Fieldhouse site visit

A Thursday evening site visit to Fieldhouse, to meet up with Luke from Beneficial Tree Care. Beneficial have recently cut down a lot of the dead trees at the back of the site for us, part of the process of making the site safe for public access. There were a lot of dead trees, and so, as you can see, there is a lot of timber. We discussed Luke removing timber from the site, and the possible use of the site in the future for a community woodfuel project. Access to the site seemed to be the main sticking point. There is no access for any medium to large vehicle. A quad bike and trailer would perhaps be the answer. Funding for the project did include some money for improved access, but only enough to pay for a new gate and stile.

Nursery carnage

Got call from Dave about 4pm this afternoon. He had seen tree work being done at the nursery. So I whizzed down there and found Luke and his Beneficial crew razing the top half of the nursery to the ground. According to Luke the allotment grant money that Julian had said we would be getting, was got, and needed spending pronto. So the area designated for the storage containers had to be cleared. All the top area of the nursery has been deforested, including the copse by the entrance. The sheds are now somewhat exposed. The horse tail bed at the far end of the top has also been destroyed, along with the small trees that were planted there. I phoned Philip and he and Ali zoomed up to have a look, Luke and crew had gone by then though.

On the whole, though a bit of a shock, it looks like a positive development, as we should now get the secure storage and fencing that we asked for.

Tidying up the nursery

Neil, Justin, Tilly, and my Mum (looking like an old hillbilly)

This Saturday we spent the morning tidying up our nursery base. We are hoping to get some money from Kirklees allotment department for securing the boundary of the nursery and having some secure storage set up for the Society to work from. A recent inspection by Julian Faulkner from the Council found the place looking a bit sad and neglected. So we worked hard on it this morning. My mother came a long to lend her expertise with sorting out the Raspberry bushes. Philip, Geoff, Neil, myself, and Justin were also there. And later on Sarah and Tilly appeared. We cleared paths, trimmed hedges, weeded beds and generally did very well. What we didn't know was that a few days later....

There will be blood, Fitzcaraldo!

Duncan, covered in blood

A diverse morning. Philip, Geoff, Diane and I spent an hour tidying up at the Nursery, and then we went up off to Merrydale. We had some coffee and cake, and then made a feeble attempt at clearing some Japanese knotweed. Duncan, who had been up there already with some Scout friends, cut his hand rather badly on a bramble. So that is the first bit of today's blog title. The second part refers to Geoff then dragging us up to the furthest corner of Merrydale to do some more filming and interviewing for his documentary. And that furry thing on top of Geoff's camera is, apparently, called a "dead kitten".

Not much tree planting, but there is serious work going on behind the scenes, getting quotes for fencing and signage, filling out monitoring forms, and making grant applications for next season.