Street. We joined the kids and staff in preparing the ground for two raised beds, which we then put in place and filled with topsoil. There was just time for a few tatties to go in – more sowing and planting to follow. They all showed amazing enthusiasm and perseverance in the face of some chilly rain and wind. Such keen diggers and shovellers – excellent work guys.
A weekend of fun beckons at the Home Farm Open Day after working alongside the Greenfingers crew at Cooper Park for their open day on Saturday. I’ll report back when I can – bye for now.