A thorny time

We can be real spoilsports at Green Gym.

Remember last week, when one of our jobs was to fix a gate?  There was good reason for it: to prevent cattle leaving their assigned pasture for another, greener field.  But they had been having such fun, playing with the loose mechanism of the gate-handle!

Since then?  A pattern of fresh cowpats leading up to one side of the gate, but not the other promised well.  The Green-Gym photographer got some ‘direct looks’ when next exercising human privilege of walking freely across the site:

We hope the gate now ‘foxes’ the steers sufficiently that they will stay put until the hay cut in the other meadow is done.  Pin and latch on the gate certainly now engage properly.  (Open doors soon shut!)

 

Meantime there are other objects in the field to explore.  This, you might think, is an information board.  But that is only from the human PoV.  Actually, it is a scratching post.  How well it will stand up to being used like that is another matter.  Maybe our next repair job at WCM will be to fix the visitor-information display?

And if, gate having been neatly fixed, other less careful human visitors leave it open anyway? – Overnight, it appeared, on one occasion.  This was the scene played out early next morning:

“Bother!  There’s no way I am going to get to the gate before them”

“Have we met before?”

“I’m sure I recognize you two …”

“I can at least shut the gate behind you before the others cotton on”

“You’re doing a great job on those thistles, but could I persuade you to go back where you belong?”

  

Answer to that last was: “NO!  Not on my own.  Not even with help from a couple of very willing passing members of the public.  I/we could not steer steers back through a gate they did not want to go through – had to leave it to the professional(s).”

At least the rest of the herd had been obliged to stay put.  So it had been worthwhile, Green Gym fixing that gate:

So much for last week’s efforts then!  Today’s session was also with Earth Trust, but at one of their own sites, near their HQ at Wittenham: North Farm, River of Life project, around one of the backwaters which had been re-created.  Task: “keeping on top of the thistle burden which comes with any excavation work.”  

Volunteers were assured beforehand that “It’s a lovely time to be there as it’s buzzing with dragon and damsel flies.”  So it probably is, on a sunny day.  As on our previous visits, in 2018, when it was lovely blue sky, warm/hot, and very hard ground from which to pull thistles.

Today was not a sunny day.  Grey sky, cold wind, damp with added drizzle at coffee time, and long wet grass.  But the task was the same: to pull up the ‘naughty’ thistles and leave the ‘good ones’ behind!  [Is there such a thing as a ‘good thistle’? – Ed.]

 

Tim briefs the team

We were a small group today: just ten of us.  Unlike previous weeks, when we were spread out over large sites, this week we seemed to be huddled together quite a bit of the time – perhaps in the hope of keeping warm!

The good thing about the recent rain was that the ground was much easier to work with, and we were able to pull many of the thistles up by hand.  Some Gymmers still like to use Lazy Dogs, either to loosen the roots of the thistles or simply to lean on.

The offending thistles were chucked into large buckets and then unceremoniously dumped over the fence at the edge of the field.

Thistle stew anyone?