Time slowing down

Nature enforced a change to our plans for this week.  Some newly-nesting birds had moved in where we were going to be working.

Clearly it was us humans who were going to have to give way.  Especially since what we do is intended to be of benefit to the countryside environment as a whole: not just to homo sapiens.  Being in no more position to argue with coots which had decided on a second brood this year, than the world’s time-keepers are with the planet revolving a fraction slower than our atomic clocks allow for, we meekly re-scheduled our session for ‘the other Anne Carpmael Trust site’: a wildflower meadow by the Thames:

As it happened, the change of schedule meant we had fetched up at the place which some of us had been talking about only the previous week.  One volunteer, who confessed she “would not know a dormouse from an ordinary mouse”, had asked then whether there were dormice in Paradise Wood, Wittenham.  To which the answer from the site warden there had been “No, that’s not very likely!”  We (other Green-Gymmers) were able to add that the nearest known dormice would be at Little Meadow, Goring – and that dormice are not actually mice.

Dormice are more closely related to squirrels.  For one thing, they have furry tails, which on the whole mice do not; and in the summer they scamper about in the canopy of trees.  They are also relatively long-lived for small mammals: typically 4-6 years.

These days the term ‘common dormouse’ is preferred to ‘hazel dormouse’, as folks have got round to realising that the gastronomic preferences of dormice run to a great deal more than hazelnuts.  Dormice will eat aphids, for instance.  They have also been found in habitats such as Forestry Commission conifer plantations, where there are no hazel trees to be seen.  Most of the creatures live in the southern counties of England, but for some reason there is also a significant population in Hexham.

Today, in meadow beside dormouse-habitat, a start had already been made on the annual cut-and-clear, in the sense that the first area had been cut.  From the towpath it was initially difficult to see what some Green-Gymmers were doing, except that they appeared to have travelled back in time to an era when all such jobs were done by hand:

It was only on approaching closer that it became clear that all the volunteers in that team had initially set to raking:

Next task was to drag cuttings/hay.  The material being so dry, this initially encouraged Green-Gymmers to go for a few large loads to drag rather than many small journeys to the haystack:

The other difficulty with large loads was that they then needed to be rolled up the slope, to the top of the stack:

At least the views were good from the top:

And on hand, were:

• Site warden to award verbal praise and encouragement.  Apparently “it’s not everyone who’d turn out on a Tuesday morning to wrestle with hay” and we are “really very special people”.  Many a person may have reflected that today truly is an even longer summer day than usual.  What a way to spend the extra second!
• Fellow-volunteer to pour cool water over the head, and down the back of the T-shirt – “very refreshing on a warm day”, I’m told; although it does look like some kind of religious ceremony:

(The Feast of St John the Baptizer was last week, folks!)

The alternative task was sanding & varnishing benches.  This was something we had hoped to do on a previous occasion, but weather did not permit.  Today, even if birds were not co-operating with the WGG schedule, at least the weather was:

Good hay-making weather = good paint/varnish-drying weather.

Warm weather also made for a more leisurely tea-break than usual – in the shade.  Which also gave time to see with one’s own eyes evidence that efforts to make the Thames more fish-friendly may be having some impact.  These littl’uns (c 5 cm) could clearly be seen from the bank:

If the pace of raking & dragging was slower, and the loads lighter after the break, this was entirely understandable.  There were certainly more pairs of willing hands ready to work on the second bench than the first! 

It can be a curiously satisfying task, sanding wood – especially when there are several people at work.  Each person working at a slightly different pace leads to some interesting sound effects.  And, as our informal motto proclaims, you could see where we had been.

“Some of the logs are quite heavy …

So the site warden said in his notice of today’s session: “Please make sure you wear the stoutest boots you own.”

Knowing from previous experience that he was not kidding, I duly looked out my ex-Bundeswehr boots (these boots are made for walkin’) and even gave them a loving polish the day before:

(Sorry, don’t know what barracks-German is for ‘bulling’ boots.) 

Our tools officer had looked out his steel toe-cap boots, which aroused some interest among the inquisitive:

Other volunteers, I suspect, were relying on not dropping said heavy logs:

 

Our task today – the reason for wearing cherished stout boots – was timber extraction.

Indeed the task called for not only stout boots, but also stout gloves (who cares if they don’t match?) and stout jacket:

Extracting timber was something we had done before, at the same site: in Paradise Wood.  On this occasion, another of the Earth-Trust wardens was on hand, to drive full trailers back to the Centre to be unloaded.  The idea was that “we” (the volunteers, that is) “should be able to get a few trailers filled up.” 

In fact we managed only to get two trailers filled up.  In part this was because we had a delayed start to the session.  We don’t seem to have much luck at this site with vehicles in the way:

Another thing we don’t have much luck with at this site – and this end of the site in particular – is the conjunction of Earth-Trust landrover with Green-Gym thermos flask.  On this occasion the thermos had been loaded in the back of the landie, along with the tea-crate.  Unfortunately, the ride along a bumpy track did not do the thermos a lot of good:

In his welcome to the session the site warden had said, “All we need today is tea, cake, and gloves.”  Thankfully, more water for tea could be obtained when the trailer was taken over to the Earth-Trust centre for unloading.  Gloves we had a bagful of.  And cake we had in abundance:

The warden was right about our not needing anything other than gloved hands and booted feet.  He was also right about some of the logs being heavy.  

The first job along any fresh row within the plantation was to clear a gangway of brash – not so much because the brash itself is a trip hazard, but because it can obscure other hazards such as tree stumps:

Logs could then be passed along a line of volunteers and stacked by the path.  As we worked on each stretch, this rapidly created the impression that we were blocking ourselves in:

Stacked logs could then be transferred to the trailer.  Once full, but not over-loaded, the trailer could be towed to the Centre, and unloaded.  And that’s where we encountered a bottleneck in the work-flow, for the journey from plantation to Centre and back – though short in distance – took getting on for half an hour.

Meantime, the chain-gang could continue creating more stacks.  Those can be loaded on to trailer by other hands on another day.  This was quite a dynamic process, with each volunteer carrying a log to the next person in the chain:

As logs were passed along, Green-Gymmers kept up an ever-changing pattern of comment on the size, weight, and balance of each log.  At one point:

"This one's just a baby."

"This one's a teenager."

"Here's the man of the house."

"And this is granny ..."

"Is this what they call a family tree?"

By the end of the session, it was thought we had moved c 2 tonnes of wood.  Some 26 tonnes are burned each year in the biomass boiler on site.  So only another 2 doz tonnes to go!