Tree planting, Onion Farm, Burley

Yesterday we helped Forest of Bradford plant a hedgerow at Onion Farm in Burley. Trees included hawthorn, blackthorn, hazel and Viburnum opulus (guelder rose). We notch planted, staked and guarded 100's of trees for what will be a stockproof hedge in a few years. The weather was drizzly but it wouldn't have felt like the Christmas task without it! Our own Nik "Mears" fetched the brew kit and got the Kelly Kettle fire going despite the rain. The brews were much appreciated all round. And then it was off to the pub with the first round kindly financed by the farm owner. A few more drinks in Bradford rounded off a fine day's work.

Guardhouse Primary School wildflower meadow

We scythed and raked and raked and scythed until the wildflower meadow was levelled ready to let it regenerate next year. Plantain was removed in a full scale attack to prevent it from dominating the wildflowers. Reports from the teachers indicate that the wildflowers came up in abundance in the Summer which is good news. We are also told the pupils of the school have been busy using the planted beds which are well taken care of by "The Environment Club". We helped them by doing a bit of weeding.

Apple Day

The weather was fine and the community orchard was buzzing for the annual apple day today.

It was a vey enjoyable day! My apple was identified (I say mine, my neighbour actually donated it, good of them). It was a massive Howgate Wonder. The book, that the very knowledgable lady had, said it was only of fair quality but the ones on sale there were described as sweet and pleasant which I prefer. I ate apple quish. It was so good I nearly had another helping but then I saw the puddings and chose two of them which were both outstanding. I also sampled some gorgeous, sweet apples.

Boar's Well UNR last week

Ok, so this is a little late (a week!), and I didn't actually arrive until 30 mins before we packed up, but there are still a few things to report.

One of the big tasks was to clear the pond/spring area from reeds that have grown up and nearly filled the space. It was wet, mucky work! (of course only for 20 mins for me, but a long day for others) There was a huge pile of reeds left by the end, that would have had to be cleared away the next day. They have to stay near the water for a while so that any creatures that get pulled out with them can crawl back into the water.

Other volunteers tackled overgrown paths; some even had the scythes out. There was also the remains of a pretty large looking tree that had to be sawn into smaller pieces - someone had been busy.(as usual not me!)

UNR - Urban Nature Reserve!

feedback re schools work

It would be really useful to have some general feedback about volunteers' experiences and thoughts about project work in schools - the Eschools project, other voluntary work you have done and future opportunities you would like us to create.
We are in the process of putting together a funding bid and your feedback, as potential users of the service we will create will help with the funding application.
The project we hope to deliver will build on our experiences of eschools.
Did you enjoy working in schools? with the children or because it offers chance for habitat creation? Is there any specific training that you think would be good to support volunteers in this sort of work? any other comments

Blog any thoughts, or contact the office.
Thanks
julia

BEES Nature Reserve

BEES Conservation Volunteers
BEES Urban Nature Reserve - the good and the bad.

The nature reserve is full of life, though it looks a bit unloved at the moment. I think the increase of bindwind might be due to lack of management around the pond edges, and it would be nice not to be tickled by nettles when sitting on the bench. The bog bean in the top pond seems to have increased massively, and we will probably need to remove some this autumn before the pond becomes a marsh. The marsh cinque foil from Howard's garden is in flower and looks lovely - as do the lilies. We saw a brown hawker dragonfly in flight and one on a leaf over the pond. Although we could not see the larval case we think this had just emerged as it was in the same position for a couple of hours. Brown Hawkers should be emerging for the next coupl eof weeks. Loads of damselflies and birds drinking from the ponds.
However not all is rosy. As some people will know the university has been trying to sell the land adjacent and including some of the reserve. The offer they are accepting will not tolerate a sitting tenant so our boundaries are threatened. The plan is to withdraw the reserve back to the old medlar tree, with the potential of officially including the area where we are struggling to control the giant hogweed. The university were not willing to preserve the reserve in it's current shape as the sale of the land is earmarked to fund specific projects (not sure what but a bit ironic if it's anything to do with their eco- versity status)so wanted to maximise their income. Apart from losing the ares of wild flowers we will also lose the only significant bit of land, however small, away from the pond which will affect our educational work with groups. The area over the fence has been fairly secluded over recent years which has created good nesting zone. A new management plan will have to be devised and funding sought to enable us to deliver the changes. sorry i wasn't able to excert more influnce on the university. They have said they will send be plans with the new boundary, and give bees number to the developers. Then we need to keep our eyes open for the planning application.

Charcoal Update

BEES Conservation Volunteers
charcoal update
Keen to try and manufacture more drawing charcoal we finished loading the kilns on friday evening, and in an attempt to introduce some time efficiencies into thhis labour intensive process, we thought it would be good to light the kilns then, and close down in the morning. Maybe it was the wind - or lack of it - or a difference in the way the air sinks in the evening (well about 10pm once we had prepared our willow sticks in their bake bean cans) but the valley seemed to be filled with smoke within minutes. Hope we didn't spoli anyone's evening! Jack and Annie helped out again - initally thinking it would be a good opportunity to spot wildlife but probably more motivated by the excuse for a late night.
The kilns still need unloading - jonathan did a bit on sunday morning but i opted out. We have enough timber left for one more burn at most. I have sold some of the charcoal - £5 a bag of more or less 5Kg.

Barbecue 9th July!

Another batch of charcoal turned out well today. The artist's charcoal experiment was a success and plans are afoot to produce on a larger scale.

And to celebrate this wonder of traditonal industry a barbecue is planned for the 9th July, 3.30pm. This will be at the Community Orchard in West Bowling http://www.civictrust.org.uk/regeneration/includes/Orchard.pdf The World Cup Final is at 7pm that day so it may be off to the pub around this time for those who are interested. Come on England! Everyone connected to BEEs (and friends) are welcome. BYO drink and food for the barbie. A few things may be provided. Please let me know if you want to make something to share around, that would be great! Cover will be available for any light rain showers. Downpours will be good for the orchard and we can all marvel at nature and stuff! Or go to the pub or someone's place. Anyone volunteer their place as a backup?

Come along for a taste of our hard work!

Thanks to Annie and Jack, the masked charcoal makers from the West, who helped out today.

Black Gold!

The 2nd burn completed, the kilns were opened on Friday and inside.... black gold! Bags and bags of it.

Everyone seemed to have a good time. Treats this time were provided by Chris. His fresh pineapple chunks went down well. Paul (the Russian-German) chopped wood tirelessly but for the second time the axe he used couldn't match his incredible strength. Paul 2, axe handles nil.

After emptying the charcoal into bags we could have been mistaken for a group of miners fresh from the pits. Either that or we could have been a hippy commune in the woods as the men from the golf club commented. They kindly used their pick-up to take our black gold down the hill to our minibus so we'll let them off.

We restacked the kilns ready for another burn this Sunday and it looks like the production line has begun. I made some artists' charcoal makers fashioned from beer cans slotted inside cat food tins (patent pending) stuffed full of bark-stripped twigs. This experiment was placed amongst the wood in the kilns and I'm excited to see if it will work when they are next emptied.

Why we couldn't turn wood to charcoal

Sorry about the failure last week - yes i don't think we let enough oxygen into the kilns so the fires went out...the theory is that the oxygen is limited so that not all the carbon turns to carbon dioxide...but there's no smouldering without oxygen (as the saying goes). anyway i've checked it out and fingers crossed we should do better tomorrow...if not i will abandon my plans to live in the woods. Will try and post some more techical info, or links to other website once i've found some.

Emptying the Kilns

So we went to see our lovely new charcoal on Friday, the kilns were opened and inside.... some slightly charred wood. Well, one more step on the road to success! We discovered the problem: some blocked flumes and perhaphs the wrong configuration for keeping the air flowing through it.

Stickie buns at Lunchtime! Provided by Alyson, these were warmly received then duly scoffed.

Tomorrow we will start the burn and we are confident of turning the wood into pure eco friendly charcoal by the end of the day!

wildflower seeds

We still have 100's if not thousands of packets of mixed wildflower seeds that the bbc commissioned for the Springwatch event. Do you want some or no someone, or a community group that does? They should be used in gardens etc. not scattered randomly in the countryside so we don't affect what's going on out there unnecessarily.
Contact the office for more info.

BEES Conservation Volunteers

BEES Conservation Volunteers
Last Friday we cleared vegetation from the historic hill tramway at Shipley Glen with help for the first time from some volunteers taking a break from their desk jobs at Bradford & Bingley Building Society. Set in historic woodland the tram has run for 111 years ( http://www.glentramway.co.uk/). Under the drizzle we attacked the weeds with strimmers, sickles, spades and trowels. By the end of the day we had cleared the whole line (about 400m) ready for the invasion of families this Bank Holiday Weekend.

At the end of the day an impromptu fashion show along the station-platform/catwalk treated us to Pavell's Spring foliage garland design modelled by the lovely Agnes.

Knotweed

Last Friday we had a volunteer meeting. A chap from the council came to talk about Japanese Knotweed, which was really useful because we come across it all the time.

We also ate a lot of biscuits.

Since the last blog volunteers have made baby herons at the Yorkshire Sculpture park (don't ask), had a long day at the orchard that ended with a barbeque, and spent last Friday on the nature reserve.

Up on the roof

..well not really 'cos that wouldn't be safe, but the roof went up on the shelter at the orchard today - with the help of the step ladders. It was a bit of a job trying to get it right first time, but eventually it went up just in time.

In other news, the first of blossom was showing, the garlic was coming up. Other people worked on small vegetable plots within the orchard.

There was also some bizarre work, drilling holes in plastic cups. Not for use on the orchard - you'll have to wait and see what use they'll be put to.

Lots of people out today, well there were lots of teas and coffees to make at lunch anyway and not much room in the minibus - 14 at least.

Next task is on Sunday 2nd May - find out what the cups will be used for then!

Lakeside Residential

We spent two days at the beginning of the month at Lakeside Ymca on the shores of windermere. Lakside provided accommodation and food in exchange for our efforts at deer fencing an area of woodland (to enable regeneration of the trees). There were 18 of us and we completed about 100m of fence, including some awkward spots...in fact we were retrofitting an exisiting fence which had its pros and cons. Although the sun shone on saturday we all got a bit soggy on sunday...

Boars Well Urban Nature Reserve

Planted trees to cover up the holes left by the utility company!

Sifted through Bradford's 1920's rubbish (or treasure depending on your point of view) - the nature reserve was once a great big rubbish tip.

Cut back the dogwoods so they'll look really good this time next year and stay off the path in the summer.

Planted some more trees in the Japanese Knotweed colonies as part of our attempt to kill off the invader.

Ate cake because it was nearly everyone's birthday (4 this week, 6 in Feb) - although we nearly always eat cake.

12 people out today, cold but sunny.

West Bowling Community Orchard

One of the jobs today was to take away a pice of wood from the shed to stop people tripping over. It was hard work but we did it. Good teamwork.

Hana said it was "nice and funny"

We got the doogwoods in. Our plan is to defeat the couch grass with Formisol and bark mulch.



We've also put in some hops. They can be used for crafts as well as brewing beer!

Dogrose and Sweet Briar went in to encourage bumble bees. They in turn will help pollinate the fruit trees.

9 people out on a cloudy wintery day, but the orchard is looking good.

Preparing for Sunday

No task today.

Once a month the weekly task takes place on the weekend, so that people that can't come on a Friday get a chance to have a go. BUT there's still some preparation to be done, so went to Beardsworths (in Cleckheaton) to pick up tree stakes, more dogwoods, a range of other shrubs, some climbers and tree ties.

All set for Sunday!

Down at the Orchard

Last Friday we were all out (about 12 of us) at the West Bowling Community Orchard.

New benches went in, lots of couch grass came out, and a few repairs that needed doing got done.

We got some new trees and some shrubs in, including three multicoloured dog woods - a red, a yellow and a black/purple.

Next trip to the Orchard is Sunday 5th Feb. More planting hopefully, but probably still some weeding as well!