And another thing ...

You know you’re getting old when you discover you can’t use The Pitchforker’s Pride is a Fallacy for a blog title, because you’ve already done that once.

And if you think you have already read a blog once about clearing scrub on Linkey Down, that’s because you have.  Today was session #2: same task, same tools, same barbed-wire fence in our way:

Today was a good day to be out on the Chilterns scarp:

(Impossible to tell from the photograph that what had attracted our attention was a herd of fallow deer, on the far slope.) 

It felt cold, though, on account of the wind.  Note the insulated pitchfork:

Most of us kept layers of winter-warmers on throughout the session.  Some endeavoured, with varying degrees of success, to use the power of the wind to assist in lobbing cuttings over the fence. 

At tea-break, when the weather threatened briefly to turn nasty on us, some volunteers were glad of the shelter newly created by all the brash thrown (whether or not wind-assisted) over the fence-line:

As always – or so it seems – when we go to that site, the direction in which cuttings had to be transported on the slope was: UP.  This makes for an excellent cardio-vascular workout; also strengthening of glutes, quads, and hamstrings – and a good appetite, come tea-break!

In the second half of the session, as volunteers started to weary, a casual observer might be forgiven for thinking that we a. had a man down, b. didn’t care!

It was only on approaching closer that one could see that this was not a case of “him and work had a fallin’ out” (as they say in Wisconsin).  Also that the Green-Gymmer was very much still alive, but the stubborn treelet in his way would soon be food for the fire:

As for the creatures for whose benefit (as well as our own health) we were doing all this work, they made a brief appearance at the start of the session.  This was largely for the purpose of checking out that none of the site warden’s kit included extra rations for them:

Double-checking that there were no mineral supplements in any of the boxes was a process which had to be repeated several times.  Of all our customers, sheep are the most woolly-headed, literally and metaphorically: it is only in the movies that sheep are the quick-witted, resourceful heroes.

However, at least when we are doing things for sheep, no Green-Gymmer pipes up with “What are they good for?”  For everyone knows that sheep make for mutton pie and rogan josh – as well as providing wool, which can be turned into winter-warmers or works of art / cultural-political statements: