Our Allotment

Okay, so it’s been a few weeks since the last update. What can I say; things to see, people to do…

Last thing we heard, the plan was to define the beds negatively by setting out the paths; the beds would be the areas in between. Sounded good, but when we came to start setting out the paths (on a day which was only a little bit breezy) the underlay membrane kept threatening to escape and it turned out I’d drastically underestimated the sheer quantities of bark we were going to need. Once again, the scale of the plot fooled me. A couple of weeks later, and the paths were still ill-defined, the string with which we’d marked the beds was fraying, and the whole thing was looking a little less rosy than I’d previously hoped…

Fortunately, a local business’s waste disposal problem turned out to intersect nicely with out timber needs problem. Webb’s Forest Furniture build sheds, fences, birdfeeders and so on, using logs as their source material. These logs are sawn into planks, and the offcuts and oddments are then bundled up and piled outside their premises. They were only too happy to give us a stack of timber for a very reasonable donation, which left Storm and myself with the task of transporting the wood to the allotment…

With the back seats folded and the front seats crammed as far forwards as they’d go, we were able to stack a fair haul of planks into the boot of the car. The driver’s seat position wasn’t optimal for driving, but we managed to ferry the wood to the plot and pile it at the end. Two piles: Wide-ish planks suitable for edging, and narrower oddments and peggy bits which I hoped to use to fix the boards in place.

 Storm and I took turns , with one laying the boards out in position on the plot while the other used a makeshift sawing table to saw the fixing posts and pegs. I’d already tried out a method of placing the boards which seemed to work reasonably well (a 1′ stake behind the board to hold it in place, with a narrower peg hammered in in front to press it against the stake) and by the end of the day we’d managed to build a whole bed.

Okay, doesn’t sound (or look) like a lot, but we’d also laid out the boards ready for the other nine, and we’d worked out some details of how to finish the rest off. We’d also gathered about a pound-and-a-half of blackberries, so we figured we’d get away with calling that a job well done…