Miss Swallow Departs!

This week, DiGGers gave Miss Swallow a great send-off with cakes and a signed card.  It will be her last day on Friday before she moves to take up a new post in Aberdeenshire.

Danielle and Sara baked cup cakes and added a gardening touch!

We quickly reduced the cakes to a pile of papers!!

Miss Swallow will really miss everyone at Dingwall Academy (especially the DiGGers!) and sincerely hopes that the garden will continue to be looked after.  DiGGers will be taken over by Mr Macfarlane (a familiar face in the garden) and Mrs Morton so good luck to them - "You will be rewarded for your efforts as the DiGGers are all great individuals!"  So "Keep DiGGing" everyone and start growing this year's Christmas Dinner!!

The Forest School Group also had a great session today and will be sorry to see her go!  There was also cake and a wonderful card...

...we finished with a walk to the pond area to show her all the work that has been done in the last few weeks.

The cabin is looking great - Ryan and Alexander did us proud last week speaking about the project in Edinburgh at the "Outdoor and Woodland Learning Scotland" Launch event.  Keep up the good work everyone - I'll be expecting more changes to see next time I visit the woods!

ROWAN event and Spring Fair

Whilst Miss Swallow has been away, there were another two big events that DiGGers were involved in that made her very proud!

The first was an "over to you" event to mark the end of a three year project that ROWAN has been involved in to encourage schools to cut down on their waste.  We are using the RIDAN composter to compost the canteen waste as a direct result of their campaign.  The participating schools presented on their various projects and DiGGers were excellent hosts looking after everyone.  Connorhan and Danielle also did a presentation about the Certificate in Practical Horticulture course that they have been studying.

The event was also combined with presenting our first Growing Hub certificates.  Two pupils from St. Clements were awarded a bronze certificate; well done to them!  Hopefully pictures to follow...

The second event was a new Dingwall Academy occasion - the Spring Fair (Saturday 28th March).  Everyone had a great day; there were many stalls and displays.  DiGGers wrote to local garden centres and supermarkets and were donated plants to sell as well as their own seedlings and seed potatoes.  Again, they worked really hard and did themselves proud raising just over £105 for the club!  Again, pictures to follow...

Finally, Miss Swallow has returned to school albeit three days a week, so we could get cracking with tidying up the garden and have eventually managed to re-anchor the Olympic Jubilee Greenhouse to the ground.

There has been a lot of devastation with the winter winds so we had to gather lots of pots and sticks up that had blown about.

Cutting timber to secure the greenhouse to the ground.
Also during the Easter break, the groundwork has been done for the Outdoor Classroom (hooray!).

 The topsoil from the plot was donated to the garden...so here it is!

Potato Day 2015

DiGGers were pleased to help again this year with the "Transition Black Isle" Potato Day on Saturday 7th March.  Our motley crew of Connorhan, Danielle and Kyle were accompanied by Mr Macfarlane for the day at the North Kessock Village Hall.

We helped out with many tasks - setting up, taking money... 

...helping the public decide which varieties might suit them best... 

 ...and generally helping out.  Potatoes sold well again and everyone had a great day.

 There was a huge range of earlies, second earlies and main crop potatoes - to buy "by the tuber".

 Helping out on the Seed Swap stall too...

 As you can imagine, there was a lot of clearing up to do at the end.  Well done to everyone for such a hard day's work.  We are also grateful for potatoes to take away with us for our own garden his year!

**Apologies for lack of posts recently; Miss Swallow was suddenly taken ill.  She is now on the mend, but has been absent for some weeks!

Welcome to winter!

We have now been back in school for two weeks.  It has been rough weather - both wind and snow!
Last week, we sheltered in the shed and then managed to nail a couple of panels onto our compost bays.

The school was closed last Friday as the area had a power cut due to wind damage across the region.  Here you can see a branch has fallen from the trees above - luckily we were not around for it to fall on!

As always when there is a strong wind, lots of panels blew out of the OJ greenhouse!  When the weather improves, one of our main jobs will be to re-fix the greenhouse to the ground (it is held with concrete blocks just now!) and then add extra struts to secure the panels properly.  You can see also, the benches need to go back in as well.

Meanwhile the rest of the garden is asleep under the snow!

On Wednesday this week, we attached a few more panels.  Our compost heaps now have two panels left to add, then we will have two bays complete.  We will add layers of green garden waste and brown twigs plus sawdust to help the decomposition process.

The old Christmas pudding we put out for the birds had completely gone!  We topped up the table and feeder with seeds and nuts.  Thursday this week was very wet, snowy and cold so we ate our lunch and chatted before retreating early!  We have started to plan crops for next spring and will soon be ordering some seeds.

The Forest School group this week took a snowy walk to assess the storm damage and work that would need to be done to clear the paths at Evanton Woods.

It was very scenic with trees hanging with snow.

Happy Christmas to Everyone!

This week was our Christmas dinner!  It's been a busy week but we still managed to cook our produce and enjoy a full sit-down dinner with pumpkin cake take to take away at the end!  We also welcomed Mr Macfarlane (always relied upon to turn up when food is on offer lol!)

 On Wednesday, we sang Happy Birthday to Sophia - who brought in lovely little chocolate and banana mini macaroons made by her mother - our message to go back home is "Thank you for your wonderful cooking!"

 We then decorated the shed for our Christmas dinner on Thursday...

 ...and set the table.

Notice Sophia sweeping the floor whilst Sara and Danielle put up baubles!

Meanwhile, Connorhan and Kyle finished the job they started last week...

 ...and planted up the flowers into our trough.  This should make a welcoming sight for visitors at the entrance to the garden in spring.

 On Thursday unfortunately, Sara and Carrie were off - we missed you guys!!   That meant just Danielle and Miss Swallow were there to cook the Christmas Dinner during period 5!  Here, Danielle chops some sprouts...

 ...and then crushes the cashews and walnuts.  We had our now "traditional" dinner of mash (containing parsnips and carrots too) along with a dish of onions, garlic, bacon and sprouts with nuts all fried in a giant pan.

 We all gathered in the shed and enjoyed Christmas crackers too.  Joke: What do you call an elephant that flies?  A Jumbo Jet of course!!!  Another one: What's Andy Murray's favourite dish?  Bangers and smash of course!!  (Bet he'd like our smash though!!)

Can't resist one more: What's E.T short for?...

...Because he's only got little legs!!!!!  LOL get it?

We also had a special guest this year...Mrs Cormack, our Head Teacher.  She wanted to see what our Christmas Dinner was all about and enjoyed the hospitality.  She pulled a cracker with Danielle and Sophia made sure she got a plateful of food too.  She was surprised how tasty it was! 

The time flew and before we knew it, the bell went for school to start again.  Here you can see the "after" picture of our table!  Lots to clear up, with empty pans, plates and cups!  We would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.  We hope you all stay safe and healthy and have a happy time over the holidays.  We will be back in the New Year, and may well have some new first year members, so "watch this space!"

Cantray bridge College and Christmas preparations

This week, Danielle enjoyed a "taster day" at Cantray bridge College on the outskirts of Inverness.

 She joined the Horticultural department and helped them with jobs in the greenhouse.  Here, sowing sweet pea seeds...

 ...and here she potted on some californian poppies.  She also had the chance to illustrate her art skills by writing plant labels for the group and decorating them with mini pictures!  The instructor Gillian was friendly and welcoming; we hope to build stronger ties in future with already a planned "plant swap" and garden visits.

Meanwhile in the garden this week, we had to cancel our activities on Wednesday as the wind was howling!!  Tree branches above our shed can present a risk in gale force winds so we erred on the side of caution.  On Thursday, we welcomed a new member - Kyle who has been checking out the blog and is keen to join us.  He and Connorhan filled this trough with soil and planted bulbs...

...it is now waiting for the flowers at the top of the picture to be planted.

 Also, we started a major "shed clean-up".  We postponed our Christmas dinner until next week as Danielle and Sara were keen to join in with the canteen Christmas dinner this week!  The shed still looks messy, but it is a "work in progress".  Watch this space...this time next week the table will be laid for dinner and our decorations will be up!

Building our Compost Bays and Holding a Bake Sale

On Friday this week, we held a bake sale at break and lunch time.

Lots of people enjoyed the cakes...

...we had a selection including a variety of cup cakes, shortbread, lemon & orange slices, our own home-grown pumpkin cake, chocolate cake, giant chocolate buttons and even sticky toffee pudding plus chocolate mouse so lots to choose from!

We raised £27.61 which we will add to our Sense Scotland Fund for deaf-blind children.  That means we now have a grand total of £65 so well done DiGGers and thank you to all those that contributed!

Earlier in the week, we also made real progress with our new composting area.

We starting cladding the sides of the first bay with timber that the Forest School group had cut for us up at Evanton Woods. 

Sara holds the wood whilst Connorhan fixes it. 

Carrie nails the other end. 

 We all took turns with the hammering (the little hammer was quite difficult to use compared to the full-sized claw hammer!)

Ayisha has a good eye! 

Danielle concentrating on the nail! 

Meanwhile, Connorhan sharpened some lengths of 2 by 1 timber that we will use to re-fix the OJ Greenhouse to the ground. 

The wall gets higher! 

Then we start the back. 

Using the larger hammer... 

...and a spirit level to make sure the panels are level! 

 Watch this space to see the three bays emerge!

 We hope to be able to get all our compost into it so the garden will look much tidier because at the moment, we have more compost, weeds, trimmings and general garden waste than we can handle!

Meanwhile, there are still seeds in the garden - including these Honesty seeds in their delicate papery seed case. 

Also, a new leaf-mould pile is in the process of being constructed - using chicken wire and smaller lengths of wood.  We will place it near the garden entrance so that the Janitors can add leaves to it when they sweep the bus bay area in future.