Today 12 NCVs, 6 Heritage
Skills students and their 2 tutors collected at the barn to carry out more work at Fishpond Wood. Last week we moved old brash piles into new positions and sorted
out the larger timbers suitable for charcoal - or just a good blaze. James re-assured
us our task this week was not to move them all back again to where they had
started.
We had a few more piles of old brash to sort and re-stack
where it could be burned. That took us up to coffee time.
Tom starts to drag out the brash from under the bushes.
Home is where you hang your coat.
The students lend a hand to shift the
brash to its final destination.
Some embers from a fire lit yesterday were still active
and we made the most of them....
...although it took a while to get a roaring blaze going.
Charlie feeds the towering inferno.
Coffee time was spent standing up....
...whilst lunch was spent sitting down in groups....
....with Phil in two minds about taking off his boots
and dangling his feet in the water.
We then started on clearing rhododendrons from around the bases of the larger trees. It proved easier to lop and saw down the offending rhododendrons than it was to reduce the debris to brash and logs and to move them to new sites where they could be burned.
The enthusiasm of some provided more material than we could deal with and by the end of the afternoon there was still waste we had not sorted or moved - a task for another day.
Post-lunch adjournment to the top of the hill for
rhodie cutting, brash piling or dragging.
Tom's at the back but can you guess who is
the mobile rhododendron in front?
That's better Ros - we can see your smile now!
At the far end of the lake the branches were
thrown down to Graham, Anita and Maggie.
A river of rhodies threatened to engulf them
once the cutters stopped cutting and began dragging!
At lunch we were able to sit by the pond in the sunshine and enjoy its newly dredged and cleaned up state. It is slowly filling again from the stream and will look very good by the time it is full.
The lake when it was first dredged in September......
... and now. Much improved!
(As is the lava like flow of dredged silt that is now covered over
with dead leaves and looks just like the woodland floor should.)
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