Tuesday 31 January 2017

Replacement Trees for the Villagers' Orchard: An Orchard Update.

Back in May 2014, Year 6 from Henllys Church in Wales Primary School helped to plant our Tidy Towns' funded Villagers' Orchard. Those poor trees have had a terribly difficult life, but planted and cared for with such love. Before we started and to make things easier for us, holes were dug for our little trees with the bucket from a mini-digger more than a week beforehand by the contractors who were working on the paths. On the day of the tree planting, we saw this:
Mar 25th 2014
The kids did have a great time and were completely covered in mud, but fair play an Orchard was created:
Mar 25th 2014
We realised that not only were the holes too large, but they ended up being clay-lined ponds. As a result and even after clearing out the water, the trees were often waterlogged:

4th April 2014
 We returned a little later to properly mark the trees with the children using a pyrograph machine:


April 8th 2014
The very wet spells were mixed up with very dry spells and increased competition from adjacent grasses. we then put down extra mulch mats:

June 2014
The wet spells, were more frequent than the dry spells, so the next year, in Feb 2015, we went down as a group and tried to create barriers and dug drainage ditches to try and stop the worst of them from getting waterlogged:
Feb 2nd 2015
Feb 2nd 2015

These measures seemed to help and the most badly affected had much better drainage. Sadly, the stress of the hardships led to a few of them not being able to survive and we had a few losses:
Feb 20th 2015
We started to think that we needed to give the trees a little more help with nutrients, so paid for a delivery of well rotted manure from Greenmeadow Community Farm and chucked loads of it around all our fruit trees. The manure was great and packed full of great big tiger worms:
Feb 26th 2016
We wanted to replace the dead trees so made a purchase from Ian Sturrock's Welsh Heritage trees, picking varieties which originated as close as possible to Henllys. This time, we learned from the planting mistake made by the contractors, and made the hole for the trees the right size and dug drainage ditches to protect them from flooding:
 



Mar 12th 2016
We also kept a couple extra which were planted in good compost in the back garden to replace any more which wouldn't make it through 2016. The manure was great and the surrounding vegetation loved it, so we had to do a bit of vegetation treatment in late autumn, as well as try out a few of the early varieties.

Aug 28th 2016
We then made our first produce to sell from the orchard which was a great activity involving us meeting up in our normal clothes and having a chat not being covered in mud. We were all under the strict control of Chef Tricia Davies who had previously gone on a food hygiene certificate course: 
Sep 14th 2016
In January 2017, the weather conditions were mild enough, as well as the trees starting to develop larger buds, so we planted out 2 replacement trees* in the orchard (Monmouth Beauty [Monmouthshire] and Brith Mawr [Newport]) which were being looked after for the previous year:
Jan 27th 2017
*We also planted a Machen [Caerphilly] apple tree in the Natural Buzz area by the car park

As the orchard grows we will make more produce, but there is a lot more work which needs to be done to continue caring for and looking after our orchard.

We did find out that a few teenagers who camped on the meadow over the summer, were some of the class who originally planted the orchard and had already been over to look at their trees. These youths didn't leave any litter, just flattened grass and this is exactly the way we would want it to be. Moreover, when we went to replace two dead trees in January 2017, some of these children must have been back over and had carved their names into the faint remaining marks where there names once were. Investment in primary aged school children is the best possible intervention you can do. It has seen a miraculous change to how people view and treat Henllys Local Nature Reserve. They love doing the work, they love seeing the results of their work and they tell their parents, grandparents and others about what they have done with us. It is so important to do this work and so rewarding as a group to be able to play a role in this. 

Saturday 21 January 2017

Gabions finished, Bags of Help Bags of aches

While we still had the rubble chutes on hire, we were joined again by Brian and Phil, with Richard and Stella. The pile had hugely decreased from before the Tuesday, but there was an awful lot of loose material. One of us broke up the pile to get at the stone, while two filled the barrows.
The above pictures show us some of the process involved; filling up the barrow from the pile, unloading them at the top of the chute and waiting for the order to throw the stones down the chute before they are unloaded.
Here is the pile of stones before the WG event (left), before the Group's follow up event (middle) and after the event (right). Most of what remains is small stones to dust.
This is the view of the gabions from the path. We have left the stones up the bank to try and stabilise any further erosion and it makes the footpath feel much safer. We think probably 26 tonnes of limestone have been moved during this project and all of it by hand and by volunteers. It feels and looks an amazing achievement. We know loads of little critters use the gaps in between the stones for shelter, so it'll be great to see if we get any crayfish along this stretch.
As we know, this massive erosion all started with a little trickle, which widened and widened after the massive rainfalls we'd had over previous years. Our attempts to limit this with willow bundles was only ever a temporary measure and with Bags of Help funding through Tesco and help from Keep Wales Tidy with Business volunteers has allowed this fantastic transformation. It is fair to say, that it would have been easier and quicker to have done this with heavy machinery, but what new erosion damage could have been caused by these vehicles and what damage have we prevented by doing it carefully by hand. Time to relax, but we have bird boxes to put up before nesting and a few apple trees in the orchard to replace. One victory at a time.



Gabions, erode is long

Eight volunteers from Welsh Government with support from two of our volunteers and a member of staff from Keep Wales Tidy worked all day moving some of our second 16 tonnes of limestone to further shore up our eroded bank.

Last May, we had a group from Barclays and one from Welsh Government come down, with a noble effort afterwards by ourselves and moved 16 tonnes to this site. You can refresh yourselves here and here.

When we did this last year it was really hot and really hard work because of this. However, doing the same thing in January provides extra challenges. Most likely these would be, frozen ground or muddy ground with air conditions of cold or cold and wet. When the day came around it was cold, drizzly and very muddy.

A few days earlier Brian and I set up the rubble chutes which was the easy part.

The hard part is the stone moving as can be seen from the assault course map below.

After loading up the barrow, the stone is pushed 40 metres down along a very muddy path churned by feet and barrow until the hard path which feels like bliss. There is then a short steep hill to navigate down followed by a short flat push to the top of the chutes. The stones are then unloaded, and after the go ahead is given by the team at the bottom the stones are thrown down the chute. These are collected in a tonne bag filled with old torn tonne bags to absorb the stone's impact. These are emptied into a barrow and taken down the short push to where the gabions are waiting.

The position we were at is shown below with the bottom row fully back filled behind and a top row of 3 gabions partially filled.
The enthusiastic team from Welsh Government were given a briefing of the work and with a volunteer from the Friends at the top and bottom of the chute set to work. This started with a tongue in cheek ceremonial cutting of the ribbon/ safety tape.
Very quickly it was clear that they were great problem solvers and rearranged their plans with 3 barrows at the top, 3 at the bottom with an extra person wiring up the final gabion. Although the path was much muddier than last May, the cooler temperature made the work a little easier.
 
It was decided after last May that the height of the top row would be shortened by 2 x rows to preserve some of the views of the stream. While the stones were being barrowed down the hill to the gabions, these top two rows were cut off with wire cutters after removing the clips of the lid.
The group worked really hard after lunch and finished with everyone having a look at the results of their hard work.

What a great effort in difficult conditions. They all had a great day giving up a day to help out with our community work. There were two fitness monitors at work during the day, one saying 1,800 and the other saying 2,200 calories were burned.

The whole project was funded through our Bags of Help Application which was from Tesco single use carrier bag charges (those 5ps add up) and managed by Groundwork.

 


Wednesday 11 January 2017

Gabions Day Revisited - Event Jan 17th 2017 at 9.45 am.

Happy New Year!

We're hosting our first practical event of 2017 with Keep Wales Tidy on Tue 17th Jan at 9.45 am. On the day, we will be finishing off the gabions work started last May and we'll have a small team from Welsh Government helping us out. However, we know it is really hard work and would really love to have any extra help we can get as we have a lot of stone to move with our trusty wheelbarrows.


As a reminder, you can read about the work on that erosion point here and here.

It may be cold and a little wet so best to bring wellies or walking/work boots and gloves if you have them. The main event will be running all day and you can view the map below. Google Maps have updated their imagery (late Aug/Early Sept 2016 we think) and you can see the memorial tree and the orchard now. You will find us in the car park at 9.45 am or if you want to come later, meet us at the work site off Henllys Way (pink marker on map below).
 
 
You can get in touch via Twitter (@HenllysLNR) Facebook (Friends of Henllys LNR) or add a comment below.