Welcome to Autumn!

SHOP HOURS ARE CHANGING IN OCTOBER

We're pleased we have managed to continue the shop service through recent difficulties. While we remain resurgent, there has not been quite so much footfall this year, and our merry band of volunteers have plenty of other interests to keep them going. However - many of you have asked about the return of Sunday opening..

So, to best serve everyone, we have decided to change our shop hours to:

• SATURDAY  14:00-15:00 - ONE HOUR ONLY  
• SUNDAY  11:00-12:00 - ONE HOUR ONLY

This will apply from October to end of this year (5th Dec).

(For September only, it will remain Saturday only, 13:00-15:00.)          

In the New Year we will then review and see how this change has been received.
 

POTATO ORDERS - UNAVAILABLE VARIETIES

Please download the form for your seed potato orders this year here

Due to ongoing concern about limited seed potato availability this year, we are asking you to return and place your orders by end October latest.

We are keeping prices at last year's levels (except pink fir apple).  

NB: Several potato varieties, and all red onions, are NOT AVAILABLE this year due to bad harvests. 

ASSOCIATION AGM

The annual general meeting for 2019- was held late (via Zoom) in Nov 2020. Under the constitution we must hold the next AGM by Nov 2021, to review year 2020. To do this we propose to hold the AGM again via Zoom and perhaps on Nov 24th. This will be confirmed in due course. (We then intend to restore the next AGM to its rightful place in April 2022.)   

RHS NEWSLETTER

Click here to read RHS September newsletter

 

News from our site secretaries

 We hope you’ve had a productive season on your allotment this year so far.

 If you do have any surplus produce, the message below from local councillor Jonny Crawshaw may be of interest:

Hope all is well on the allotments? I don’t think I’ve ever seen them looking so well-tended!  I’m just getting in touch as I wondered whether it might be possible to pass a message around Scarcroft Allotment Tenants that The Collective Sharehouse would welcome donations of fresh fruit/veg if people have a glut! They’ve suggested that ‘robust’ fruit & veg would be most suitable and it can be dropped in to The Sharehouse whenever they are open – Tues/Thurs/Fri 9-11am or Weds 5-7pm. The Sharehouse is located within Clement’s Hall and accessed via the rear entrance on Cygnet St (at the bottom end of Swann St). They are currently making around 80-100 shares per week - which they believe represents around 40-50 families/households - so any and all help/donations will be gratefully received! 

We’ve had some reports from tenants recently of unwanted visitors on their plot;, items such as cycles dumped, and sheds broken into.  Please do report any criminal or anti-social behaviour to the police on 101 – they may not be able to take any immediate action, but it does help them to build a picture of what is going on and they will increase patrols if there is an increase in problems.

Most of the asbestos on site that was identified by you and by us has now been removed; we’re aware of just two places where we’re still waiting for collection/assessment.  We shall be meeting Dave Meigh from City of York Council on site later this month to push these forward, so if you’re aware of any asbestos on your plot that you haven’t told us about, please do so in the next week or so.

We did a full site inspection over the weekend.  Although most plots have been well looked after over this season (see Councillor Crawshaw’s comment above!), there are some cases of neglect and we’ll be following this inspection up in another month or so.  The autumn is a great time for tidying your allotment and tackling unproductive areas in preparation for next season…

Finally, a local sixth-form student has asked us if tenants would like to respond to a survey they are doing for an A-level project about the social benefits of allotments. If you would like to respond to this, please use this link:  https://forms.gle/rReAjMHY43E7kLWs6

All the best,
Claire and Graham