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Annual Report

 

Last week we held our AGM at the meadow. The Annual Report was presented and financial report given. You can find the report by clicking on the link below:

Annual Report 2018

After the meeting we enjoyed a chicken curry, vegetable tagine, flatbreads and naan breads, all cooked at home by volunteers and then reheated on our oil drum fire.

This week we’ll be getting hot and bothered again, delivering wood, burning charcoal, checking the health of our trees and preparing to site our new wooden bench. The bees are doing really well and another hive has been started with two new queens looking ready to hatch.

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mid-July

It’s been really hot lately – especially when we’ve been burning charcoal and working hard in the meadow. Eric and his band of willing helpers have made great progress on the wooden shelter they’re building.  The damaged ash tree has been safely removed and the jetty has been repaired. We’ve also had a stab at removing the bracken from the hillside which was pretty difficult.

 

ENVIRONMENTAL NOTES

There was great excitement last week when we surprised a grass-snake which wa probably about two and a half to three feet long. It promptly slithered into the canal and swam to the other side. Bob found the home of a Leaf Cutter Bee and we also saw a Green Orb-Weaver spider with her egg-sac on the leaves of one of our trees. This has been a great summer for butterflies, moths and other insects, such as the Common Red Soldier beetles on the hogweed in the meadow – they are also apparently called the Hogweed Bonking Beetle…

 

 This week’s work plan:                                        
1. Continue working on roof of the shelter which is now in place
2. Prepare hedgehog huts and templates for other wildlife boxes
3. Charcoal burn & sift – Lots of customers waiting for charcoal
4. Get shave horses out and re-stock labels etc.
5. Check the pod roofs

At 1.00 we’ll break for lunch, which this week will be a curry and a vegetable tagine.

This will be followed by our AGM 

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1st July

We seem to be in the middle of a minor heatwave. Whilst the weather is like this we’ve decide to start our Tuesday sessions an hour earlier than usual so that we can get a lot done before the temperature and humidity rise too much.
Last week Bob and Jackie spent some time checking the bees, we continued to burn charcoal and we gave our newly planted apple trees a good soaking of water from the stream. It looks as though two of the eighteen that were planted may be dead so we’ll have to make a decision about them. There was some excitement, however, when we realised that one of the trees was already sporting an apple!
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This week we are planning to get some wood delivered so Rob and helper will be getting the best use of our great new trailer and hoping to make three deliveries.  The proceeds from sales go in to our annual income account and helps to keep the organisation financially viable without having to apply for lots of grants.  It’s also a clean fuel (although recent publicity might have you thinking otherwise) and is sustainable because we plant as many trees (almost) as we cut down.  
 
There’s lots of other work to do this week too.  We need to get some hedgehog huts, bird boxes and bat boxes built to sell, and possibly owl boxes. 
 
There’s a damaged ash tree hanging over our new shelter, which is causing a few problems. Canal & River Trust are looking into getting a contractor in to help us with this.  Once we get that tree down we can put the roof on the shelter. 
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