Load up and go!

By ‘C’ (with thanks to our two session-leaders today):

This was our warm-up this morning:

The first raking after a meadow-cut this season?  There’ll be plenty more to come! 

If this is livin’ on Tulsa time, people were taking it terribly seriously, and possibly more
at EC pace:

We may only have been joking when we maintained we would have that small patch of land cleared in ten minutes.   In fact it was precisely 10 mins after our (unusually precise) 10 o’clock start that the job was declared finished:

So then it was on past the pond we had helped develop, towards our main task.

Before we could get going, some discussion of which direction a diagonal was to be cleared.  It was thought best to check with the site warden before starting to cut!

Once we had the green light, Green-Gymmers were let loose, with a choice of blade:

Working with the short-handled slasher – a variation on the sickle

Using the dasselbasher.  In the background: the air station

Cutting was only one part of the job.  There was also the business of loading on to wheelbarrows, and transporting to compost-heap:

A treeful of discarded warm-tops bore witness that this was warm work on a warm day:

Meanwhile, above us, the RAF was practising its own loading and lifting:

Someone joked that this must mean it was tea-break at the air station: the first load looked like a shed; and the second, like a pair of tea-crates.

Curiosity about what our neighbours were up to, continued to our own tea-break:

I am not sure the volunteer concerned did manage to see any more from his higher vantage-point.

The usual early-autumn chat about where people had travelled to over the summer, prompted one member to recall a rhyme, which he maintains will not make any sense to a younger generation (and is considerably more polite than contemporary variations):

There was a young man from Pitlochry,
whose morals were simply a mockery.
He kept under his bed
a young lady, instead
of the usual item of crockery.

This in turn prompted an interesting literary-critical question:

Is it a poem?
– No, it’s a limerick.

Surely a limerick is a kind of rhyme.  And that kind of simple rhyme is a sub-set of the genre ‘poetry’?

What we do know for sure is that after our efforts this morning, that stretch of Chilterns chalk-stream is now running fast and free, as it should:

Scrubbing the ramparts

By ‘C’:

There was no doubting Green-Gymmers’ enthusiasm signing up for this session: “I like scrub clearing!” volunteered one.

The ramparts, from which scrub was to be removed, were the defensive earthworks of an Iron Age fort known locally as Sinodun Camp.  So there we were – a full round dozen of us – doing as probably our ancestors had been obliged to do at regular intervals when the base was operational: scrub-bashing all along the watchtower. 

Armoured gloves our forebears may have had, but they probably did not have Kevlar material.  – And neither did we until this morning and the chance to try out a batch of new, allegedly thorn-proof (“stab-proof”) gloves which had been bought by Earth Trust:

Gloved and tooled up, some volunteers went for the softer stuff in the ditch – nettles mostly – which could be slashed very satisfactorily with a good long swing of the arm:

Others headed straight up the slope – the hard way, cutting down all before them with shears and loppers:

A few made their way round, via a path, to begin the task from the top of the ramparts (“better views”).  Here, it seemed to not so much a question of which tool to use, but whether to use a tool at all:

The scrub was so varied that several volunteers reported that one moment they would be tackling nettles, which could be slashed.  The next they would be up against a mature thistle, which called for shears.  After that, they might be faced with an infant thorn-bush, which called for loppers or pruning saw.  Of whatever variety, there was an awful lot of it – scrub, that is – to be cleared.  Some workers almost disappeared from view:

The slope itself posed its own challenges.  It made for an interesting test of balance:

Soon the call could be heard, “You can see where we’ve been!”  Those who had chosen to proceed directly up the slope, were the ones best able to judge their own progress – watched over by a Red Kite:

Site warden, on quality control: “That is perfect!”

Even those three, however, travelling up the slope, seemed to find it hard to credit as they neared the top:

And having finally reached the upper rampart walkway, they proceeded back down via the path, and started all over again.

Tea-break was most welcome today!  Re-fortified by tea/coffee + cake (rather than hot pretzles), more volunteers began to tackle the task of collecting the cut vegetation for eventual disposal via a bonfire:

The volunteer in the background: not collapsed in a heap, nor even metaphorically lying down on the job – just crawling towards the target from the best angle.  As far as I know, no volunteer was to be seen upside down over the course of the morning, although I am told that one Green-Gymmer rolled gently down the slope at one point – no harm done.

We still believe that doing good things for our health should be fun.  Indeed you could say that Green Gym is the exact opposite of the medical model of approaching health (“Hey that's my aspirin!”).  So, as usual, there was some lively chatter as we worked.  Some revolved around the subject of the weekend’s Bunkfest, at which some members had been on stewarding or donation-collecting duty.  The headline act on Saturday evening was said to have been quite good – some Québécois outfit I had never heard of before.

Green-Gymmers being who we are, as we worked and chatted, we were also very solicitous  towards the non-plant species encountered:

Given our location, and mental images (probably entirely fanciful) of Iron-Age ancestors holding out against Roman legionaries, it was entirely understandable that there was also some joking about whether the Roman Army had come up with the idea of Kevlar.  After all, as is well known, the Romans did invent rather a lot of things. 

Meanwhile, care was also taken in regard to those plant species not condemned to be removed.  Early autumn it may have been, but some wildflowers are still going strong:

To complete the delight of the morning – for those who were not staying on – the weather was decidedly varied, but pleasant.  The wind was strong.  One wonders how creatures which look so frail, such as butterflies & moths, can fly perfectly well in such conditions.  Being a southwesterly, however, ie blowing towards, not from the north, the flow of air was mild in temperature.

At session end, we could look back and realise the scale of the task.  Ours was only the first of 8 (eight) work-parties scheduled to work on rampart-clearance this season.   

It was also time to review the performance of the gloves.  Many of us had been seriously impressed, but one Green-Gymmer was ruefully contemplating his sore hand, and reporting that one thorn had got through:

For those who were able to stay on a little bit longer, there was an extra treat: helping with the moving of a small flock of sheep.  They really aren’t the brightest of creatures: a few threads short of a sweater, as they say in America.  So, when sheep are being moved along the public road, even a short distance, it is good to close all gates which can be, and to post people along the route to block off obvious places where they could deviate from the straight & narrow.

Two of us extras were stationed, for instance, at a junction.  The positioning was finely judged, in relation to the war-memorial:

If we kept behind the line of that, then we were not so close as to deter the sheep from walking straight past (as they were meant to), but we were close enough to prevent them from wandering down towards the next village.  Oh and we were to stop any traffic. 

Not a lot of traffic-halting was required on this stretch of highway ...

and the sheep did indeed obediently trot straight past our location:

It may have been a different story further up the lane, but at the end of the operation we saw the last one safely in to their new pasture: