Twelve of us met up in the car park at Styal on a bright chilly autumn morning this Sunday to carry on a project started by the group a few weeks ago. The task consisted of the removal of holly from the steep banking bordering the mown field at the back of the mill. The bank is an established beech woodland but the holly has grown between the beech trees shading out the earth beneath preventing the establishment of a more diverse understory. The understory should regenerate naturally due to the seed bank being a natural store of native plant seeds that has lain dormant in the earth since the holly took over. Once the understory has reestablished it will attract a far greater variety of wildlife.
Scrambling about cutting and dragging the holly trees down the steep soft bank was a particularly strenuous job and I expect there were a few sore muscles the following day. After being dragged down the slope the holly was humped over the fence and taken to the chipper where the big orange machine munched the trees up into sawdust and spat it back over the fence. Unfortunately John the ranger's knob came off in his hand and the machine stalled so we had to stop a bit early, but we got plenty done and had a lot of fun.
The cake provided this week was an Irish Whiskey cream sponge made with instant Horlicks because Tim had no cocoa powder - but it tasted okay anyway! Tim
No comments:
Post a Comment