Café open on Sundays

Posted on by Stuart

Rosendale café is open from 2 April for the 2017 season. Every Sunday, between 12.30 and 3.30pm, head for the Community Building for delicious, reasonably priced food served by friendly volunteers. A main course and pudding costs on average less than £5.

Run for the benefit of RAA members and their friends, the café is not open to the general public. It provides a welcome service to plot holders each Sunday, it helps build the allotment community and raises extra revenue for the RAA. Emphasis is on providing a welcoming place for plot holders to come and enjoy a reasonably priced meal. We will try to keep the RAA Facebook page up to date with menus and opening times.

Volunteers needed. Please get in touch with Camilla Brown if you would like to help, from baking a cake, washing up, to running the café for the day. All offers of help are gratefully received.

Please don’t feel intimidated at the thought of running the café. Keep food simple and don’t feel you have to offer a huge choice (although if you want to please do!). Why not help someone else the first time? Let us know if you’d like to do this and we can try and pair you up with other volunteers.

Posted in Cafe

AGM 2017

Posted on by Stuart

Peabody Estate on Rosendale Road
The Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Rosendale Allotments Association is being held on Tuesday 25 April 2017, 6:45pm, at the Rosendale Community Hall, Rosendale Estate, Rosendale Road, SE24 9DR. The agenda will be published in the forthcoming weeks.

Nominations for Committee membership and any resolutions should be received by the Secretary on, or before, Monday 3 April, 10am, either send us an email, or hand your completed Committee nomination form or your proposed resolution in at the shop. The Committee nomination forms for 2017, are also available in at the Stores.

The RAA relies on members to be actively involved in the management of the allotments. All members, new or established, are very welcome to join the Committee.

Posted in Notices

Spring Stores

Posted on by Stuart

Our Stores are now open and fully stocked with everything you may need for your plot. Located on the forecourt of the Rosendale Road main entrance the Stores open between 10.30am and 12.30pm Saturdays and Sundays in the growth and harvesting periods each year, Sundays only during the month of August.

Our Stores are staffed by volunteers with any profits helping to fund Association activities and keep rents down. If you would like to volunteer some of your time to help in the Stores, please call in during opening hours or send an email to the Stores organisers.

Posted in Stores

Workers required

Posted on by Stuart

Worker beesThe RAA are looking for a part-time Administrator and for a part-time Site Officer.

The Administrator will have responsibilities including office administration; record management; updating databases, minute taking; dealing with telephone enquiries and correspondence; helping with financial matters/book-keeping; liaising with plot holders, committee members and with hirers of the Community Building. Click to download a full Administrator job description.

The Site Officer will work for twelve hours a week on a variety of tasks including site and building maintenance; liaison with the committee, office holders and plot holders and will also have some administrative responsibilities. Click to download a full Site Officer job description.

Applications, by letter please, to Acting Chair, Rosendale Allotments Association, 227 Rosendale Road, SE21 8LR. Make sure your application addresses some or all of the job description and person criteria outlined and is with us before 5pm, 25 February.

Posted in Notices

Keep ’em peeled

Posted on by Stuart

81d7a2bd1d7c05b8247206e0184328e6Most plot holders manage to enjoy their plots without having their possessions and produce stolen and their sheds being broken into. Sadly, on occasions, our site has trouble.

In their much-loved movie, Curse of the Were-Rabbit, Wallace and Gromit have countless inventive ways to thwart a vegetable thief. The RAA is inventive too, but we’d be stretched to organize 24 hour monitoring of the whole site. Unfortunately the huge cost of CCTV installation is quite beyond our resources and probably always will be.

We don’t know if culprits are plot holders or people who illegally gain access. Please always ensure entrance gates are kept locked. Do not innocently let in people who claim to have forgotten the gate code. Ask for a name and plot number and decline entry if suspicion remains.
Read more ›

Posted in Feature

Roy’s master class

Posted on by Stuart

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On a damp Sunday afternoon in November, a dozen or so plot-holders were treated to a two-hour allotment ‘master class’ given by Roy Moody, a fellow plot holder known to many as the grower of unbelievably huge tomatoes, pumpkins, squashes, and many other edibles! Roy is the ‘go-to’ person for plot holders seeking advice and he generously offered to give this talk to pass on some of his tried and tested methods.

We learned about the importance of planning and preparation – especially at this time of year – and Roy stressed that we should look after our soil as well as we look after ourselves. He covered topics ranging from how to improve soil fertility, the right time to plant (keep an eye on the pigeons!), how to plant, protection from pests (including foxes!), the wonders of clay and how to unlock its goodness, to the best variety of pumpkin seed to sow (these will be on sale in the Stores when we re-open in February!). 

The class was a wonderful opportunity to learn from an experienced plot holder what has worked for him on the Rosendale site – knowledge that can’t be gained from a book or from the internet. Hopefully, Roy will be persuaded to give more sessions and we’ll have the opportunity to learn even more of his secrets!

Posted in Community Building

RAA website

Posted on by Stuart — 4 Comments ↓

RAA responsive website on a variety of devices
The public face for the Rosendale Allotments Association is our website. We welcome any feedback you may have. The site and in particular this news section is kept up-to-date by the website team led by Lance Hodgson. So if you have news or pictures you wish to share, please pass them on – fruit and vegetable ‘selfies’ anyone?

Stuart Russell has designed our website based on a ‘responsive’ WordPress template created by the developers CyberChimps. Each layout adapts to view well on PCs and laptops of different screen sizes, iPads, tablets, phablets and phones. People use an array of devices to view the web these days, we hope the new site works well on yours. If you see any problems or busted links please let us know. Be sure to include details of your PC/tablet/phone type, the browser you use and attach a ‘screen grab’ if you can.

And please, if you need a website designed for your business or organisation contact Stuart!

Posted in Website