Much grass!

By one of the session volunteers:

Mowbray Fields is a favourite site for some of the tasks there, but not necessarily for today’s job.  We had wondered how many of us there would be today. 

Raking cut grass is not the most popular task.  [Especially not at that particular site – Ed.]  In the event, however, it was a good turnout, and a session which many of us enjoyed much more than we expected. 

To keep the neighbours happy, we were able to park our cars on the site rather than by the side of the congested approach-road.

There was a lot of meadow-cut to be gathered, as the grass on the wild flower meadow had grown prolifically this year. 

Yesterday, the site warden had managed to cut about 80% of the area, before the machine broke down!  Today, site warden was at the wheel of the ever-dependable landie – at the start of the session, manoeuvring the trailer to alongside where the workers would be, for ease of loading:

The Green-Gymmers were, of course, equipped with the traditional tools for this purpose:

 

The task didn’t seem so great at first.

As the raking got under way, however, the rolls of grass got bigger and heavier.  Not that this seemed to dampen Green-Gymmers’ spirits:

Some volunteers developed a positively balletic technique:

As the rakers rolled it up, the pitchforkers took each consignment, and loaded it on to the trailer:

From time to time, the trailer was driven down to the bottom of the site to be offloaded beside the compost heap, then stacked on to the heap – more manual labour required.

As the session progressed, there was discussion about using sheep to keep the grass under control as the royal parks are doing. 

Some of the local wildlife was not pleased at our disrupting their territory, and escaped as soon as possible.

Our agile warden rescued another, and – pausing only for a quick photoshoot - took it to a place of safety.

By the end of the session three trailer-loads had been gathered, transported, offloaded, and stacked.  That amounted to about two-thirds of what had been cut,
so most of the meadow had been cleared:

It had been good and satisfying exercise for us, and the weather warm, but not sunny – just right.  For that we were very thankful.  Unfortunately we didn’t manage to find the lost bolt from the machine.