Humberstone Bank: 21-05-2019

This week saw a return to Humberstone Bank, helping farmer Jonathon with the woodland management work we didn’t get around to earlier in the season, namely tree guard removal and stake checking or replacement. This meant that few tools were needed - just some lump hammers and Stanley knives. It's always good to be able to travel light (although lump hammers don't quite fit the 'light' description!)

As the photos show - we made a good job of tidying up the piece of woodland on the opposite side of the valley from the one we planted up last time, although it was an extremely challenging day as far as the terrain goes.....

This is the scene that greeted us in the first area of the wood - 
lots of tubes to deal with here!

 Some trees had got so fed up waiting to be freed from their extremely
 tight corsets they had decided to take matters into their own hands.
Stanley knives were going to be the tool of choice here.

This one had done a good job in disrobing but 
couldn't quite get free of the plastic it was laying on.

 New volunteer, Wendy, was soon caught up in her work - quite literally!!

 Ros K. found it easier on the knees to sit in the dust to do the job.

 Osian was lucky to find a patch of woodland that could accommodate his lofty proportions.

Andrew, on the other hand, spent a good deal of his day bent over, under the low hanging branches, carrying the discarded tubes away.

We started out with one pile down by the fence, 
but then the piles proliferated right up the hillside.

Farmer Jonathon will come to collect them 
all up with his quad bike and trailer (thank goodness!).

Walking across the top of the hillside provided other challenges.

And once up at the top we had to work downwards.

The slope was so steep we often had to resort to 
walking on all fours to get back up.

A few of these tiny little, self seeded beech trees were found in amongst the big boys.
Let's hope they manage to escape the attentions of the roe deer population, 
seeing as they are not protected by tubes.

The tree tube piles just kept on growing in size and number.
Farmer Jonathon is going to have his work cut out collecting them all!!

Lunch in the sun, at the top of the hill was very pleasant.... 

...but, unfortunately, provided us with a grandstand view of the area we had planted last year. Many of the trees had been blown over by a gale.

 As we had finished the first job by 1:45 we decided 
to move across the valley make a start on putting the place to rights.
Now the lump hammers came into their own!

The band of 5 remaining NCVs fanned out across the slope and got busy knocking the posts upright, replacing any that were broken and tightening the tree ties.

Within just 45mins every tree was standing vertically again.
Let's hope there are no more gales for them to contend with.

Back at the cars everyone was relieved to take off their boots after such a hot day's work. And - of course - they made sure that said boots were cleaned off.