Digging in the Rain, Like we're in a Chaingang

www.lancastercohousing.org.uk

The day was cold, windy, wet and miserable. Only the select few turned out for the work party on 26th April.
 The task was to dig over the subsoil and mix in the mushroom compost so that we could sow a meadow before the end of April.
 The sub soil was solid, impacted clay, and as you can see, in places we had to use a pick ax or a mattock.

A great deal of banter made the task a lot more fun - recollections of famous chaingang movies - (aimed at the person behind the camera - I don't know why - I promised them a reward of moving stone at the end of the digging - did  I miss something there)?

We learned about Nelson Mandela's method of breaking up stone - going as slowly as possible, but never actually stopping. It was too cold that day to emulate.

Martin gave us a little talk about when digging was necessary to improve the soil structure and when No Dig was appropriate. Not sure what the conclusions were about this plot, though it was strangely disappointing to find the plot looked exactly the same at the end as when we started. Cliodhna said, 'But we KNOW it's different.'

Ann and Jaz offered us tea halfway through and the chaingang immediately voted to stop. Voting? Chaingangs? I think I would call it a consensus to have tea and cake.
The team practised Leaning on Spades, a time-honoured builders' tradition, taught by Chris.

You can easily identify The Ham Actors in this troupe.

Eric and Jessica joined us in time for raking and trampling - evening and flattening the soil with tiny sideways steps. We did this instead of hiring a roller, which seemed over the top for such a small area, though we did hire one 2 weeks ago for sowing meadow seed on the verge between the houses and the riverside path.

Eric thought we looked like Space Invaders taking these silly sideways steps, so we did the arm movements too.

Then Geoff's alarm went off - work shift over - all downed tools - well, they condescended to put them away in the tool shed.

Diana and Kate sowed the seed, and raked and trampled again the next day.

Fancy helping us paint our bike shed this Sunday?!

Your handiwork here?

When we were trying to balance the project budget, we took a few things out that we thought, hey, we can do that ourselves later. One of them was painting the bike shed... it really ought to look like the lovely bin store just further down the street, but at the moment, well, it doesn't. It's one of the original buildings that we retained, and it's not the best view for the residents of Terrace A.

So we're going to get started on it this Sunday, March 24th, which is also a site Open Day -- all friends and interested observers are welcome to visit our Forgebank site.

We will be serving a simple brunch from 11am followed at 1.30pm by a site tour, including a tour of one of our homes to find out more about the technology that makes a Passivhaus.

You are welcome to pick a brush and join the painting team, there will be other tasks underway too, or you can retire to our common house and sample some tea and cake. We have a children's room to entertain any little people who don't want the full details of Passivhaus technology, and we have guest rooms where any of you who might be travelling some distance could book in for the night. 

With many of us now moved in, we are proud of what we have achieved and keen to show it off to all those who have followed us on our journey but for varying reasons haven't joined us in permanent residency on the street. Come and have a nose around, a chat, and of course, there are the last couple of homes still available to tell your friends about.

Please let us know on info@lancastercohousing.org.uk if you are coming, to give an idea of numbers (we need to make sure we have enough cake!) or give Lucy a call on 01524 812843 if you would like to know more details.

Hope to see you on Sunday!

www.lancastercohousing.org.uk