Thinning and Improving

Thursday, February 9th 2017

We had a job in mind today; the net ride behind the Field Centre which is always a mud bath at this time of year, the only problem was that we had to do half a dozen jobs to achieve this one, like to repair one of the bridges over a ditch.

Thank fully we have a great team who can help us with making it happen!

Yesterday we had cut a few wayward trees down in the Coppice Block, in doing so we were able to partially lay down the edging to a path along this net ride, which we were then planning to top with fresh wood chippings.

We still had to finish the edging so Jonathan took down a couple of Sitka Spruce that we were going to clear anyway.

Jackie, Christine, and Jenny thinned out some spruce on route to the Wetland Hide to provide brash which allows the chippings to sit above the mud to prevent them from becoming waterlogged and rotting prematurely.

This required that brash to be dragged or carted to the site of the net ride.

We then had to cut the brash down so that it would lay flat.

While all this was going on pegs were being cut using the small spruce trunks to make firm the edgings…..

…. as well as the surface levelled to prevent pooling of water under the chippings.

The fence can be awkward to climb over so John built a stile to facilitate easier access.

Although this job is not yet completed, watch this space, the team did a great job at doing the bulk of the hard labours leaving us to do the easier job of laying the wood chippings tomorrow. Thank you to all who helped today.

We finished off with replenishing the Honey Bee feed, which supplements their own honey over winter. This is always an interesting episode, last time we did this we had to catch 30+ escapees from inside the Field Centre and take them around to the outside entrance of the hive so they could get back in. This time it was just a few that were contained in a jar and returned with ease and success!

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