As the days get longer and the world begins to open up again we've been able to welcome more and more of our wonderful volunteers back to our Growing in Harmony site. Our plants are growing well in the polytunnel and many of them are ready to sell or transplant. We've kept them in the tunnel much longer than usual as the late frosts and cold weather have held us back this year. We have, however, been preparing the beds ready for those that will be planted out and keeping the site looking neat and tidy as we work.
One of our big focuses of the last month has been building some new chicken housing in the education area so that we can show how smaller flocks of chickens might be kept at home. Volunteers Mo and Robert have worked extremely hard and have now completed the housing. If you're interested in keeping chickens, Francis has made a video explaining what is needed in regards to housing and also about how to keep cockerels. You can find it on our YouTube channel here.
After mentioning in the video that we've never had any sign of foxes on our site, it seems we've spoken too soon as foxes have recently been sighted in the area. As a result we've put lots of extra care into making sure that all of our chicken areas are fox proof and so far we've been lucky that all of our birds have been fine.
Meanwhile over at the Harmony Hub we've had our food hygiene inspection, which seemed to go well and we're awaiting the results of that shortly. When we receive them we should be able to start up our lunch club and other groups again. Our plan is to turn the Harmony Hub back into the training centre it once was, supporting people in learning about cooking and nutrition, budgeting, employability, sustainability, wellbeing and other useful skills. Our plan at the moment is to keep the shop running from there alongside these other groups.
Lastly, we've had some sad news this month as our last remaining rabbit, Snuggles, star of our recent Easter video, passed away at the impressive old age of 8 years. Snuggles was well loved at our Growing in Harmony site and will be missed.
