Voluntary bangs and bruises

In the first few weeks of my voluntary work for the Countryside Service, I received many instructions about health and safety matters. I began work in the Autumn, when the programme of tree felling and thinning out was in progress. Naturally enough, when there is chainsaw work going on, it is necessary to know the basic rules about working safely, such as wearing protective headgear, standing a good distance away from the tree being felled and so on. But I have noticed that these reminders have become less as time has gone on and we are engaged in different tasks. 

Now I don't mind at all being reminded of safety matters, since I am the kind of person who tends to get stuck into a task with enthusiasm, to the extent that I overlook, or am forgetful of the need to be careful.  But today was a day when two of us (The Birdman, and I) sustained some kind of small injury. 

We were doing more fencing work. There are many miles of footpaths in the County, which means many miles of fencing, wicket gates and stiles which need maintenance or repair.  Armed with a map and what The Birdman called "intelligence", we drove down some out-of-the-way country lanes to find our way to some rolling farmland, set among the disused quarries and mines of this limestone area.  I have described in previous  blog posts the process of clearing away any damaged or rotting fencing, digging post holes, installing the fence posts and then attaching any rails that are needed to complete the structure. 

There were several tasks on the list, the first of which was to replace a waymarking post. The old one was suffering from rot, so it was necessary to remove it, as we try to put the replacement as near as possible to the  old, if possible using the same hole.  Removing an old post might seem an easy job. This one gave us a few difficulties. We dug down and discovered that the bottom of the post, a good way underground, had a metal cross through it, thereby anchoring it securely. In the course of unearthing it, I was rocking the post back and forth in order to loosen the soil around it. During one of these wiggles, I managed to get my head in line with the post as I rocked it towards me, and gave myself quite a bump. After seeing that I was OK, my co workers fell about with hilarity, saying they had never seen anyone head-butt a post before. Very funny, I am sure!  The post finally came out and we were able to put in the new one.

I have been a bit concerned about the distribution of work when there are three of us. It is perfectly possible to stand aside and let the lads do it all, especially as I find some of the tools too heavy to use effectively. But I have found that I can take over and do a bit of digging for instance, when they pause for a rest. So they do most of the heavy work, which is fine because I am too slow if I do that. Instead I make myself useful by doing the fetching and carrying, sawing off bits of wood to make a neat job, and mixing cement for fixing the posts in position.  I am good at mixing cement, I know the proportion of chips to cement to water, and I know what it looks like when it is ready to use. The amounts we use for the posts is small, so we mix it with a spade on an old piece of hardwood, or whatever happens to be around.

After we finished work on this waymarking post, we drove the pickup down what used to be a lane to a farm. There were curlews and lapwings everywhere. I love their cries. The land is now a grassy strip between two stone walls. About half a mile further on we came to a pair of very large old iron gates across the lane, with a stile to one side.  We needed to open the iron gate, but it took three of us to lift it, it weighed a ton. They don't make them like that any more!  It was at this stile that we were to do our next job of installing a wicket gate.  This job proceeded more easily, as the soil was easy to dig, although in one of the post holes we encountered some stones that had to be crowbarred out.  The post hole was quite close to a dry stone wall, and whilst wielding the crowbar, The Birdman inadvertently banged his fingers between the crowbar and the stone wall. I think he received a quite painful bruise. There is nothing that health and safety can do to protect us against this kind of injury, other than being constantly aware of potential hazards. We installed two posts and some rails between them, but ran out of time before we were able to attach the gate. The lads would return the next day to finish the job.

Whilst we were there, one of the farmers drove up in his landrover to see what we were doing. He carefully explained who the land belonged to and asked if we had permission to be there. The conversation was polite and civilised, though at the same time there was an underlying tension I felt on both sides. Of course, it had all been cleared with the appropriate landowner. However it is easy to see how, on the one hand a farmer might feel annoyed if he thought that people were doing things without permission, whilst on the other hand the Countryside people are trying to do a job. It can easily lead to misunderstandings and bad feeling unless everything is sorted out beforehand. I think there is an uneasy relationship between the landowners across whose land the footpaths run, and the bodies who are charged with looking after them.

Some mid-season pruning

The team were busy this week, engaged in various bird-related activities I gather, so I only managed a half-day with the Countryside Service.  It was a gentle afternoon, doing a little mid-season pruning of overhanging greenery along the trail.  Today it was just me and one of the wardens -henceforth I shall call him The Birdman, as this is his area of expertise and interest.  He used to do a lot of volunteer work for the RSPB. Sometimes it is good to be with only one other person as you have an opportunity to ask questions and tend to learn a lot more.

I'd been thinking about the fact that I know there is money available for conservation and environmental purposes, but I had no notion of where it comes from or how it is spent.  I asked The Birdman about this. 

A little way along the trail, there is a field to one side where it widens out, and it is given over to grassland.  The area is maintained as a grassland meadow, which means that things like bracken and the himalayan balsam are weeded out. This then encourages the development of a rich meadow of wild flowers.  This field is known as the Stewardship Field, because some funding has been secured to protect and maintain it from the Environmental Stewardship Fund. At least, I think that is what it is called. I tried to find out more information, but my google search kept retrieving a company that provides consultancy on managing woodland, and an organisation in Minnesota.  There was some interesting information on both websites, but I don't think either were the one Mr Birdman was referring to.  Whatever the fund is pays for the fences which bound the area. The fence prevents horse and bike access but people still have access via a stile  Another example of the work that the Service does in the local community is that next week a group of people with learning disabilities will be coming to help weed the field.

Sometimes when I am not able to do my volunteering, I spend some time finding out background information about the work. I was talking to Mr Head Ranger recently, and mentioned the fact that I had found some slides from a presentation he had made to a local conference. The conference, which took place in 2008, was a local gathering of people concerned with implementing the Biodiversity Action Plan, or BAP for short.  I realise that there are large gaps in my knowledge about environmental issues, but then, there is a lot to know.  Wikipedia informs us that "the principal elements of a BAP typically include:(a) preparing inventories of biological information for selected species or habitats; (b) assessing the conservation status of species within specified ecosystems; (c) creation of targets for conservation and restoration; and (d) establishing budgets, timelines and institutional partnerships for implementing the BAP."  These elements translate into species and habitat plans at a national and local level.

Going back to Mr Head Ranger's presentation, the thrust of it was that the work that they do is an attempt to make an impact on the environment by engaging more of the population, and that the sites that they manage is the best way to inform and engage people.  Countryside sites are therefore managed for people and wildlife.

I find all of this very interesting. If I had my time again, I think I might have pursued a career in this field.  I know that there are a number of courses available for people who want to take it further.

Dont fence me in!

Surprisingly, three weeks have elapsed since my last post, it doesn't seem that long.The season has moved along in the meantime. The bluebells have been and gone (but I saw some on my travels, though not in such numbers), and the undergrowth of nettles, umbellifera (yarrow? cow parsely?), buttercups, and other flora are now waist high. Everything is incredibly green. In spite of that, the weather men have been saying that we have had the driest spring on record.

I've been away. I took a week out to go on a visit to the Outer Hebrides.  This is something that has been on my list of "must do" for a while. I am attracted to wild, unspoilt places with a bit of wildlife and history thrown in, and the Outer Hebrides, or the Western Isles as they are called for administrative purposes fit that bill.  Others have written at length about the birds, the seals, the wonderful "machair" or seaside meadows, so it is not my intention to repeat them. Other than to say it was a wonderful experience, apart from gale force winds that assailed us for most of the week. Even the locals were complaining that the weather was most unusual for this time of year.  So I returned last week, ready for some more countryside work, but discovered that the office was in the throes of having a floor replaced, and everyone was busy with that.

I turned up this morning full of enthusiasm for the day's activities. My heart sank when I discovered that we were to do more fencing replacement. The last time we did this, where we were digging through asphalt and concrete, nearly put me off the job for good. However, as it turned out, today's was a straightforward job in comparison.

I reported in an earlier post, Two steps forward, one step back, 9/2/11,  about the damage to the trail, that had been caused by heavy rains and blocked drains.  Last week some contractors came in and did a lot of remedial work, which included digging out the main place where the blocked drain had caused the flood. Now I am not just talking about an ordinary drain here.  It is a place where there is a stream in a deep gully on the uphill side, with a drain into a ditch at the side of the trail.  The contractors used a digger to excavate about 4 metres of silt from this gully.  Interestingly, this excavation revealed the original victorian stone arch and a massive drain which took the stream under the old railway. But the result of this work is that there is now a steep bank going down from the trail to the big hole and drain.  The edge of the hole is unstable, so our job was to fence it off, to prevent the public from endangering themselves.

Today was a good lesson in how to put up post-and-rail fences. There was a lot of discussion initially about where to put the main posts, both in relation to the existing fence and the spacing between them.  Also, we needed to decide whether to have the fence rails running level, or running parallel to the ground.  Eventually we opted for the latter arrangement in order to minimise the space underneath the bottom rail. A fence consists of upright posts and horizontal rails between them, and sometimes subsidiary uprights in between the main posts. The combination of how these are put together varies according to the lie of the land. The main posts come with ready drilled holes, to enable the placement of the horizontal rails. When everything is in position, the whole thing is screwed together. As I said, it was a much easier job than the previous one, because the ground was, in the main part, soil. So the shove hole tool worked a treat, even I managed to work it. I also used the crowbar to prise out some rocks, did some shifting of earth with the spade, and made myself useful with the saw to trim off the rails to the appropriate size.  I used the drill briefly to put some screws in, but my co-volunteer did most of this as he is pretty nifty with the drill.  At one point during the construction, it became clear that the other volunteer was the wrong side of the fence and called out, "don't fence me in!"  He had to finish putting the screws in, then retreat to the trail side of the fence before we could attach the last rail. All in all I think we did a good job, the result is sturdy and neat. I like doing this work, you get a great sense of achievement when you see the end product of your labours.