Bees and Fruit Trees

Well since my last posting things have really taken off at the ‘community’ allotment. On Thursday a lady came and looked over the area that we’ve decided to plant up as an orchard, she’d come to check on the ground, to make sure it was suitable growing soil and see how large an area there was so that she could recommend trees to be planted. It was all very positive so in September a group of us are going on a training course to learn how to look after and prune the fruit trees, and start to get the area ready for when the fruit trees are planted.

On Saturday five of the plot holders (one being me) came in and with a digger we cleared a great mound of weeds and loads of old rubbish that had been left in the area when it was previously used for pigeon sheds. We started at 7.30am and finished about 5pm, clearing, bagging, re-locating soil and eventually burning all the rubbish. It was hard work but actually enjoyable. We now have a lovely area that we are going to build a community garden on, where we can sell the produce to fund necessities such as manure, petrol, fruit trees, chicken feed etc.

Today we’ve just receive confirmation that the grant we’d bid for has been approved and therefore we are being allowed to get some bee hives, clothing, equipment and training on how to look after the bees and make the honey.

It’s all very exciting!