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Event Reports
SISSINGHURST - November 2005
The day got off to a cloudy start. Rain was forecast and was indeed
imminent. We were all water and wind-proofed up to our chins. However,
we were tempted by the promise of two huge bonfires.
The warden, who is eager to re-create many of the hedges around the
fields, had lined up another good task. One of the hedges had almost
grown into a small wood; quite a lot of the trees (mostly hawthorn) had
to be cut back to ground level and the brambles had to be eradicated
(if that is ever possible). The resulting space should enable him to
plant other threes and have everything growing from about the same
height.
We spread ourselves out, each to his or her own patch (also quite
useful when you don’t want to be hit by falling branches every so
often). Soon all that was to be heard was the sound of bowsaws, the
thuds of falling trees and the crackling of the fire as more wood was
added to the pile. The task took us longer than I thought it would,
possibly because there was more to do than met the eye; also, the
branches of the trees were quite close together and not always in each
reach of the saw.
Just before lunch it started raining and the wind blew in our faces, as
we lost the shelter provided by the trees.
The pace almost became a frantic in the afternoon, as we tried to
remove every last tree and tidy up as much as we could before the
daylight would fade, while the warden cut down the bigger branches with
a chainsaw before dragging them away with this new quad bike. I am not
sure if we succeeded but we certainly we got very close – and helped
the warden save many man-hours of work.
And, of course, we were able to check on the trees we planted in
January. The ground (clay) was wet and very cold at the time and we
wondered how anything would survive. But survive they did and are
growing quite nicely. Rather satisfying to seem some tangible results!
(Marlies)
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