Dear <<First Name>>

Just to let you know that next week we are having our work party on Wed next week, 13th June, 4 - 6pm instead of Tuesday. Hope some of you can make it, would be good to see some new & old faces, we really need the extra help just before the secret gardens event as everything is growing so fast.  

We have been given £500 from St Ives Town Council to go towards a new lawnmower so have ordered one and it should hopefully arrive next week before our work party. We are leaving large areas of wildflowers untouched throughout the orchard and only mowing around the trees and in certain areas. 

The rest of the money that they gave us is to go to building a compost toilet. Any advice on this please get in touch. We plan to go for the simple option of digging a pit latrine rather than a composting toilet where you have to remove the compost waste. Newquay Community Orchard used this option to start with and said that it works well for small numbers of users. 

We had an exciting afternoon yesterday. Josh Quick (our local foraging expert from Wild St Ives) let us know there was a swarm up at Trowan allotments. Duwayne went up and captured it in his skep (woven basket) and then transported it to the orchard and put it in our second hive.  You can watch the whole thing on youtube - click on image below to watch. If you're nervous of bees, don't worry, they are well hidden and are well away from the main orchard.