Dacre Banks Nature Park: 02-02-2016

In spite of the stormy weather over the last couple of days 17 volunteers turned up to help Michael Emsley plant the next tranche of trees in his newly formed nature park at Dacre Banks. He is intending to plant 3500 before the end of the winter and today we were tasked to plant 500 of these.Conditions were windy and muddy - something we have been getting well used to recently - but everyone cheerily picked up their spades and marched off around the Dacre Banks sawmill to make a start.

The NCVs gathered in the "Youth shelter" whilst awaiting orders.

This NCV was going to be easy to spot -
 how long would he keep his jacket clean?

Off we went!

The job involved knocking in stakes (staking), digging slots in the soil (slotting), inserting saplings (planting) and putting tubes around the saplings (tubing - or intubation). There were long stakes for long tubes and tall saplings, and short stakes for short tubes and short saplings. It was a real feat of organisation to ensure the correct sized stakes, tubes and saplings were matched up.

That's a lot of trees!

 Tree planting begins.

 Just a bit of intubation and this one will be finished.

Josh wielded a long mallet to drive in the 
long stake for the long sapling.

Dave prefered the short lump hammer 
for the short stake and the short sapling.

Every so often Michael would plough another tree trench.

Josh tried his hand at being a tractor driver.

As the trenches appeared so we lined them with trees.

Coffee time was made all the more welcome when Michael 

brought out a tray of delicious chocolate and coconut cakes. 
Thanks Michael!

Some of the saplings were planted with the aid of the 
super duper Finnish "Potti Potikar" tree planting gadget, 
ably demonstrated by Osian and Jo above.

 Everyone enjoyed lunch in the sun - and the flapjack from Audrey!

The team were still smiling at the end of the task - 

or perhaps because we'd run out of tubes!

Job done - only 2500 more to go. 

By the way - that jacket didn't get very dirty.
Perhaps a sign of not much work being done by its wearer?

Ros E.