We're still here...

So it's been ages since I posted on this blog. Beyond ages. The good news is we're still here! Well, most of us. We've had the departure of one of our original members, Cassian, and so we currently have 6 members. We're planning to stay at six for a while before returning to seven once the roof is done. Those two things are deeply related, I promise.

So what have we been doing? Small changes have been happening, but no major work has taken place. This is a combination of us dithering, deciding how to pay for the next big job (redoing the roofs - all seven of them), waiting for our accounts for 2012 to be sorted (which affects us applying for money to pay for the roof) and the general fact that we've all been getting on with our own lives.

The biggest small change (if that's a thing) is our new cooker. The saga of the cooker purchase was rather special and certainly isn't one of my proudest moments but I might as well share it to give you a giggle. We bought it from someone we'd found on Gumtree and it was in great condition. It's a big range cooker with four normal hobs and one giant one (all gas) and two lovely ovens with glass doors.

Lloyd and I trundled off in a van to Cardiff to collect it, paid for it and put it in the van. All good so far. As we drove away, we felt the warm glow of knowing roast dinners would nevermore have to all be done in one roasting dish which might mean the potatoes actually got crispy. Huge pots of pasta for ten would suddenly take less time to heat up and everyone would find cooking for tonnes of people less frustrating. Joy!

Alas, as we turned the corner out of the road the guy lived on and heard the most almighty crash from the back. Disaster! Opening the back doors to survey the damage was not a happy moment. The glass doors had completely shattered and some of the framework of the doors was bent. We rang ahead to tell our housemates the sad tale and spent the journey home alternating between ranting at each other and consoling each other.

It turned out that you can't buy the doors any more and you can't buy the glass either (except at incredible expense) so it took a week of me wondering how to atone for not securing the cooker well enough to conceive, investigate and realise the idea of getting stainless steel sheeting cut to size. Now it looks fabulous again, sort of. You can't see inside to check how your cake's rising but it genuinely makes the best roast potatoes I've ever tasted. We've eaten a lot of roast potatoes recently.

Industrial chic

Some progress has been made on painting the garden wall, but unfortunately the incredibly wet weather recently has meant that it isn't finished yet. Still, even what we have done so far is a vast improvement in brightening up the space. Eventually it will be a gradient running from the bright orangey colour at the bottom of the garden to white at the top.

So much brighter and lovelier than before :)

We're currently in the process of getting a new front door to replace the drafty, insecure, hideous one we have at the moment. The door is unusually large so we're having a local joiner make us a spiffy new timber door  which will be Tardis blue with lovely brass door furniture. I'm excited. In preparation for this we are stripping, repairing and repainting the door and surround so that they look fabulous too. I'll show you a before picture now and when the new door arrives I'll make some sort of wondrous montage for your to enjoy.

Just urgh.

The garden ended up producing us quite a bit of veg and generally enriching our lives hugely last summer. We had picnics on the lawn, barbecues and lovely afternoons spent talking about the flowers and insects while reclining in fabulous deckchairs. What's marvelous is that we did all this whilst the garden was, to most peoples' eyes, still a complete shit heap. Imagine how great it will be when it's all finished!

We also had a really awesome Christmas (actually we had two) with gorgeous roast potatoes (of course), lovely friends and copious presents.

In other news, we held a mushroom log making day for a local permaculture group. Making use of the large room being empty of tenants meant the weather wasn't a problem and everyone got a new skill and three logs to take home (one each of oyster, Indian oyster and shiitake).

I think that's all the things I have to update! We are mostly working on the door just now so if anyone wants to strip some paint then email us at golem.coop@gmail.com.

- Hannah

Bloomin' Lovely

Well, this post has been a long time coming, but it'll be a good one - fear not! Below is a major pic spam of the lovely plants which are working so hard to make our garden a nicer place to be. I'll give you a major run-down of progress in a bullet-pointy form, in order to make up for the mass of pictures.

• The lawn arrived and we now have a patch of grass! We can't stand on it yet, but it's there. It's so nice to have a big area of garden which is no longer producing broken glass or anything of that ilk! 
• The levelling of the patio area has been completed, so we're now pretty much ready to lay it. Sort of. Once I've watched loads of Youtube videos about laying permeable patios and ordered some sand, we'll be good to go!
• We've stopped having work weekends and started having a work day every two weeks. I'll try to remember to post and let you know when they're upcoming in case anyone wants to help.
• A few fruit bushes have gone in along the bottom fence. 
• We've been eating some salad and herbs from the garden on a regular basis, and Finn has started grazing on mangetout and strawberries. We've had one radish so far, but there are plenty more to come. We're not making huge amounts of food, but considering all this was concrete just a few months ago, I'm not complaining :)
• Also, we haven't weeded once :D There are weeds, but they're not doing any harm, so I'm leaving them. It'll be interesting to see how all this lazy gardening turns out.

The lawn, with newly flattened patio bit and path to the right.

Polycultures are just so pretty.

This is a mystery squash. Courgette? We'll soon see!

The comfrey is gigantic - time to make plant food from it!

This squash has been shown to a neighbouring shrub for support.

Runner beans with peas growing up them, surrounding a perennial while it gets going.

Helianthus jungle!

Well done if you've made it this far - this wasn't even all of them! In other news, we're still trying to work out what to do with the roof and how to pay for it. This might include solar panels, and it might not, but either way we won't be doing the bulk of the work. We might paint the house at the same time though. Woop!

- Hannah

June Work Weekend Details

Having just written the job list for this work weekend, I thought I'd share it on the blog so that you can see if you fancy coming along.

So here's what we'll be up to:

Fill skip - We'll be moving rubble and possibly some top soil down the garden steps into a skip at the back.

Lift flagstones - We found some Victorian flagstones under the concrete, and they need lifting for re-use. We had a little go and didn't manage it, so if you like problem solving and using crow bars you might like this job!

Level lawn and create slope -  This is a pick-axing, digging, wheelbarrowing kind of job. We're so close to getting the lawn sorted (and therefore the fruit bush beds) and this is the last job in the way!

Dig out buddleia/brambles - These are big plants and might involve quite a lot of digging (or building a fire on top of them).

Finish shed floor - This is a job which we'll only do if the others get done.


There'll be a simple lunch for volunteers (soup, I imagine), tea and biscuits, and copious good company. Let me know if you can make it!

- Hannah

Birthdays and Beds

Since my last post we've actually passed out first big milestone - a year in the house! I meant to do a big review of the past year and the things we've accomplished, but I actually just ended up cooking a nice dinner for everyone instead. It seemed a good enough marker of 365 days of community without needing it's own blog post.

Anyway, not much has happened with the house work-wise. We're still accidentally saving up for the roof (by virtue of not spending money on anything else). However, the garden is coming on apace. That's one of the many virtues of plants - once you put them in they do the work themselves. In lieu of hearing me go on about the intricacies of sledgehammering concrete (a process at which we're becoming rather adept), I've put together a slideshow of the garden over the last year and a bit so you can see what we've achieved so far.

The First Year of Our Garden - slideshows

If you want to see where we're going, you can read my permaculture design here. If you'd like to join us in making more garden magic happen, our next work weekend is on the 15th and 16th of June. There will be lunch and dinner for volunteers, and a mix of digging and bashing type work, and gentler things. Let us know if you'd like to get involved. Crash space is available if you're coming from further afield too. - Hannah x

Plodding On

With a month from the last blog post to this one, it's nice to have some photos that prove we've been doing things. Progress on the garden is slow but steady, as we concentrate on that to allow funds to accumulate in our bank account for the next big job on the house. I'm not feeling wordy today, so have lots of pictures instead :)

 

Day one of installing the reclaimed paving.

A small patch of sanity in a sea of crap.

Finn's been heavily involved in the planting process.

The sea beet is in rude health, and the mountain sorrel at it's base too!

Everything's looking happy, but is sadly still in pots.

Progress! More paving and the start of the back fences.

Plants! In The ground! In our garden!

The paving and the planting are starting to show the garden's future potential :D

In other news, I've finished the permaculture design for the garden (good thing as we've started implementing it!). When I work out how to put a link to a PDF you can have a flick through.

- Hannah

Garden Work Weekend Update (or 'Mud day!' as Finn called it)

A good sign of success is that there was a queue for the shower yesterday, so muddy and wet were we all from a day of digging, smashing, lugging and bashing. Although today was a quieter affair, we still got loads done and the garden is starting to shape up! There is much work still to be done, but making all this progress is a great start.

I'm going to spare you my usual lengthy narrative, and thanks to Toby's mad camera skills, resort to spamming you with pictures instead!

But before that, a list of acknowledgements seems appropriate, since we received so much help (sorry if I forget anyone). Thank you to Heather, Lis and Julia for the loan of tools, it made everything so much easier, and thank you to Todd, Toby and Ryan for doing masses of work. Ryan didn't even know there was a work weekend, he was just visiting for his birthday. He got stuck in nevertheless. What a legend. Thanks to Toby for taking pictures or we wouldn't have a record of all the frenzied activity. And thanks to Finn, for doing more digging today than you would imagine a 2 year old would be up for, and managing to do it in an actually useful fashion. Between that and his tendency to shout "grow more plants! grow more seeds!" I have high hopes for his future.

On to the pictures!

Day One

There was a breeze block wall on top of this stone one only hours before.

That's some of it in a heap centre-left, next to all our sexy recycled paving materials!

Lifting concrete to make a home for the compost bins.

Flick is a professional digger, and she found a clay pipe stem!

Knocking down the wall revealed next door's rubbish heap - which Toby promptly sorted and bagged for recycling :)

Victorian flagstones under the concrete show how much the ground level has risen.

Day Two

Start of day two: so much ground to level!

Marking out the edge of the patio so we can start not standing on the beds.

It's a family affair :D

Finn asked Toby to take this picture. Quite right too.

The future shed floor is now levelled!

A nice tidy garden, with newly housed compost bins!

Cleaned tools at the end of the day. Woop!

Our newest treasure - a buried shopping trolley!

More Work Weekend Information

Hello again!

I promised I'd be back with more details of the work weekend, and here I am. Although this is all subject to change, I just wanted people to have an idea of what we were going to be up to.

Below is a picture of me clutching the demented brilliant permaculture design I've done for the garden, further details of which will be in a future blogpost. This is what you'll be helping us to realise :D

Crinkled, but awesome. I promise it makes sense!

So, these jobs are all ones which don't cost any money, which after the palaver of the garden wall is quite a relief for us. These jobs are therefore more likely to happen than the costly ones.

- scrub left hand wall ready for painting (may need to buy a couple of stiff brushes)
- knock down breeze block wall to the right
- put breeze blocks in hole left by building the new wall (makes sense when you see it)
- break up concrete where compost bins are going to go
- save big bits for paving and put small bits in garden refuse bags to re-use on the green roof
- move compost bins
- break up as much of the rest of the concrete as we can manage, concentrating on the edges where beds are going to be
- mark out main parts of garden plan
- level lawn and create slope between lawn and patio

It's all brilliant stuff, and also all necessary before we can get to the really fun bit, which is of course the planting!

If we do find some cash to spend on the garden immediately it will most likely be on fencing as we currently have a couple of impressive drops from the new wall and steps. There may also be some painting, but don't hold your breath for that one.

What do you get in return? Besides a warm glow, you'll get lunch, dinner, somewhere to stay if you need it, and lots of love and gratitude from us. You'll also be helping to make an awesome permaculture garden which we hope will be used for open garden events in the future, and as a demonstration of small-scale urban permaculture, as well as a nice place for us to hang out with you when you visit.

So, who's coming? Email us at golem.coop@gmail.com and let us know.

- Hannah