Riverside, Pateley Bridge: 26-11-2019

艾 克 斯 诶 豆 贝 尔 维 艾 娜 诶 艾儿

"A hedge of 420 trees begins with a single sapling."
Lao Tzu (from the 'Tao Te Ching' - 6th century BC) 

This summed up the philosophy of the NCVs when faced with what seems to be an enormous task. With 420 trees to be planted in one day, along the riverside at Pateley Bridge, all you can do is start with the first one and go on from there. 
And here are the trees:

It is probably the same approach that the Woodland Trust decided on when they started their Big Climate Fightback. Their aim was to get people to pledge to plant 1,000,000 trees around the 30th November 2019. This group of 420 will be quite a nice little chunk towards that!

As it happens - the approach worked very well. The trees were shared out and all got planted. With a team of 17 on duty everyone only ended up having to plant, on average, 24.7 trees each. Easy peasy! 

And here they all are, beavering away - all for the good of the environment.....

At first the planting plan was revealed.

Then all the canes were inserted at an appropriate density 
over each 10m stretch, to ensure that the trees would 
be evenly distributed along the whole fence.

Spiral guards were next laid out, one per cane...

...and then planting could begin.
Ken was first off the blocks with tree number one.

Some members of the group doled out a variety of species 
to each 10m stretch, but this NCV got distracted by a 
swanky tree planting device - the wonderfully named 'Pottiputki'.

She immediately decided to try it out for size.

Having got the taste for this tree planting lark, 
Ken eschewed this 'one at a time' approach and made off with a fistful. 
Or are these his entry for the next carrot competition at the Pateley Show?

It was 'eyes down, look in' all the way along the fence line until,
 not too long after coffee time, the job was done!

Talking of coffee time - field owner Fran provided not one, 
but THREE cake choices at her 'cake station'

Everyone soon made short work of these delicacies.

Once the hedge was complete there were a couple of tidying jobs to be done.
First one - to create a habitat pile out of this heap of brash.

 Phil knocked in the necessary posts and 
Osian kept well clear of the lump hammer.

 A pile of a million sticks begins with a single stick.

 Slowly but surely, as this new, contained, habitat pile grew larger...

 ...the original pile disappeared.

And there you have it. The end result - a perfect home for all kinds of wildlife.

By this time the rain had really set in but, thanks to Fran's 
hastily erected gazebo, everyone could keep dry for their lunch.

After lunchtime all that remained to be done was to 
shift all this wood away from the bottom of a lovely old lime tree 
(now featured on the Woodland Trust's ancient tree inventory map).

 So - that's what the NCVs did.
No problem!

 Over the field to the side of the shed went the wood ....

...leaving the trunk of the tree visible.
Well done everyone - a good morning's work.
Have the afternoon off!