Big Kids at Work

By ‘C’:

Preparation for the session began with a cryptic message sent via a third party from deepest Wales, telling us that the warden would meet us

at the usual place at Mowbray Field, Didcot.  The plan is for coppicing and it will be wet underfoot so wellies will be a good shout … the same parking arrangement as last time applies – hopefully you’ll know what that means!

Fortunately for the person relaying the message, we did know what that last part meant:

Parking literally on site

She was not kidding about it being wet underfoot in places either:

Definitely not the circumstances for any kind of machinery powered by electricity, AC or DC.  But if any of us kept looking at the sky today, it was only to try to count the number of Red Kites above us.  I think the highest number at any one point was six, but the creatures would not keep still so as to line up in the same photograph!

“Coppicing” can encompass several different kinds of operations.  Today’s was to harvest – with hand tools – the willow which is cut on a rotational basis here, to provide materials for projects undertaken elsewhere to stabilise river banks.

At the start of the session, some volunteers got to work more or less in the open:

Note in the foreground, the first ‘crop’ of rubbish extracted.

Other volunteers plunged into gaps between dark thickets:

Willow rods – whether cut by bowsaw or heavy-duty loppers – were reeled in, one by one, and placed on rapidly growing piles of brash, to be processed further and taken away at a later date:

All that sawing made for hard work, especially (I found) trimming the stool to a good shape for future growth.  The sight of preparations for tea-break, glimpsed through the trees, was most welcome:

Among today’s ‘found objects’ was this:

Judging by the writing on the other side, we think it must be the handle of a toy tool, made by the German company, Corvus.  Their slogan is “mit Pfiff und Charme” (‘stylish and smart’).  I think it could easily be denied that Green Gym’s got style.  But we do get an awful lot done with our grown-up hand tools: