Ashfield & Ashfield East

This coming Friday (April 23rd) we will be running our annual fund raising table quiz.  This will be taking place in the Orchard House pub with a start time of 8pm.

All are welcome.

We are approx €900 short of our annual budget, so if you can not attend, we ask that you please give a donation. Money can be dropped into 135 Ashfield East (first cul de sac off the roundabout) at any time.

Thanks to everyone who helped out with planting the trees last Saturday, as well as collecting litter around the estate.  Here are some photos that were taken during the tree planting.

I hope to soon post a list of the different varieties of apple trees that we planted.

If you are interested in helping our with the ongoing care of the apple trees that we will be planting next week, please leave your name in the comments. 

The people from Future Proof Kilkenny will give training on how to maintain and take care of the trees.

On Saturday 27th February at 10.30am we will be having a street cleanup, and in addition we will be working with the people from Future Proof Kilkenny to plant a small orchard of 10 apple trees on the big green as you enter Ashfield from the Old Golf Links Road.

We'll meet at the main entrance around 10.30am.  If you can't make it at that time, join us whenever you can.  Some of us will be planting trees, and others will be going around the estates picking up litter.

Today I got a visit from the new Garda community liaison officer, who helped me put through the documentation for starting up the Neighbourhood watch scheme.  We've completed the paperwork, and sent off for stickers for each of the houses in Ashfield and Ashfield East.

It will take a few weeks for these to come through, and then we will organise a meeting in The Orchard House, between the Guards, and those of you who expressed an interest in being on the Neighbourhood Watch committee.

We are currently in talks with members of the Kilkenny 400 committee and Future Proof Kilkenny, to get approximately 12 apple trees planted in the estate.  We are in negotiations over sponsorship for the trees, and hope to have this resolved soon.  Our initial thoughts are to have them planted in the front green as you enter Ashfield.  If you have any thoughts or views on this, please leave a comment.

For more information on Future Proof Kilkenny go to - http://futureproofkilkenny.org

On Friday night we held our fund-raising disco at O'Loughlin Gael's GAA club.  During the previous 2 weeks members of the committee put in a lot of hard work going around the doors selling tickets.  Thanks to all members of the committee for doing this.

In total we able to sell around 157 tickets when calling to people's doors.  In addition we were able to raise €300 in sponsorship.  With tickets priced at €10 each we managed to raise approximately €1870 in total.  Taking out the cost of the DJ and printing tickets (€200 in total) we have been left with a grand total of €1670

On the night we had around 30 people who attended.  While it would have been nice to see more people, many people on the doorsteps told us that they couldn't make it for a variety of reasons - away for the weekend, working, difficultly in getting babysitters etc.

Overall we had a good reception on the doorsteps, with even those unable to attend buying a ticket, as they wanted to make a contribution.  This puts us in a good position to meet our target of €2500, and hopefully we will be able to do so when we run another table quiz, next spring.

There were a few doors at which we were unable to get an answer, when selling tickets.  We therefore plan to send out a newsletter in the coming weeks with details of how you can make a contribution, if we missed you.  Also if you are renting, please feel free to pass us your landlord's contact details, and we will approach them for a contribution.

To finish I wish to extend my congratulations to the winners of our draw for two €100 vouchers for Hennessy's Garden centre.  The winners are:

Leslie Bell - 136 Ashfield East
Ross Fitzgerald - 133 Ashfield East

As usual if you have any questions please feel free to leave a comment on the site.

Do you have an hour or two to spare this week?  We're short on volunteers to help us sell tickets for next week's fund-raising disco, and could really do with some assistance.  If you're available, please either leave a comment, to this post, or email us at ashfieldandashfieldeast@yahoo.co.uk.

Your help would be much appreciated.