THE LATEST NEWS FROM OUR AWARD WINNING COMMUNITY COMPOSTING PROJECT July / August 2023
Our team of volunteers (why not join us, call Jon Allbutt on 577100) have been producing high quality Black Gold since Easter, it has been selling steadily and we still have plenty available. This is an ideal product to use as a soil conditioner and a mulch for donations of only £1.50 a large bag, or £5.00 for a full wheelbarrow. We have been very busy making new batches of compost ready to use later this year and for 2024; so far, nearly half of our 36 compost bins are full of new composting material. All of the raw materials (grass, soft green waste, local stable manure and woody prunings) that make our compost are from local folk including our allotmenteers. This year we saw a new record for producing finished compost, just eight weeks from making a new batch to the finished product with temperatures reaching 70C! We are open on Saturday mornings from 10.00-12.00 and on Wednesday afternoons from 14.00-16.00. You are very welcome to come and join us and learn all about making excellent compost from green waste. Our project depends on donations for our Black Gold and also income from the Tandridge Lottery. If you do not need our compost perhaps you could support us by buying tickets from the Tandridge Lottery (www.tandridgelottery.co.uk) A huge thank you to Mr B for donating his recent lottery winnings to our composting project COMPOSTING NEWSW APRIL 2023 About 30 years ago the then Headmistress of Tatsfield School Mrs Jennie South decided that Tatsfield should have its very own community composting project. She found a site in the back garden of what was then named Trug in Maesmaur Road (entrance in Borough Road), she sought advice from Jon Allbutt, gathered together a small team of composting nutjobs, found a supplier of wooden pallets and started the Tatsfield Community Composting Group. The project was such a success that it became one of Tatsfield’s social events every Saturday morning, bring your green waste, have a cup of tea and a biscuit, and take away a full bag of the now famous ‘Black Gold’. It was no surprise that the project quickly outgrew the small space available, but help was at hand. Another super award winning Tatsfield project was getting underway, the Tatsfield Allotments and Community Gardens; it seemed to be a logical step for the composting project to be moved the centre of the new allotment site in Approach Road. And so the project continues through wind, rain, snow, pandemics and drought, the team of volunteers have been beavering away to process last years compost bins into the now famous Black Gold. Volunteer leader Jon Allbutt and team are looking forward to opening the site on Saturday 1st April from 10.00 to 12.00 and Wednesday afternoons from 2.0pm to 4.00pm to receive green waste and offer bags of Black Gold to eager customers. Jon asks those bringing green waste to please sort their waste into light woody material, twiggy prunings and soft material such as lawn mowings. COMPOSTING NEWS MARCH 2023 Hello composters, here is the latest news: Dilo has decided to step down as our lead volunteer, so we thank him for all his work. I have agreed to take on this role I have been having discussions with Martin and Peter and we have decided for this year to: Return to a more traditional aerobic composting with emphasis on monitoring temperature, turning and managing moisture levels
Jon [email protected] Tel: 07712 196406 Composting report Saturday 18th June 2022 After the near 32 degrees of the Friday before it was hard to think that we would have the same number of volunteers that we normally do to man the compost site. But thankfully the weather was a lot cooler and we had almost a full complement of regular volunteers. We welcomed Sue, Gerry and Victoria and Jim and Ruth Yeeles back from their respective holidays and Harry Boys our long term friend of the site back for his summer break from university. Harry joined us some time ago to complete his Duke of Edinburgh Bronze, then silver and finally Gold and he has stayed with us ever since for which we are very grateful. Dilo, Martin and Elaine from the regular team were also present along with Jen Aston Fleming our newest member and the T.H.S. Meet and Greeter for the day Sue Warren along with past member Eddy Leaves and his wife Heather and Julie Jewell. It made for a hard working but also a pleasurable social event during tea time. We must not forget Mike Williams from our band of volunteers who very kindly comes along and maintains the “treasury” part of the site but also who makes us splendid cups of teas and coffees. All supplemented today by two of Sue Warrens superb cakes. The one other person you do not see in the picture is of course your scribe, David Bishop who took the photo attached with this report. So you can see both the benefits to the environment and to the social interaction that volunteering at the site brings, so if you are interested then please contact Dilo on 07709 357086 or myself Martin Allen 577201. We have increased our level of donations requested for each bag of Black Gold to £1.50 and for a wheelbarrow £ 3.00 to cover the ever increasing costs of running the site. You may be interested to recall that in April 2021 petrol for the site cost £ 1.03 per litre having yesterday paid £ 1.88 hence the need for the increase. Don’t delay the Black Gold is moving very fast this year and we are down to the last half dozen bins Martin Allen 19 June 2022 In the photo courtesy of Dave Bishop rom L-R Sue, Victoria and Gerry Reed, Heather Leaves, Elaine Winterbotham , Julie Jewell , Harry Boys , Eddy Leaves, Jim Yeeles , Martin, Ruth Yeeles , Jen Aston Fleming, Sue Warren and Dilo De Alwis April 2022 THS Tatsfield Composting Group We will be open to residents on most Saturdays, from 10:00 till 12:00. Please bring your garden waste including hedge trimmings, grass mowing's etc. Please do not bring any materials that have been sprayed with weedicides/fungicides etc. unless the product states when it is safe (i.e. biodegraded). Do not bring any food waste. Attached picture shows the new Engine for the sieve that was purchased with Grant money from Surrey County Council. Compost will be available at £2.00 per bag (approx 60 litres) - please bring your empty compost bags. If you are a member of the horticultural society or the allotments, the discounted rate is £1.50 per bag or £3.00 per barrow load. The increase in charges is due to fuel costs for our shredding and siever machines. If you wish to join the happy team of volunteers, please call/text Dilo on 07709 357 086 TCCG – Tatsfield Community Composting Group March 2022 THS Tatsfield Composting Group I’d like to start by thanking everyone who helped to make last year a record for the project. You brought in garden waste by the car loads and, with the incredible team work of the volunteers, we produced and sold a record volume of wonderful organic compost. My special thanks to the team who worked tirelessly and with great humour and goodwill throughout the season. This project is important to the village in many ways and is one of the ways in which we can help with climate control. Whilst it is good practice to join in the Tandridge garden waste service as many do, it is in fact better to use the local, TCCG service. The carbon cost of you delivering your waste to us is significantly lower and it’s also a free service. Additionally, if you buy the compost that is produced by us, what you get is an organic product which is rich in nutrients and biodiversity. We add horse or chicken manure as well as wood chippings to the garden waste and the end result is rich in organic materials and biodiversity. It is great for mulching beds. Please consider joining our volunteer team. We are a genuinely fun group and there is no pressure or expectations on you other than doing what you can and joining in the wonderful spirit of the team. In addition, there is plenty of scientific evidence to show that this type of activity involving generosity of your time to your community, belonging and working with a group and also the outdoor physical activity all lead to significant gains in happiness and well being. It is almost selfish for you to join us – science says you will get a lot more back than what you will put in! And if any of you or your family are participating in the Duke of Edinburgh award scheme, we have would be delighted to have you join us this Summer. You have to be signed up through your school or a youth organisation who are licensed by the scheme. DofE volunteers have been a valued part of our team each year. Volunteers must be over 16 years but we also welcome families with young children. How much time you put in is entirely up to you. What you do is also flexible – we appreciate anything that you can do to help. If you wish to join or want more information, please contact me, Dilo, on 07709 357086 – text me first as I do not always respond to unknown numbers. The service is available to all residents of Tatsfield village. The new season will begin in April and we are open from 10am till midday, most Saturdays. And, since we were at full capacity when the site was closed last autumn, we will have plenty of well rotted compost available right away. You can deliver garden waste including grass, hedge trimmings etc. Residents can buy compost at £2.50 a bag. Members of the Tatsfield Horticultural Society and the Tatsfield Allotments pay £1.50 per bag or £ 3.00 per wheel barrow load. If you’re not a member of THS, it’s just £5.00 annually. Have a happy gardening year. Dilo de Alwis, TCCG April 2021 COMPOSTING REPORT On Friday 12th March the Composting team of Jon, Ian, Ruth and Jim and myself welcomed Fiona Mellington and Andrew Wright from the community Of Outwood to the site. It had taken over 6 months from the time of first inviting them up to see us, with many " covid related" delays but we finally got it together today and despite the worst of the weather managed to show our visitors around the site and to explain to them what we do . Jon Allbutt relayed the story right from the very beginning in Borough Road right up to today , where we had rented the site , started with a few bins and only one small Elliot shredder. We also took the opportunity to show them “Fred” our shredder in use, where Jim and Ruth showed them how this machine turns wood and green waste into shredded waste with ease and makes the composting of this waste turn so much quicker.. Our journey has taken us, from a small site off the beaten track in Borough Road to this central village site off Approach Road with as many mod cons as we can get to make it easier for our volunteers but of course it cannot happen without all of the good will of the volunteers that have served the Parish over the twenty years that it has been running. We were also pleased to welcome Becky Rush our County Councillor who is a great supporter of the site and our local parish scribe David Bishop who we are thankful for for his article and photos of the visit. The community of Outwood through Fiona, Andrew and others are considering setting up a similar scheme down in Outwood and we offered them all of our built up knowledge and experience from the journey we have already taken. I make no apologies for repeating last months “ Call to Arms” for volunteers. I am pleased to advise that we have had two offers of support from two villagers So that is a good start, but more are needed March 2021 TATSFIELD COMMUNITY COMPOSTING SCHEME 2001 – 2021 Celebrating 20 years of making award winning “Black Gold” As winter loosens its grip and stirs our gardens into action it is also time to wake up our sleeping compost heaps. The Tatsfield Community Composting Scheme will be open for business on Saturday 3rd April to receive green waste and distribute our well known ‘Black Gold’; but before opening day we will be turning the contents of some bins and processing others that are now completed and ready for you to collect and use in your gardens and allotments. To achieve this, WE NEED YOUR HELP! WE NEED TO BUILD A NEW TEAM OF VOLUNTEERS – THAT COULD BE YOU!
The composting site at the allotments, on Approach Road is open every Saturday from 10am to 12 noon. The site will open to the public on the first Saturday in April for the receipt of green waste from the village. Donations for the Compost will remain the same £1.25 a bag or £2.50 a wheelbarrow load. January 2021 Update We are delighted to confirm that our County Councillor Becky Rush has approved a grant fund of £ 506 for our project that will enable us to purchase some new machinery to help keep the site looking neat and tidy as well as providing some much needed fertilizer to assist the turning of the bins. This grant was received through the Members' Community Allocation funding from Surrey County Council whose social media handles are listed below, please follow these to keep up to date about information and funding in our local area. Twitter @TandridgeLC Instagram TandridgeLC Facebook Tandridge LC In December we were also pleased to be informed that our grant application was successful to the Tatsfield Parish Council and they have agreed to our request for the funds that we will need to service our two shredders and siever . We are thankful to both of these organisations and individual that continue to support the Compost scheme in the village. Tatsfield Community Composting At the end of September, we completed another successful year. Due to the CV situation, we were unable to keep a good record of our turnover, but it felt like that we maintained the same number of bins in and out. The new shredder performed very well, but only on the few occasions that we had the numbers of volunteers for us to be able to get it out and operate it. However, it did block towards the end of the season as the material got damper and damper. Finally, I would advise that Phil Brett and Helen have left Tatsfield and are in the process of moving to Bexhill. Phil has been our team-leader for the last two years and we will miss his dedication and drive as well as his woodcraft skills, resulting in the transformation of the site with the installation of the new bins and containers, he produced. We wish Phil and Helen every happiness in their new life in Bexhill. Rupert Eales-White 570985 [email protected] And following on from the above we are now appealing to the whole village and specifically those that use the site regularly to come and volunteer with us on Saturday mornings between April – September 2021. We unfortunately lost 2 regulars this year, one to the CV regulations and the other to the fact that he had done his time (something like 15 years) and decided that enough was enough. As a village, we should all be most grateful to him for his time and commitment during the years that he volunteered with us.
Martin Allen 577201 [email protected] On the right you can see the dedication that was made to our good friend and long time supporter Barry Bull who passed away recently. In the picture are Vince Short, Phil Brett, Martin Allen, Jon Albutt and Mary Bull, who was supported by over 50 of her and Barry's friends to commemorate the event. |
Composter’s Chronicle for September 2020
Thank you all very much for keeping to the social distancing rules. The site has been running smoothly and we are building up a plentiful supply of compost.
As most of you are probably aware, one of the founding members of the Composting Scheme, Barry Bull, passed away earlier this year. Barry was involved from the Scheme's inception in 2001 until 2019 when he had to call it a day due to deteriorating health. To mark his amazing contribution to this local community group, we have dedicated an area near the entrance of the site to him. It includes a planting and a bird feeder in recognition of Barry's interest in nature. A small gathering was held on Saturday 8th August (close to Barry's birthday) where his name, carved in wood, was unveiled.
Looking forward, I would mention that the last Saturday for bringing green waste to the site is 26th September, although team members will be on site during Saturday mornings in October if anyone wants to avail themselves of compost. We will reopen for green waste on 3rd April 2021.
Finally, it is with some personal sadness that I would advise that Phil and Helen are moving in September from Tatsfield to Bexhill. Phil has been our team-leader for the last two years and we will miss his dedication and drive as well as his woodcraft skills, resulting in the transformation of the site with the installation of the new bins and containers, he produced.
We wish Phil and Helen every happiness in their new life in Bexhill.
Hints and Tips for using the composting site:
Please separate waste three-ways into soft green which does not need shredding, tough green for shredding and woody for shredding. We will always try to take all your compostable waste, but it helps us if you can try to limit it to no more than a large builder’s bag or equivalent in any one week. If you have a larger amount, please get in touch with me in advance. This will allow us to manage the waste more efficiently. Please keep any soil and especially stones out of any waste for shredding as these are both bad news for the shredders’ blades. Using our compost will greatly improve your soil and helps us pay our bills! Rupert Eales-White 570985 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle for July / August 2020
As we hoped, we managed to get the composting site up and running on the first Saturday in June.
Due to the need for social distancing we can only have five or six people working at the same time so our capacity will be somewhat reduced but it is good to be working again.
As we are operating under strict distancing rules, please help us by complying with the following:
Turn sharp right on entering the main gate and queue in your car along the fence until directed to the receiving bays by a composting team member.
We will be unable to assist you in unloading your car so please bag up your garden waste into easily manageable amounts. This is particularly important with soft material as you will probably be asked to take it around the outside of the compound and place it directly into one of the bins. This may be some distance away.
Please take extra care in sorting your waste into woody shredding, green shredding and soft before you arrive in order to keep queueing times to a minimum.
Please check the THS website each week this year as we may not always be able to open the site on Saturday mornings. The website will be updated by 6pm the previous Thursday.
Hints and Tips for using the composting site:
Please separate waste three-ways into soft green which doesn’t need shredding, tough green for shredding and woody for shredding.
We will always try to take all your compostable waste but it helps us if you can try to limit it to no more than a large builder’s bag or equivalent in any one week. If you have a larger amount please get in touch with me in advance. This will allow us to manage the waste more efficiently.
Please keep any soil and especially stones out of any waste for shredding as these are both bad news for the shredders’ blades. Using our compost will greatly improve your soil and helps us pay our bills!
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle for June 2020
The Compost site has reopened with effect from Saturday 6th June but under strict social distancing rules and safety guidance.
Only one car or person will be allowed to unload at any one time - the others will have to wait in a queue. The volunteers will be unable to assist you in the unloading so it is very important to organise your waste into easily manageable and carriable quantities correctly separated before you arrive. This will speed up the throughput and minimise the queueing times.
The web site will be updated with the latest information and you should check there to see whether the site will be open on any specific Saturday.
Hints and Tips for using the compost site:
1.Please separate waste three ways into soft green which does not need shredding -
tough green that will need shredding and woody items for shredding.
2. Try to limit the quantity you bring up on any day to no more than a builders bag or equivalent. If you have a larger amount then please get in touch with Phil in advance . This will allow the volunteers to manage the waste more efficiently.
3. Please keep any soil and especially stones out of any waste for shredding as these are both bad items for the shredder blades.
4. Using the compost which is the end product will greatly improve your soil and assist us in paying for the ongoing work up at the compost site.
Philip Brett 577420 or [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle for May 2020
Just a very quick update this month.
Due to a shortage of volunteers this year, the composting site will not re-open as soon as the current restrictions are lifted. We will complete the rebuild and generally get the site into a good place before we accept any waste.
We should be able to get a supply of compost available fairly soon, though, should you wish to have any.
It is quite possible that once we do start we will not be able to open every Saturday. So, this year, please check the composting section of the Tatsfield Horticultural Society website before taking any waste up to the site. We will update the page by 6pm on the preceding Thursday.
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle for April 2020
Your Composting Site Needs You!
The composting site will be accepting green waste starting Saturday 4th April. However, we are starting the year seriously depleted in terms of the number of volunteers we have.
Last year Barry Bull had to hang up his composting hat due to health reasons. Barry has worked at the site since its inception in 2002 - an amazing contribution to this community project - and he deserves a huge vote of thanks from us all.
Three other volunteers who have also done long years of service are carrying on gallantly but, obviously, can’t go on forever and another key player will be unable to start this year until much later in the season.
So, the long and the short of it is, if we want this amazing local facility to continue, we will need more people to help. I can’t believe in this day and age, with all the talk of climate change and the need for sustainability, the people of Tatsfield will let the composting site wither on the vine. A tremendous amount of time, effort and money has been spent rebuilding the site for the future and it has been designed to be easily maintained for years to come.
If you have ever thought of helping out (and many people have said to me that they would be willing) now is the time to turn words into deeds. See contact details below.
Hints and Tips for using the composting site:
Please separate waste three-ways into soft green which doesn’t need shredding, tough green for shredding and woody for shredding before you arrive. We will always try to take all your compostable waste but it helps us if you can try to limit it to no more than a large builder’s bag or equivalent in any one week. If you have a larger amount please get in touch with me in advance. This will allow us to manage the waste more efficiently. Please keep any soil and especially stones out of any waste for shredding as these are both bad news for the shredders’ blades. Using our compost will greatly improve your soil and helps us pay our bills!
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle for March 2020
Another composting season is almost upon us. We will start to accept green waste at the site starting the first Saturday in April. This year that falls on the 4th but, as usual, the team will be working each Saturday in March getting the site ready for action and, hopefully, completing the rebuild which has been going on over the last couple of years.
Although we can’t take green waste up the site in March, there are good supplies of compost which the team will be happy to serve you with if you fancy putting down and early mulch.
Over the years we have provided a volunteering opportunity for youngsters doing their Duke of Edinburgh awards. Many have started with us on the Bronze award and come back each year working their way up to the Gold Award which is presented to them by a member of the Royal Family at Buckingham Palace.
To my knowledge, at the time of writing, we have no youngsters with us this year so if you know someone who might be interested in joining us, please ask them to get in touch using the contact details below.
With climate change moving up the agenda, activities like composting become more and more important. We reckon we process about forty tons of Tatsfield’s green waste every year saving thousands of car miles to council run sites, hundreds of CO2-producing bonfires and locking carbon away into the soil. It is a great way to get out in the open and get some of Tatsfield’s lovely fresh air into your lungs. This applies to older folk, too! We are always looking for volunteers.
Hints and Tips for using the composting site:
Please separate waste three-ways into soft green which doesn’t need shredding, tough green for shredding and woody for shredding before you arrive. We will always try to take all your compostable waste but it helps us if you can try to limit it to no more than a large builder’s bag or equivalent in any one week. If you have a larger amount please get in touch with me in advance. This will allow us to manage the waste more efficiently. Please keep any soil and especially stones out of any waste for shredding as these are both bad news for the shredders’ blades. Using our compost will greatly improve your soil and helps us pay our bills! Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle Composter’s Chronicle January / February 2020
Our environment: our planet!
As there is not much going on at the composting site at the moment let me tell you about a meeting I went to recently.
One evening at the end of November, Martin Allen and I attended a meeting in Outwood aimed at raising the issue of climate change. We had been invited to put up a display stand showing how the community composting scheme works here in Tatsfield. We estimate we process about forty tons or so of Tatsfield’s green waste every year and so we could show how we probably save over five thousand car miles in trips to the council site at Bond Road or around one thousand average-sized bonfires if the waste had to be disposed of that way.
There were two other displays, from companies selling environmentally friendly products, but the highlights of the evening were talks from two organisations: “Possible” and “REPOWERBalcombe”.
“Possible” is an organisation which, as well as pushing government to make big changes, also promotes things we can all do to help the environment, such as less plastic use, tree planting, repair and re-use, pressuring your MP to take action, etc. They highlighted a village that had purchased a pool of electric cars for everyone’s use and 100 companies who had agreed to give staff an extra day off if they used the train rather than flying for their holiday.
“REPOWERBalcombe” is a community solar power project. It was set up by a group of residents in March 2014, in part with a view to heal rifts which had emerged during protests over fracking in previous years.
In 2015 REPOWERBalcombe installed 45kWp of solar photovoltaics (PV), at a local farm and two local schools. In 2016, thanks to a successful share offer that raised £110,000, they installed an additional 100kWp of solar PV at two other local schools. Investors in this scheme receive a return just shy of five percent – pretty good in this day and age.
In September 2015 they achieved planning permission to build a 4.8MW community-owned solar farm. This was a flagship opportunity to demonstrate what local communities can achieve, but just hours before signing the deal, they were forced to abandon their participation in the project after the Treasury unexpectedly scrapped a tax break that community energy projects rely on to raise funds. However, the good news is that this project has gone ahead. The electricity that this solar farm generates exceeds their initial aim of matching the amount of electricity that Balcombe uses, even though it is not owned by REPOWERBalcombe. They are looking at using the excess to power the local railway line directly, which is better than putting it back into the National Grid, so we were told.
There is a lot of publicity about climate change at the moment and an apparent willingness to do something about it – let’s hope that continues!
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
December
Who we are and what we do.
Although we share the land leased by the Parish Council with Tatsfield Allotments and Community Gardens, we are in fact part of the Tatsfield Horticultural Society. We take a lot of green waste from the allotments but our primary aim is to provide a green waste recycling facility for all the village’s residents. We like our users to be members of the Horticultural Society which, at just £5 for a year’s family membership, we think is excellent value given that it includes a 10% discount on garden products at Knights Garden Centres, plus a 50% discount on seeds and 15% discount on all other catalogue items from Suttons.
So, after receiving your green waste which you have previously carefully sorted three-ways into “Woody Shredding”, “Green Shredding” and “Soft”, we introduce a blend of the woody and green material into the shredders in order to produce a nicely balanced mix. Having these separate piles also allows us to increase the woody material if the shredders start to block due to too much sappy green stuff. It is quite an art!
We then build the heaps with alternate layers of shredded material and soft stuff such as grass cuttings, small weeds and leaves. Our bins have a capacity of just under 1.5 cubic metres filled level but we pile up as high as we can because the rate at which the piles drop is quite astonishing. A tightly packed bin piled up an extra 18-24 inches will usually have dropped below the level of the top by the following week. Big piles also mean big heat which is so important for killing weed seeds and other nasties.
We then finish off building the heap with six watering cans of water. This is a vital ingredient to get the temperature to go right up. We normally reach between 64-70 degrees centigrade – more than enough to sterilise the heaps.
After a week or two we “turn” the heaps. This involves pitchforking the hot, steaming, semi-rotted compost into an empty, adjacent bin. We aim to get material that was originally near the top or sides of the first bin into the middle of the new one to ensure everything gets a good blast of heat. We add another four cans of water which means we use about 100 litres of water per bin in total. Then it’s all down to nature to finish the job!
We then pass the finished compost through our sieving machine to produce a quality product for your gardens and allotments. Mostly this will be the previous year’s green waste but towards the end of the season we usually get around the site to a few of the same year’s bins which are perfectly rotted by then.
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
What we do.
We aim to provide a local and sustainable green waste recycling facility for the residents of Tatsfield.
We estimate that we process about forty tons of Tatsfield’s green waste every year.
How does this benefit the environment?
Tatsfield is a semi-rural village and many gardens have large hedges and a lot of trees. We do have a council-operated green waste scheme but much of the material we receive is made up of substantial and large woody prunings which are far too bulky for the council’s bins.
This type of waste is not easily composted at home and the only alternatives would be to drive it to a council site or burn it. However, once it has gone through our shredders it becomes easily compostable and produces a lovely compost.
We estimate that having this facility in the village saves at least five thousand car miles or one thousand bonfires every year.
The compost we produce goes back to the gardens and allotments in the village where it locks carbon into the soil.
Our History
The Community Composting Scheme was originally set up in 2001 by Tatsfield resident, Jennie South, and a group of like-minded individuals.
Much of that first year was taken up with paperwork, mostly to do with getting planning and environmental consent, together with constructing the site. There were also some concerns expressed about having such a facility in the village.
Like most things, the scheme started small and has grown over time from the little plot it occupied in a backwater of the village to the much larger and much more visible and accessible position it is in now.
Consequently, we are coping with much larger amounts of garden waste, saving more and more unnecessary car journeys to council recycling sites and greatly reducing the need for summer bonfires. Not only is this good for the environment but it also provides the community with a local supply of lovely compost to use in our gardens and allotments.
How else does the composting scheme benefit the community?
As well as providing an environmentally friendly way of dealing with Tatsfield’s green waste, the scheme also encourages people to engage in healthy outdoor activity, is another social focus point for residents of the village (so much chatting goes on you sometimes wonder how any work gets done) and provides a valuable volunteering opportunity within the village for our young Duke of Edinburgh Scheme participants.
How we process the waste.
We ask people to separate the waste three-ways into “Woody Shredding”, “Green Shredding” and “Soft” before they arrive at the site. We then introduce a blend of the woody and green material into the shredders in order to produce a nicely balanced mix. Having these separate piles also allows us to increase the woody material if the shredders start to block due to too much sappy green stuff. It is quite an art!
We then build the heaps with alternate layers of shredded material and soft stuff such as grass cuttings, small weeds and leaves. Our bins have a capacity of just under 1.5 cubic metres filled level but we pile up as high as we can because the rate at which the piles drop is quite astonishing. A tightly packed bin piled up an extra 18-24 inches will usually have dropped below the level of the top by the following week. Big piles also mean big heat which is so important for killing weed seeds and other nasties.
We then finish off building the heap with six watering cans of water. This is a vital ingredient to get the temperature to go right up. We normally reach between 64-70 degrees centigrade – more than enough to sterilise the heaps.
After a week or two we “turn” the heaps. This involves pitchforking the hot, steaming, semi-rotted compost into an empty, adjacent bin. We aim to get material that was originally near the top or sides of the first bin into the middle of the new one to ensure everything gets a good blast of heat. We add another four cans of water which means we use about 100 litres of water per bin in total. Then it’s all down to nature to finish the job!
We then pass the finished compost through our sieving machine to produce a quality product for our gardens and allotments. Mostly this will be the previous year’s green waste but towards the end of the season we usually get around the site to a few of the same year’s bins which are perfectly rotted by then.
What we’ve learnt along the way.
The woodwork
We first built the site using old pallets. These were good in that they were free, or at least very cheap, and re-use is the best form of recycling. But we learnt that they come in all sorts of different sizes and designs and that they don’t last a long time.
Building with them often requires cutting and drilling a lot of wooden blocks of various thicknesses to cope with these differences and, as they are nailed together, modifying them in any way that requires removing slats is very difficult. All very time-consuming!
We now use standard timber and screws.
Our machinery
We have two professional-grade shredders and a sieving machine.
Most of the machines you see out and about used by tree surgeons are chippers rather than shredders. These are designed exclusively for wood chipping and cannot handle the mixture of stuff which we get. Apparently, a stone going into a chipper can cause catastrophic damage. Occasionally one gets into our machines and, so far, has caused nothing worse than a nick in one of the blades.
There are far fewer professional-standard shredders on the market than chippers. We also wanted machines that were self-propelled so that it was easy to manoeuvre them around the site. Basically, this restricted us to one make – Eliet. This was fine because we had started with two small machines of different makes and the Eliet was by far the most reliable.
Our first purchase was an Eliet Ultra-Prof. This is their flagship machine and had a lot of features which suited us. It has side panels which reduce noise, a catalytic converter to reduce emissions, an input conveyor belt to take the waste into the machine and a conveyor belt at the other end which streams the output into a wheelbarrow. Both belts were optional extras and the input belt was a huge mistake. It is made of a rubberised material much like the belts at supermarket checkouts and it wears out very quickly. We were only getting one year out of them and they cost £1,000 to replace.
The blades also seemed to wear very quickly considering we were only using this professional shredder for two hours a week.
After a couple of years we decided to get rid of the input belt and since we have done this the blade life has increased greatly. This is because the input belt allowed the operators to be over-enthusiastic with how quickly stuff was put in and, consequently, we used to get a lot of blockages. Constantly chopping stuff trapped in the machine finer and finer wore the blades out. Without the belt, the material goes in more steadily at a rate that the cutting mechanism can deal with and we get far fewer blockages.
We now have an Eliet Prof 5b. This is a smaller machine but is also self-propelled. It ejects the shreddings much like a chipper – shooting them out with a strong blast of air. This makes collecting them a bit of a challenge but the strong air flow and the fact it does not have a perforated screen inside makes it much less prone to getting blocked with the sappy green stuff.
Our sieving machine was a cast out from the local golf course. It was used to sieve the sand for the bunkers and was adapted by one of our volunteers, a skilled mechanic, to handle our compost. It has given us years of service.
How do we finance our operation?
Our day to day running costs are covered by donations given in exchange for our compost. We also benefit from participating (being a good cause) in the “Tandridge Together Lottery”.
The Parish Council has been very supportive and helps us greatly with the servicing costs of our machinery.
The purchase of our machinery has been made possible by generous grants from a number of organisations including: Surrey County Council, The National Lottery, The Community Fund for Surrey, Tesco, Skipton Building Society, Tatsfield Parish Council and Tatsfield Horticultural Society. We are extremely grateful to all.
It is surprising how much grant money is available out there for community projects, although it can be a protracted process to get it. Most of our larger grants have been unsuccessful at the first attempt and only gained after a second attempt with the benefit of feedback from the first.
Phil Brett
26 November 2019
AGM Compost Report November 2019
This year has been busy. We have rebuilt 25 bins.
Over half of those were built during the composting season whilst also carrying out our normal duties.
That we achieved it at all was down to a huge effort from all the volunteers.
A lot of this work was done during extra mid-week sessions and a special mention has to be made of our two DoE volunteers, Harry Boys and Nat Bateman who both came along for these extra sessions.
The site for the three receiving bays has been cleared.
Design work for these is nearly complete and building will start in March.
This will complete the renewal of the site ready for the new season’s start in April.
The new receiving bays will look neater, be more weather proof to keep any left-over material dry and the tarpaulins will be green/brown in colour to fit in more with nature.
We have no DoE youngsters lined up for next year so if anyone knows of anyone who might be interested please let them know.
We have had two visits this year from our new Surrey County Councillor, Becky Rush. She is greatly impressed by our composting scheme and is eager to encourage other communities to do the same. She has also approved a grant of £360 for the new receiving bays.
In a couple of week’s time we will be showing what we do with our green waste here in Tatsfield at a Climate Change meeting in Outwood at the request of their Surrey County Councillor. Word is spreading!
Composter’s Chronicle
Tatsfield Leads the Way!
Our new Surrey County Councillor, Becky Rush, visited the composting site twice this year. One of her responsibilities in her new role is to look at ways in which green waste can be better dealt with in Surrey. She was enormously impressed with our Community Composting Scheme and spent a lot of time taking photographs and picking our brains for all the information about how the site works, how it was originally set up and the costs and benefits involved. All this led to her presenting a case-study to the council which I understand, having spoken to her a few days ago, attracted a lot of interest.
We also had a visit from one of the members of Caterham Horticultural Society who are thinking of setting up a similar scheme themselves and, in November, Martin Allen and I are visiting a group in Outwood at the request of their Surrey County Councillor to give a presentation on what we are doing here in Tatsfield.
Becky has offered to fully support our request for more funds to complete the renewal of the site and these will be aimed at building better receiving bays for the waste that arrives every Saturday morning.
The Community Composting Scheme was originally set up in 2001 by Jennie South and a group of like-minded individuals. Much of that first year was taken up with paperwork, mostly to do with getting planning and environmental consent, together with constructing the site. There were also some concerns expressed about having such a facility in the village.
Like most things, the scheme started small and has grown over time from the little plot it occupied in a backwater of the village to the much larger and much more visible and accessible position it is in now. Consequently, we are coping with much larger amounts of garden waste, saving more and more unnecessary car journeys to council recycling sites and greatly reducing the need for summer bonfires. Not only is this good for the environment but it also provides the community with a local supply of lovely compost to use in our gardens and allotments.
So, an idea that came to fruition in Tatsfield seventeen years ago is now being actively considered by others. I wasn’t involved then but well done to all those who were!
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle
As advised last month, the last day for bringing waste up to the site was Saturday 28th September, so, in that respect, we are now closed for the season. However, the team will be up there, as usual, on Saturday mornings throughout October putting the site “to bed” for the winter and will be very happy to serve you with any remaining compost.
I feel as though I may be tempting fate a little by writing this (as I am now) with three more weeks of the season to go, but what a good year we have had. We have taken delivery of a new shredder which has performed at least as well, if not better, than hoped for and our other shredder has given us its most trouble-free year to date. We have kept up with the flow of incoming waste both from the village and the allotments, great though it has been some weeks, and we have managed to rebuild thirteen composting bins. This is down to the most fantastic effort from our volunteers who have worked flat out, not just on Saturdays, but also during many mid-week sessions throughout the year.
So, thank you to:
Our regular weekly volunteers - Eddy Leeves, Ray McPherson, Martin Allen, Rupert Eales-White, Ian McAffer, Mike Williams and Peter Maynard.
Our once-a-month volunteers – Jim and Ruth Yeeles (who also give us an incredible amount of extra help), Elly Goodwin, Ian Longley and Sue Rhule.
And Carole Cuddon who steps in, if she can (and often with life-saving cake), whenever we look stressed.
We have had two great young Duke of Edinburgh volunteers with us this year; Harry Boys and Nat Bateman who have also put in extra hours during the week. Over and above the call of duty, guys! You have done us proud and thoroughly deserve your gold medals. Enjoy your day at Buckingham Palace.
Then there are the committee members of the Horticultural Society who perform “meet and greet duties” and a special thank you to our vicar, Vince Short, who came up to the site to perform this role one day in August. Sorry I couldn’t be there to greet you, Vince!
Thanks to all of you who have supported the site in any way, and see you next year!
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle - July Notes
I can’t believe we are already half-way through this year’s composting season! The bins which we built last winter are now all full and we have moved on, a little out of our normal filling sequence, to the previous year’s new-build which are all empty at the moment. This is because we are going to try to replace the remaining bins as we empty them rather than filling them up and having to empty them again over the winter to do the rebuild. This may seem like common sense but it is going to be a bit of a challenge as we will be doing the rebuild at the same time as our normal composting duties. Wish us luck!
I have noticed that we are slowly getting more supporters on the Tandridge Lottery. Ticket sales have gone up from 13 to 17 each week over the last couple of months which is great news as we get 50p each week from every ticket sold. So, thanks to the newcomers and to all of those who support us. We are still quite a long way off our 50-ticket target, though, so if any others fancy a flutter you can find us most easily by Googling “Tandridge Lottery Tatsfield Composting”. We share the page with the Horticultural Society but they very kindly let us keep all the proceeds while we are going through our expensive rebuilding programme.
The new shredder is performing beyond our best expectations. It is particularly good at dealing with the greener, more sappy material as it doesn’t have a grating to block up and also has a gale of air blowing through it all the time. We did have to do a bit of experimentation in capturing the shreddings due to the strong airflow. Directing them into a wheelbarrow not only failed to capture them but also removed anything that was already in the barrow but we solved it in the end using a builder’s bag supported by four posts.
Hope that the weather is good when you read this and that you are enjoying the summer.
Hints and Tips for using the composting site:
Please separate waste three-ways into soft green which doesn’t need shredding, tough green for shredding and woody for shredding.
We will always try to take all your compostable waste but it helps us if you can try to limit it to no more than a large builder’s bag or equivalent in any one week. If you have a larger amount please get in touch with me in advance. This will allow us to manage the waste more efficiently.
Please keep any soil and especially stones out of any waste for shredding as these are both bad news for the shredders’ blades.
Using our compost will greatly improve your soil and helps us pay our bills!
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle for June 2019
First of all, I would like to say a huge thank you to Dave Randall who came to our rescue when our ancient but hitherto, unstoppable, sieving machine ground to a halt. Of course, it happened just when we really needed to be sieving large quantities of compost to meet the high demand at this time of the year. Fortunately, it only took a short time for Dave to make the necessary repair so, thanks again, Dave – a real life-saver!
I have just been reading an article which says that there is more than three times more carbon in the soil than there is in the atmosphere and how important it is to protect the structure of the soil so that it can continue to contain all this carbon. Our compost is perfect for this as it made from a mixture of green waste for nitrogen to promote growth and woody material which is an excellent soil conditioner. So, keep composting!
Putting my allotmenteer hat on for a moment, I had a pathway along my plot which had become overrun by big, beefy weeds which I doubted would be completely smothered by a simple layer of wood chip. I was just about to start the unenviable task of digging them out when I remembered a trick I used many years ago and had almost forgotten about. That is to cover the weeds first with a layer of newspaper. The thicker the better but try for at least five or six sheets. Take a watering can with you if the weather is breezy so that you can wet the paper to stop it blowing away and then apply the woodchip on top as normal. The newspaper will eventually rot away but, by then, the weeds will be long gone. I expect most of you are familiar with this technique but thought I would just mention it.
Hints and Tips for using the composting site:
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle - May Notes
This winter we had new arrangements for allotment waste following the construction of two brand new, purpose-built receiving bays.
There was clear signage all winter that no clods of turf, earth or stones and no woody stems were to be put into the bays. We have now finished transferring this material into composting bins and I am very sorry to say we have found it full of woody stems (some nearly an inch thick which is our limit for shredding during the summer), clods of turf and other heavy clods – some several kilos in weight. The pile of woody stems which we removed was waist high and more or less filled the main “Woody Shredding” bay. There was a tremendous amount of earth in the bays and separating it from the mat of woody stems was incredibly hard, back-breaking work which, in the end, required us to use a pickaxe to achieve. We also found a lot of plastic waste including old compact discs.
This facility for allotment holders was paid for with public money in the form of grants from the Parish Council and Surrey County Council. A lot of work by the composting volunteers went into building it. That it should be treated with such careless disregard for all this effort is truly depressing.
I do accept that much of the earth probably came from numerous small quantities attached to weed roots, probably mostly grass. I know it is very difficult to completely remove this especially during the wet winter season. With this in mind we will probably restrict next winter’s composting to “top growth” only.
An allotment holder approached me to suggest creating one pile for this sort of earthy material. This may be a solution for allotment holders but it is not something I would want the composting site to be involved with as we are very much geared up to dealing with organic waste. The best way to deal with grassy clods is to turn them into the soil on your allotments. Flip them over so that no greenery is showing and they will rot down to give a lovely loam. Much better than giving your topsoil away.
On a happier note, we have been advised that the Composting Scheme has been accepted by Tesco to participate in their “Bags of Help” scheme. Voting will take place during May and June. This will give a huge boost to our bin replacement programme and you should be able to find the official press release elsewhere in this magazine.
Please note we will be featuring in the Biggin Hill and Orpington Tesco branches but not the Caterham or Shirley/West Wickham branches.
Wish us luck!
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle - April Notes
As I write this, we are well on our way to replacing this year’s quota of composting bins. The new bins are all along the “White House” end of the compound and around the corner up to the main receiving bays. This will greatly improve the appearance of the site as you approach from the allotments’ pedestrian gate and will also help with the efficient running of the facility.
The other good news is that, with a fair bit of horse-trading and by dipping heavily into our reserves, we have now acquired our new shredder. It is a smaller version of our big machine and, being somewhat simpler in design, will hopefully give us less trouble. It may seem strange that we have bought another Eliet shredder when the last one has proved somewhat troublesome, but the reality is there are relatively few makes available (mostly the machines you see around are chippers which would not be suitable at all for our green waste) and Eliet is the only make which is self-propelled, meaning that we don’t have to push very heavy machinery around the site and up into the storage container. Also, credit where credit is due, of the two old, small machines we had, the Eliet was by far the most reliable. Part of the deal to afford the new machine was the part-exchange of these two old, worn-out shredders which freed up space in the container and removed the problem of what to do with them.
Message to allotments holders: On Saturday 30th March (the last of the preparatory sessions before we open to the public on 6th April) the team will be emptying the allotment waste that has built up over the winter in the receiving bays and will be putting it into composting bins. Once this has been done, we will revert to the summer allotment waste arrangements whereby we ask you to put waste that needs shredding into one of the bays and waste that doesn’t need shredding into the other. Clear signage will be on site and please follow instructions about what we can or cannot accept.
I spoke to our service agent about the wear of the shredder blades and they have advised that sand and fine grit present in soil can greatly accelerate wear. This highlights the need to separate waste carefully. Most plants we get with roots are small and go into the “Soft” bay and then straight on to the heaps, so a little friable topsoil (humus) here is not a problem, but if you do have larger plants with roots, please make sure they are completely free of soil before putting them into the shredding bays.
Your help here will be greatly appreciated.
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
First of all, I would like to say a huge thank you to Dave Randall who came to our rescue when our ancient but hitherto, unstoppable, sieving machine ground to a halt. Of course, it happened just when we really needed to be sieving large quantities of compost to meet the high demand at this time of the year. Fortunately, it only took a short time for Dave to make the necessary repair so, thanks again, Dave – a real life-saver!
I have just been reading an article which says that there is more than three times more carbon in the soil than there is in the atmosphere and how important it is to protect the structure of the soil so that it can continue to contain all this carbon. Our compost is perfect for this as it made from a mixture of green waste for nitrogen to promote growth and woody material which is an excellent soil conditioner. So, keep composting!
Putting my allotmenteer hat on for a moment, I had a pathway along my plot which had become overrun by big, beefy weeds which I doubted would be completely smothered by a simple layer of wood chip. I was just about to start the unenviable task of digging them out when I remembered a trick I used many years ago and had almost forgotten about. That is to cover the weeds first with a layer of newspaper. The thicker the better but try for at least five or six sheets. Take a watering can with you if the weather is breezy so that you can wet the paper to stop it blowing away and then apply the woodchip on top as normal. The newspaper will eventually rot away but, by then, the weeds will be long gone. I expect most of you are familiar with this technique but thought I would just mention it.
Hints and Tips for using the composting site:
- Please separate waste into soft green which doesn’t need shredding, tough green for shredding and woody for shredding.
- We will always try to take all your compostable waste but it helps us if you can try to limit it to no more than a large builder’s bag or equivalent in any one week. If you have a larger amount please get in touch with me in advance. This will allow us to manage the waste more efficiently.
- Please keep any soil and especially stones out of the shredding waste as these are both bad news for the shredders’ blades.
- Using our compost will greatly improve your soil and helps us pay our bills!
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle - May Notes
This winter we had new arrangements for allotment waste following the construction of two brand new, purpose-built receiving bays.
There was clear signage all winter that no clods of turf, earth or stones and no woody stems were to be put into the bays. We have now finished transferring this material into composting bins and I am very sorry to say we have found it full of woody stems (some nearly an inch thick which is our limit for shredding during the summer), clods of turf and other heavy clods – some several kilos in weight. The pile of woody stems which we removed was waist high and more or less filled the main “Woody Shredding” bay. There was a tremendous amount of earth in the bays and separating it from the mat of woody stems was incredibly hard, back-breaking work which, in the end, required us to use a pickaxe to achieve. We also found a lot of plastic waste including old compact discs.
This facility for allotment holders was paid for with public money in the form of grants from the Parish Council and Surrey County Council. A lot of work by the composting volunteers went into building it. That it should be treated with such careless disregard for all this effort is truly depressing.
I do accept that much of the earth probably came from numerous small quantities attached to weed roots, probably mostly grass. I know it is very difficult to completely remove this especially during the wet winter season. With this in mind we will probably restrict next winter’s composting to “top growth” only.
An allotment holder approached me to suggest creating one pile for this sort of earthy material. This may be a solution for allotment holders but it is not something I would want the composting site to be involved with as we are very much geared up to dealing with organic waste. The best way to deal with grassy clods is to turn them into the soil on your allotments. Flip them over so that no greenery is showing and they will rot down to give a lovely loam. Much better than giving your topsoil away.
On a happier note, we have been advised that the Composting Scheme has been accepted by Tesco to participate in their “Bags of Help” scheme. Voting will take place during May and June. This will give a huge boost to our bin replacement programme and you should be able to find the official press release elsewhere in this magazine.
Please note we will be featuring in the Biggin Hill and Orpington Tesco branches but not the Caterham or Shirley/West Wickham branches.
Wish us luck!
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle - April Notes
As I write this, we are well on our way to replacing this year’s quota of composting bins. The new bins are all along the “White House” end of the compound and around the corner up to the main receiving bays. This will greatly improve the appearance of the site as you approach from the allotments’ pedestrian gate and will also help with the efficient running of the facility.
The other good news is that, with a fair bit of horse-trading and by dipping heavily into our reserves, we have now acquired our new shredder. It is a smaller version of our big machine and, being somewhat simpler in design, will hopefully give us less trouble. It may seem strange that we have bought another Eliet shredder when the last one has proved somewhat troublesome, but the reality is there are relatively few makes available (mostly the machines you see around are chippers which would not be suitable at all for our green waste) and Eliet is the only make which is self-propelled, meaning that we don’t have to push very heavy machinery around the site and up into the storage container. Also, credit where credit is due, of the two old, small machines we had, the Eliet was by far the most reliable. Part of the deal to afford the new machine was the part-exchange of these two old, worn-out shredders which freed up space in the container and removed the problem of what to do with them.
Message to allotments holders: On Saturday 30th March (the last of the preparatory sessions before we open to the public on 6th April) the team will be emptying the allotment waste that has built up over the winter in the receiving bays and will be putting it into composting bins. Once this has been done, we will revert to the summer allotment waste arrangements whereby we ask you to put waste that needs shredding into one of the bays and waste that doesn’t need shredding into the other. Clear signage will be on site and please follow instructions about what we can or cannot accept.
I spoke to our service agent about the wear of the shredder blades and they have advised that sand and fine grit present in soil can greatly accelerate wear. This highlights the need to separate waste carefully. Most plants we get with roots are small and go into the “Soft” bay and then straight on to the heaps, so a little friable topsoil (humus) here is not a problem, but if you do have larger plants with roots, please make sure they are completely free of soil before putting them into the shredding bays.
Your help here will be greatly appreciated.
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle March 2019
Another composting season will soon be upon us!
During the month of March the team will be on site getting things ready to accept green waste from villagers starting Saturday 6th April. We should, by then, have finished rebuilding thirteen old composting bins with new timber. If we achieve this, we will be on target to have completely renovated the site by spring 2020, although this does depend on funds being available to buy the timber.
On the subject of money, we received a grant of £5,500 from The Community Fund for Surrey to go towards the purchase of a second shredder. This was great news but it was £1,500 less than they originally indicated they could find for us. We have to go ahead and buy the shredder before the end of April or we lose this grant and the £3,000 grant from the National Lottery. Obviously, we don’t want to lose this money, especially after all the work applying for these grants involves. The Parish Council have kindly allowed us to divert money they had generously promised us for new timber but we will still be dipping quite deeply into our reserves, something we try to avoid given how expensive unexpected repairs to our machines can be.
Should you wish, you can help us with our finances by buying our lovely, locally produced compost, supporting us via the Tandridge Lottery (you can find us by Googling “Tandridge Lottery Tatsfield Composting”) or you could always consider making a donation directly to us.
On more mundane matters, I am going to be a bit more specific about the quantity of waste people can bring up to us this year. In the past, we have asked people to let us know in advance if they have a “large quantity”. This obviously means different things to different people so I am going to say up to a large builder’s bag or the equivalent in smaller bags is fine but please call me in advance if you wish to bring up a larger load.
I am going to finish this month by including a quote from the report by the Royal Horticultural Society’s judges following their visit to the village to judge last year’s entry into the South East in Bloom competition.
“…the community green waste recycling is not just something to be proud of but should be shouted about.”
Always nice to get a compliment – well done, team!
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
The Compost Site is now closed until the 1st Saturday in April.
If you would like to volunteer at the site please contact Philip Brett 01959 577420
Composter’s Chronicle November 2018
Well, what a year that was!
Shredder problems dogged most of it but I am glad to say that we have finally solved the problem of the wearing input belt by having it removed completely. We have done a couple of Saturdays without it and, although there is a little extra effort required to get stuff into the machine, it doesn’t seem to have had any great impact on the “throughput”.
When I think back to the worst part of the summer when machine was out of action for about a month and the backlog reached its peak, I can’t believe how lucky we were that the weather was so good. For two or three weeks I was slicing a cliff face off the mountainous piles with my most powerful petrol hedge-trimmer to try to keep things moving – a bit like slicing a doner kebab! If those piles had got wet we would have been finished.
We are still waiting to hear whether or not we will get the grant for the new shredder but, hopefully, there will be fewer breakdowns with the current one now that the troublesome belt has gone. (Hope I am not tempting fate.)
The two receiving bays in the new “island” for the exclusive use of the allotmenteers have now gone over to “winter mode”. This means that there is no need to sort the material into shredding or soft but it would help if really big stuff like sunflower stalks of sweet corn stems could be chopped up a little. In the spring this will be moved into other bins in the island ready for the usual summer allotment arrangements to commence again. Please continue to observe the rules about not putting in clods of turf, soil, stones etc.
I would also ask allotment holders not to put anything woody like fruit tree prunings or old blackcurrant or redcurrant stems in as these will not disintegrate sufficiently over the winter and will make emptying the bays very hard work in the spring.
These bays will only take a little of what the allotments are capable of producing but we have to be realistic about what we can cope with and I would ask allotmenteers not to “overflow” them or put stuff in any other bin. More room will appear on the top of the bays as the waste rots down during the winter.
We intend to replace another third of the composting bins over the winter break and (possibly) the main receiving bays. I think the improvements will then really start to make a difference both in the running of the site and its general appearance.
Just a reminder that we are still looking for a little extra help for the fourth and any fifth Saturdays of the month.
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
Composter’s Chronicle - October 2018
By the time you read this, the composting site will have closed as far as receiving green waste is concerned but will still be open until the last Saturday in October for anyone who wishes to avail themselves of our compost. During this time, the team will be up there preparing the site for winter and, maybe, the construction of more new bins to replace the old rotting ones if funds become available.
The new “island” was completed at the end of August and includes two new receiving bays exclusively for waste from the allotments – one for “soft” material which does not require shredding and one for larger, tougher stuff which does. Please take a moment to read the notices next to the bays regarding what can and cannot be left there.
We have had a couple of phenomenally busy Saturday mornings which have resulted in us having to organise mid-week shredding sessions. If we get the grant for the additional shredder we will be able to cope more easily next year but we have to accept that, however much shredding capacity we have, we could still be overwhelmed by demand. I will see how things go next year and may have to be more specific about how much can be brought to the site each Saturday.
The latest thing to be renewed is the ramp which we can use to empty wheelbarrows directly into the compost bins if they are particularly heavy or if there aren’t two people available to lift the barrow, which is how we normally do it. The old one had become dangerously rotten and a bit of an eyesore.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank our “extra” volunteers who each do one Saturday a month. So, thank you, Ruth and Jim Yeeles for doing the first Saturday, Elly Goodwin for doing the second and Ian Longley for the third. It is great to have your support and a real pleasure to see you each month. The fourth and fifth Saturdays are still looking for a willing helper.
If you would like to support the Composting Scheme in another way, you could always have a flutter on our part of the “Tandridge Together Lottery” which we share with the Horticultural Society. We can always use the extra cash to rebuild the composting bins and one of our supporters has won the biggest prize so far: £2,000! So, why not see if you can benefit from the “Luck of the Composters” and help us with the continued renewal of the site at the same time? Go to https://www.tandridgelottery.co.uk and search us out, or direct to https://www.tandridgelottery.co.uk/support/tatsfield-horticultural-society-and-composting
Philip Brett 577420 [email protected]
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We are proud to show off our certificate of excellence from South & South east in bloom.
Community Composting
The site will reopen on the first Saturday in April and the team having spent the past few Saturdays in preparation will be ready to receive the green waste and shredding from you at this time.
The donations for the Black Gold will remain the same this year
£ 2.50 for a wheelbarrow load
£ 1.25 for a bag
These donations will go towards the cost of running the site for your benefit.
I repeat my regular call for volunteers to come and assist on the site. There are many things to do some of them not strenuous in any way and your help would be appreciated.
The composting site is run by compost volunteers aided by some allotment volunteers so do please be considerate to them by not dumping any material whilst we are closed and separate the waste you bring to the site for ease of transport to the correct bins.
Details of what and when you can bring waste to the site can be found in the T.H.S. Year Book.
If you would like to join the T.H.S. or join the band of volunteers to help on the composting site next season, then please contact Philip Brett on 01959 577420
Further details of the Composting Group and all other THS events can be found on the THS website
Composter’s Chronicle
Hopefully, by the time you read this, we will have sorted out the problem with the shredder. It has occurred to me that it might be a good idea if I had a way of contacting people who normally use the site to inform them if there is a problem so that they can avoid a wasted journey. I can understand how annoying it is to load up the car with your green waste and drive up to the site only to find that we cannot take it from you. So, if you would like to supply me with your email address I’ll be able to email you to advise you of any problems in advance. I do update the website but realise that most people probably don’t look at that too often.
Now a little gripe. We have a dustbin just outside the compound in one of the corners. This is primarily for use by the composting team for disposing of plastic and other non-organic material that comes in the green waste. A couple of weeks ago we found a large amount of broken panes of glass in it. This is highly dangerous stuff and should be carefully wrapped in sturdy paper or cardboard even in your home bin. We certainly don’t want it in ours. A member of the team had to spend a good deal of time going home, finding a suitable box, then returning and finally taking it away. We don’t mind the bin being used for the odd bit of litter but please use it considerately. It isn’t collected from site and one of us has to take it home for collection there.
Ending on a happier note, we would like to wish you all a productive summer in your gardens and an enjoyable holiday season!
Hopefully, by the time you read this, we will have sorted out the problem with the shredder. It has occurred to me that it might be a good idea if I had a way of contacting people who normally use the site to inform them if there is a problem so that they can avoid a wasted journey. I can understand how annoying it is to load up the car with your green waste and drive up to the site only to find that we cannot take it from you. So, if you would like to supply me with your email address I’ll be able to email you to advise you of any problems in advance. I do update the website but realise that most people probably don’t look at that too often.
Now a little gripe. We have a dustbin just outside the compound in one of the corners. This is primarily for use by the composting team for disposing of plastic and other non-organic material that comes in the green waste. A couple of weeks ago we found a large amount of broken panes of glass in it. This is highly dangerous stuff and should be carefully wrapped in sturdy paper or cardboard even in your home bin. We certainly don’t want it in ours. A member of the team had to spend a good deal of time going home, finding a suitable box, then returning and finally taking it away. We don’t mind the bin being used for the odd bit of litter but please use it considerately. It isn’t collected from site and one of us has to take it home for collection there.
Ending on a happier note, we would like to wish you all a productive summer in your gardens and an enjoyable holiday season!