Styal, in the orchard, on Sunday 9th June 2019

Eight of us, including Georgi who joined us for the first time, met with Craig and Dani, two of the Styal Rangers, in the main car park at 9.30am.
From there, Dani and Craig took their vehicles to the orchard to where we would be working, while the rest of us opted to walk there to take in the lovely sunny morning and have a chat.
After arriving at the orchard, Craig explained that we'd be doing a variety of tasks today: the grass in the orchard needed strimming, a new tree guard needed erecting and some of the existing tree guards needed re-positioning so they sat parallel to the road along with the rest of the tree guards, and a number of willow trees that were in the garden of one of the newly tenanted properties needed removing so the oak trees had more space and let more light in.
In true MNTV style, after a safety and tools talk, we got to work on the various tasks with enthusiasm to take advantage of the weather while it was being kind to us.

Girl Power! - although it was Tim and Dani who actually put up the tree guard:-)

We had a quick morning break around 11.15am, then were back to it.

Andy strimming the grass

Sadly the rain fell as predicted around lunchtime, so we had a wet lunchtime, but it dried up as we continued afterwards.

Georgi taking the strain while the willow was being felled

However that wasn't the last of the rain and it came down again during the afternoon!
There were more willow than we realised and, once felled, the trees took up more space on the ground than we expected so Craig and Dani left to collect the chipper and,

The chipper being loaded

as an additional task, we 'fed' the chipper and got rid of the majority of the felled willow trees.
A good day's work for us all, and very satisfying, particularly for those learning or trying new tasks for the first time:-)

Group photo

Photo's from Adrian and Sue