Despite the odd rain shower we had a fantastic turn out for the FlintShare midsummer celebration at Cilcain. Members pulled together to rig up some temporary shelter, loos and an open fire to keep us warm on what was a distinctly cool midsummer evening. But plenty of food, drink and great conversation fuelled a lovely relaxed atmosphere that felt like our own mini-festival. 

The tractor guys at Hawarden Estate had done an excellent job of rotovating the field so our job of creating veg beds was so much easier, plus with some recent rain the soil was a lot more manageable than the previous weeks ‘moonscape’!

The trees have come down!! The tall stumps you can see will be innoculated with mushroom spawn, the rest will need to be ground out, rotovator anyone?

Students from Maes Garmon have to complete a number of hours of volunteering in order to gain their Welsh Baccalaureate. FlintShare was suggested as a suitable project. On the 14th and 15th of June, Sandi and Rachael hosted 3 work sessions with the students and Miss Harrison, Mr Evans and Mrs Blandford.

Following the latest work days and some wonderful overtime work!! the site is now looking quite different. Potatoes are showing through, beans are almost ready to pick and the second bed is wonderfully free of stones.

The weather was perfect for a good, productive day at Cilcain.
We were serenaded by the cuckoo (who seems to be a regular FlintSharer!) as we put up the bean supports. We were rather proud of the mix of cut on site hazel and home grown bamboo for the runners. They looked spectacular with their tops reaching high but we thought the wind might want to play rough so we let Doug cut them off.

Glourious weather for the first workday at Hawarden – with temperatures above 24ºC the suncream was soon slapped on!
Unfortunately the hot weather we’ve had as turned the ploughed site into a hard moonscape – hopefully the rotavation the estate has kindly offered to do will flatten it all out.