Stone picking at Erddig on 19th May 2019

Eight of us turned out for a day of stone picking at Erddig... you may wonder what stone picking is... it is exactly that, picking stones out of the soil!!  not very exciting but our team rallied throughout the day and we enjoyed our breaks and a visit to see some donkeys.... read on...

Following on from the expansion of many NT houses parking facilities Erddig have created extra gravel parking spaces in what was an old grassy orchard area.

We were tasked to work in two areas; a larger space beneath some apple trees and an area of the car park that was between parking spaces.  The area beneath the apple trees will be overseeded with a wild flower mix (see below).

The area under the apple trees was raked over and stones were removed, it was back breaking work with very little improvement to show for our efforts apart from the ever increasing pile of stones in the back of the truck!

Team working at its best!













The second work area was digging over some triangle shaped borders between car parking areas... easy you might think... but not when the car park starts to fill up and cars decide to park either side of the triangle whilst you are working!

Let the digging commence ...

Making it all look easy!

After finishing a few triangles we decided to break for tea and cakes, but how do we stop cars from parking here? ....

Keep off, we are on a tea break!

Unfortunately when we got back from break the inevitable had happened and we were faced with trying to continue between parked cars, I wouldn't park my car there!!

Mind the Gap!!

All top soiled and ready for seeding.

It soon got to lunchtime and we were informed that there was a donkey parade taking part in the grounds so we ventured down to the house to take a look...

The donkeys were a welcome distraction from stone picking, and we learned a two things 1) the donkeys are cared for on the estate and 2) there are over 180 varieties of apples grown at Erddig.  I wonder if donkeys like apples...

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It was all worth it at the end of the day...

Team MNTV (Neil was taking the photo)