New Tricks for Old Tasks

By the Session Leader:

Natural England are never short of tasks for volunteers.  It was no surprise that there were three different tasks lined up for us. 

Some surprises on a Green-Gym morning there always are, but that was not on of them.  Having a range of tasks worked out well, as two of them were best done by teams of three.  Any more and we would have been getting in each other’s way.

What really did startle today were fresh twists to two of the tasks. 

The destructive task – to remove a rotten gate post – started easily enough.

It looked massive, but was so rotten it lifted out easily.

Not so easy was unbolting the gate from the rotten post:

The real stumbling block, however, was removing the rest of the post from the ground.  Not only was the base still sound, but gradually we realised that our initial suspicions were correct: the old post really had been concreted in place – not recommended practice.  [Not something we, WGG, have ever done, with either gate- or fence-posts. – Ed.]  After much strenuous work by at least three people in turn, we had barely made an impression.

Hats off to newcomer Joe, who worked at it hard as a badger – and still we’ve left some concrete to be removed, for Sonning Common GG to do on Thursday.  So the gate was temporarily put back in place:

Meanwhile new fencing posts were to be thumped into the ground, 4.5 metres apart, ready for stock netting.  This – the constructive task – was along the stretch where we had cleared vegetation in a previous session.  Fence-posts we have often put in, at many different sites.  The difference here was that these sparkly new steel posts. 

First time we had seen these clever posts, which were quite a lot easier to erect than wooden ones: no need to dig deep holes!  The technique was to make a small starter hole, insert the post, and drive it in with the two-person post thumper. 

The lowest strand of wire was already in place to align the posts.

The trickiest part was keeping the posts vertical as they were driven in.  Anyone peaking through the bushes [eg volunteers taking a spell from gatepost-stump bashing – Ed.] would have spotted three Green-Gymmers repeatedly checking their work against a spirit level:

This took time.  Nevertheless, just at the end of the session, all the posts were in.

The third team disappeared to cut back overhanging scrub in a nearby field,

where there were several remarkable things to be seen, including the remains of Giant Puffballs (Calvatia gigantea) …

and, well would you like to guess?

(Answer: the remains of a screen used to hide portaloos when public events were held there.)

Judging by the amount of brash they were dragging away, that team got through a lot:

They stopped when one of them got as far as a badger sett, apparently freshly occupied, though possibly only temporarily by a passing lone male:

At tea break the array of treats prompted some discussion of the symbolism of the display:

Some of it is very traditional for the day – it being the Principal Feast of Our Lady (yes, even in the Church of England calendar), which falls around the time of year when in the past many rural communities would be celebrating with great joy (possibly also relief) the first-fruits of harvest.  Mind you, the items had also selected themselves because they were among lines on offer or reduced for quick sale at the local supermarket the evening before!  It is authentic folk-culture to mark the day with fruit (oranges, layer of raspberry in the cake), flowers (daisies on top of the cake, lavender in the biscuits), the trad Marian colour blue (the icing really is sky-blue, it’s not a trick of the camera), and heart shapes (Mary’s love for her son).  The bee – well you can attribute your own symbolism to that: it stings, as well as bringing sweet things.