Thank you to community spirited companies!

Many thanks this week to several local companies: Keenan's Recycling, Morrow skip hire and John Duncan Plant Hire!

Developments continue apace in the garden: today in pouring rain we had a delivery of compost - lovely black crumbly compost made from grass clippings, branches and other green waste by Keenan's recycling.

A tipper truck dropped two cubic metres off for us - ready to fill the two raised beds in the polytunnel.  The compost needed "persuading" to come out of the truck!

 

A short while later, it was all out!

It will take a while for pupils to wheelbarrow it into the poly-tunnel to fill the raised beds!  Fingers crossed for some dry weather again soon.  Then we will be able to plant out the seedlings we have waiting.

 Talking of rain, last week we took delivery of a 1000L water storage tank from Morrow Skip Hire.  We man-handled it into position to act as an enormous water butt catching rain water from the shed. It needs a little more leveling and can then be plumbed into the guttering - shame we are missing out on this rain just now!!

This will mean we have a chance of keeping plants watered in the poly-tunnel as without a tap on site it would have been a huge struggle.

 

Also this week, we returned to school to find that John Duncan had been back with his digger to finish the trenches for our rabbit fencing!

Thank you John; now we just need some dry weather to be able to get the fencing in place and the trench filled back in again.  That will be another big milestone towards being rabbit-free!

Talking of rabbits, here is an example of one hole dug deep under the access road at the back of the staff car park!!

Meanwhile we have started constructing the first of our gates in order to seal the garden area from them.

Just the rabbit wire and "picket fence" timbers to fix next (to stop people sitting on the gate!)

Thanks also go this week to Aberdeenshire Council Recycling depot in Ellon.  They have supplied us with compost caddies in order for them to be a more suitable size for pupils to lift and empty into the RIDAN.  

Thanks to Izak and Sunisa for cleaning them out!  The RIDAN continues to "eat" our canteen waste and is maintaining a temperature of 53 degrees in this rainy weather.

 

 The first maturation bin is now full so in approximately four months, we hope to have our own fresh compost to use on the garden too!