Frantic Friday

Day-break yesterday and our IET Learning Plate meeting started with morning coffee and biscuits in the cabin at the Walsden site. Nick, Debbie, Pauline and Diana discuss the finer points on apprentices.

Then John Michael arrived with Rigg's digger and cut a trench for the north end of the fence round the site. After that he started digging out small ponds - five in all - in the marshy parts of the land. These filled up immediately with water.
Instructions from Nick to JM on the pond embankment - it has to be quite steep on one side.
Volunteer Michael and permaculturist Suzie look over the site. Suzie is visiting officially to assess our status to be an approved LAND site - and have grants to show people round. We have to go through various permaculture hurdles, and it will involve talking the lingo to the punters.
After two and a half hours the permaculturalists left on foot for Walsden junction and their electrically assisted bicycles chained to the station's new unused bike park. We got on with H&S work. So that stray brats, JDs and idiotic dogs do not unknowingly fling themselves into these ponds Nick said we have a duty of care to advise them of the risk staring them plainly in the face. Our duty is discharged by erecting this peely-wally plastic netting held up with picket sticks.
Our work done at Walsden we went directly to Riggs to buy seeds. I'd made a list of what we wanted to buy and the three of us tried to find them. We found a lot and marked them off of our spread sheet. The cost even after 20% off was £76. We need a lot of seeds at IET. We plant a lot of veg!

After that, Nick and I went on to a Finance Committee meeting at which I think we decided to abolish the Finance Committee, all five of us who turned up. I think we did that, but I'll await the minutes, or rather Monday evening's Steering Committee to see if that is what we agreed!