Giving away information

Today was another shop duty day. But this time with a twist.

We had a visit from some of the folks from Tamworth Farm Allotments who are considering going self managed. Tamworth Farm are also one of Merton's allotments so we have the same rules and regulations. Obviously we went self-managed a while back and TFA wanted our advice as to how to go about it and what pitfalls we encountered. Hopefully we managed to give them a better understanding of what is needed.

Now FTA have a few other issues with their site. Primarily their site is open to the public. That is to say that they have public paths crossing their site. As a consequence their site is more prone to theft and damage than ours, where we are only enclosed by housing.

One of the things they liked was how we manage to handle the necessary information for the Committee. We use a shared Dropbox folder. Everything we have and do is recorded in there. We even have a small Wiki which we can put any piece of information we want in there such as contact details of the many people we have to deal with, such as the Council and tradesmen. That way everybody on the Committee has access to the necessary information should the dreaded "under the Bus" issue occur.

Something else they liked was our "New Tenant Information Pack". This is a collection of information shamelessly stolen from places around the web, such as the NSALG website and other allotment based sites. It details lots of things which a new Allotmenteer would need when starting out. We include printouts of all these pages as part of the pack given to new members.

Incidentally, whilst looking up the information on Tamworth Farm Allotment, I was poking around on Google Maps. looks like they have updated their photo of the Martin Way Allotment sometime last year. Must have been before I put the courgettes out on the mound. But you can see the layout quite clearly.

Back on the plot, I didn't do much today other than weeding, watering and building a couple more of my stackable raised beds.