Where are we going?
What are we doing?
Liz kept the gang guessing as to their task this week, due to technical issues with her email system. Consequently we were all kept sitting on the edge of our seats until Sunday evening, wondering what lay in store. When the message finally came through we were only given part of the story. 'Meet at the barn to car share to somewhere else nearby to do some "woodland management".'
Well - that could mean anything! Tube removal? Tube weeding? Tube verticalisation? Holly removal? Brash clearance?
When we all arrived at the barn everything became clear. We were to be working in Bark Cabin Wood, a plantation on the edge of Guisecliffe Wood, doing tree tube removal. The trees had been planted a number of years ago by the Rotary club, with the help of the community and a crew of army cadets.
Finally - we could sit back in our seats and relax.
NO YOU CAN'T! GET UP! AND START WALKING!!
So we did. All the way from Liz's house and right up the path, almost to the mast at the top of Guisecliffe,
From here it looked as if the trees had done well.
Closer inspection did confirm this to a point.
A few trees had grown horizontally,
or even turned right angle corners.
However, there were many,
many tubes that were empty.
Anita tried hiding to get out of walking
any further uphill. We spotted her though.
Friedy got stuck in and remembered
to remove the posts from the tubes.
Alistair demonstrated his incredible strength
by carrying a pile of tubes to the 'nesting' area...
...where Mick set to work on tube 'nesting'...
...and Ruth then inserted them into dumpy bags.
Everyone was glad to hear when it was coffeetime...
...although patches of clean grass were at a premium.
Everywhere seemed to be covered in sheep poo.
Back to work. On we went, detubing trees
that had burst out of their covering...
...or simply picking up empty ones that were
buried under vegetation.
What's Brenda found?
Oh dear. An old helium balloon
that wasn't kept under better control.
We worked our way back downhill to find
heaps of tubes that had been collected up
by a smaller group.
Let's tidy this lot up shall we?
That's better. Both dumpy bags were full, so
many tube heaps had to be left
for the landowner to collect.
One group had made sure that tubes were
stored on tree post 'stretchers' for easy transport.
Hundreds upon hundreds of tree ties were collected
in the bucket or hung in swathes from belts.
On and on we toiled until Liz called time.
Hurray!!
There are still a lot of tubes to be removed.
Something for next year - before the
bracken gets going!!
No comments:
Post a Comment