Welcome to the SRT blog No. 54 

21st May 2021 – Welcome to our blog post No. 54  

Last week Keely was presented with an amazing cheque from Terry Douris’, Dacorum Mayor for 2 years. We were his chosen charity during his time as Mayor and it was held at the formal hand over to the newly elected Mayor for 2021-2022 Councillor Stewart Riddick. Many congratulations.   

A big Sunnyside thank you to Councillor Douris for his unstinting support over the last 2 years with our Northchurch project, where this money will be used. 

This week everyone has been dodging the rain showers and storms. But it doesn’t stop the teams at Sunnyside in their contract work and jobs on site. Take a look at what’s been going on this week.

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The Activity Centre and Northchurch teams joined up to work on an outside contract over in Kings Langley, re-laying a path. Lots of shingle had to be removed – hard work for Luka, Becca, Noreen and Graham. 

Then a bit of indoor work – DIY putting together cupboards to store the new tablets in. 

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Representatives of the Bakery team popped over to Asda to collect 3 trollies of goods and useful kit for the new bakery at Hemel Food Garden. Amazing. A ‘big’ Sunnyside thank you. 

Rebecca and the café team have been working on a lavish honey cake masterpiece. 3 teirs no less! All in honour of the bee as it was World Bee day yesterday. 

Wowza!
Nice new health and safety correct colour coded cloths for the cafe to replace all the old threadbare re washed 100 times over, cloths. Joe and Rebecca were VERY happy.

 Trainees were working hard at HFG cleaning the chickens inside space and collecting their eggs. Great apron for that job! 

 Harvesting baby leeks and spring onions for the pizza toppings, as it’s pizza Friday again this week. 

Last week George had his own gluten free pizza – thanks Kealey and Mark!

The Hampton Court plants are coming on really well. Only 30 working days to go! 

And last week we heard from Ieva, this week she is back!

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Tadpoles were rescued from a local pond and added to the new wildlife pond at Northchurch. Hundreds…. 

Catherine has been with a team over in Wigginton on a new contract, working around to clear weeds growing amongst the plants for a local cut flower business. A lovely space, everything is growing (including the pesky weeds!) and they’re looking forward to seeing the plants in flower. Makes a change to growing vegetables! 

 The cats have been experiencing the cat nip for the first time, which has been growing well for the last 2 years. Let us know if you want to buy any fresh plants for your cats? Eating the cat nip has a very ‘mellowing’ effect on the cat – as you can see in the photo – they are very zoned out. 

It’s water saving week and at our Northchurch site we dug out a hole big enough to take a 7500litre water holding tank, equivalent to approximately 94 average baths, when the site was re-develop last year. 

The tank is now beneath our lovely central grassed, courtyard space. It collects the rain from the surrounding, building roofs and can be pumped to the storage tank for our polytunnel irrigation. A full tank is enough to water all the polytunnels for a week! 

The Northchurch farm shop now has a super, homemade bookcase – fitting the space next to the large fridge perfectly. It’s displaying all the ‘swap’ garden books they have. 

Any idea what this is going to become? Watch this space and we will post more photos as it hatches (hint). How big was the egg? 

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