We usually hold our Work Parties at the Reserve on Saturday mornings but there was a really dire weather forecast for 8th May so we postponed it to Sunday morning. I wondered if this would cut our numbers down, but in fact we had 19 volunteers assemble at 10 o'clock. Would there be enough cake to go round at half time, I wondered? I needn't have worried - there was cake galore! Thanks to all who supplied the refreshments which were much appreciated.
The task this Sunday morning was to spread more wood chip along the remaining paths and once more we were very grateful to Chris Preston at rootstoshoots.im for supplying us with this free of charge. It smelt wonderful - clearly a pine tree had been chipped on this occasion. Some volunteers had been able to bring additional barrows so this made the task go along all the quicker and the pile had all but gone by 11 o'clock when we broke for refreshments. Really quite amazing! But I wasn't going to let all that (wo)man power disappear so easily, so once we were all suitably rested and revived we spent an hour cutting back along the paths where the vegetation and overhanging branches were causing problems. We also took out some docks which had invaded the meadow near the side of the path. I think recent rain had caused everything to put a spurt on.
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father and son team
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barrow ready to go
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pile diminishing by the minute
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off to the gorse boundary with this one
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and the compost heap path with this one
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and another load on its way later
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many barrows make light work
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a busy highway
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not just wood chip, the vegetation needs trimming too
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our hard working Duke of Edinburgh volunteer
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our husband and wife team dealing with the latest load
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clearly refreshment time - I needed no second bidding
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welcome break
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our Ballachurry Bake-Off Judges?
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cake and conversation
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good to be socialising again after weeks of lockdown
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smart, improved shutters on the hide made by Peter in his own time.
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the log pile growing larger with sticks from the wood chip
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doesn't it look neat?
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vegetation trimmed back and path finished
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the pile has gone and the area will soon green over again
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It was a rather cloudy morning, so I didn't notice many insects about. There is a healthy population of earthworms in the meadow though, it would seem. The birdsong was very noticeable and we worked to a soundtrack of Sedge Warblers, Chiffchaff, Blackcap, Chaffinch and the occasional Pheasant. I'm told that 2 Swifts were also seen overhead, which is lovely news.
A huge thank you to everyone who came along and worked so hard today.
You
are a great team and the success of the reserve really is down to all
your efforts. Apologies if I didn't manage to say goodbye and thank each
of you personally and also if I didn't manage to take your photo this time.
